The new diet idea: breakfast with dessert.

"During an initial 16-week period, the average weight loss in each group was identical — about 32 pounds. But over a 16-week follow-up, people on the dessert-with-breakfast diet lost an additional 13 pounds on average, while the others gained back all but 3.5 of the pounds they had lost."

Ah! It's about ghrelin. How strange to run into that immediately after getting my attention directed, once again, to the subject of first sleep, second sleep, which I originally captivated me in 2006. I had just read this other blog post of mine from the last day of 2006, "The two most useful health stories of the year." The second one was first sleep, second sleep, and the first one was ghrelin:

This one, explaining why your brain will be sharper if you stay a bit hungry. Maybe you've been trying to lose weight, but feeling that it's always important to stave off any feeling of hunger, for fear you might become weak or dim-witted. No! The opposite is true. We evolved to perform especially well when we feel the need for food. Sate yourself, and you'll be duller. Using this information, invent a better weight-loss diet.

Now, that's the diet idea of staying hungry, not topping off breakfast with cookies or ice cream. But I like the freaky coincidence of 2 old topics popping up today in succession, like twin comets on a 6 year orbit.

Another funny thing is that, back when I first learned about first sleep, second sleep, I wrote a post at 2:27 a.m., talking about how I was between sleeps and worrying about raking my leaves before the snows came and ruined my lawn and imagining how if the lawn were ruined it would give me reason to hire people next year to "make it thickly plush, satisfyingly level, and shockingly green." And then there's Meade, in the first comment, at 3:32 a.m., also between sleeps, advising me about how to re-green the lawn. How nice that these days, when I'm caught between sleeps, Meade is here in the flesh.

The article I'd read back in 2006 said:

This time after the first sleep was praised as uniquely suited for sexual intimacy; rested couples have "more enjoyment" and "do it better," as one 16th-century French doctor wrote.

The time after second sleep is also good for many things, including breakfast alone or with your true love, with or without dessert.

That's not insomnia, that's the natural sleep pattern breaking through!

I love to run across a surprising fact that I hadn't known before:

Until the modern age, most households had two distinct intervals of slumber, known as "first" and "second" sleep, bridged by an hour or more of quiet wakefulness. Usually, people would retire between 9 and 10 o'clock only to stir past midnight to smoke a pipe, brew a tub of ale or even converse with a neighbor.

Others remained in bed to pray or make love. This time after the first sleep was praised as uniquely suited for sexual intimacy; rested couples have "more enjoyment" and "do it better," as one 16th-century French doctor wrote. Often, people might simply have lain in bed ruminating on the meaning of a fresh dream, thereby permitting the conscious mind a window onto the human psyche that remains shuttered for those in the modern day too quick to awake and arise.

Why was I not informed of this earlier? Not only is this supremely interesting, but is it also useful. I often wake up after an interval of "first sleep," but I've never thought of it as anything but a problem, a form of insomnia to be combatted by getting back to sleep as soon as possible. I'm fascinated by the idea of valuing this wakeful interlude by engaging in activities that, for one reason or another, are done especially well in an hour between two sleeps.

A. Roger Ekirch, the author of the linked article, theorizes that the older pattern of sleeping is the natural one, and our modern "consolidated sleep" is an artificial byproduct of artificial lighting. What we are perceiving as a sleep problem is really this natural form of sleeping breaking through.

This is simply amazing news. It might just change my way of living. I have been thinking that it's just terrible to go to bed as early as 9 only to wake up and see that it's midnight. I've thought that it's important to stay up late enough that you won't just be taking what turns out to be merely a nap, a sleep snack that spoils my appetite for a full meal of sleep. Now, I'm going to think, it's time for first sleep. On waking at midnight, instead of thinking, oh, no, there's no way I can start the day this early if I can't get back to sleep. I'm going to think it's a valuable opportunity, use the time, and feel confident about the arrival of the wholly natural and not at all weird second sleep.

First sleep, second sleep.

I've written about this subject before. In 2006, I was amazed: "That's not insomnia, that's the natural sleep pattern breaking through!"

I'm fascinated by the idea of valuing this wakeful interlude by engaging in activities that, for one reason or another, are done especially well in an hour between two sleeps.

But here's a new article on the subject at BBC.com that a reader pointed out, and it made me want to revive the subject:

"For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."

The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too.

Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view.

"Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern."

When I first heard about this back in 2006, I thought it might "change my way of living":

I have been thinking that it's just terrible to go to bed as early as 9 only to wake up and see that it's midnight. I've thought that it's important to stay up late enough that you won't just be taking what turns out to be merely a nap, a sleep snack that spoils my appetite for a full meal of sleep. Now, I'm going to think, it's time for first sleep. On waking at midnight, instead of thinking, oh, no, there's no way I can start the day this early if I can't get back to sleep. I'm going to think it's a valuable opportunity, use the time, and feel confident about the arrival of the wholly natural and not at all weird second sleep.

Ah! But I did not change my way of living. And just last night, I encountered and experienced as a problem the very thing I was going to reconceptualize as a valuable opportunity. How fortuitous to have this reminder today!

"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."

We've talked about the subject of 2 sleeps before on this blog. (That's why a reader sent me that link.)

The new article cites a book called "Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe." From a review at that last link:

[Craig] Koslofsky's epic history of the night reveals a revolution: how stage lights remade theater, how Lutheran mystics penetrated the night, how witch hunters fought the devil on his own nocturnal turf, how racism mirrored the presumed iniquity of blackness, and how street lights pacified cities....

That book doesn't refer to Bob Dylan, who was not afoot in early modern Europe, but "Evening's Empire" takes me to:

Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping...

The thing about first and second sleep is that — here in mid-modern America — if you accept the opportunity of the wakeful time after a first sleep, you need to believe there's a second sleep in the offing. But who has that kind of confidence? Back in the 18th century, they didn't have electric lights. They didn't have computer monitors. After an hour or 2 of whatever they did in the dark — we're told they reflected, prayed, talked, had sex, and smoked — they'd be in the right condition to slip back to sleep. But reading the news of the world on a lit up screen and writing about it, I can't think of second sleep as anything more than a vague hope. What was supposed to be an interval becomes the entire next day.

The intersleep has mission creep.

Glenn links to my old "First Sleep/Second Sleep" musings...

... here... and immediately I find I'm fulfilling a plan I formed back in 2006:

I have been thinking that it's just terrible to go to bed as early as 9 only to wake up and see that it's midnight. I've thought that it's important to stay up late enough that you won't just be taking what turns out to be merely a nap, a sleep snack that spoils my appetite for a full meal of sleep. Now, I'm going to think, it's time for first sleep. On waking at midnight, instead of thinking, oh, no, there's no way I can start the day this early if I can't get back to sleep. I'm going to think it's a valuable opportunity, use the time, and feel confident about the arrival of the wholly natural and not at all weird second sleep.

Thanks, Glenn. For the links. The whammy links.

Post-feminist/post-sanity Darwinism read way too early in the morning.

Last night, between first and second sleep, I scanned the blogs for something to read and landed on "Love in the Time of Darwinism," by Kay S. Hymowitz.

There's an Instapundit post from 2:40 a.m. linking to it with the line "A REPORT FROM THE chaotic post-feminist dating scene." Post-feminist... or post-morality, post-sanity, post-... everything?

Is Glenn really up looking for new stuff to throw at us at 2:40 in the morning, or does he just set these things up to post at the times he sees fit... and if the latter: why this, why 2:40?

Hymowitz tells us us that men these days are angry -- angry that "young women are dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging" and "that the culture disses all things male" and "that marriage these days is a raw deal for men."

SYMs [single young males] of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional...

As the disenchanted SYM sees it, then, resistance to settling down is a rational response to a dating environment designed and ruled by women with only their own interests in mind. “Men see all of this, and wonder if it’s really worth risking all in the name of ‘romance’ and ‘growing up,’ ” a correspondent who calls himself Wytchfinde explains. “After all, if women can be hedonistic and change the rules in midstream when it suits them, why shouldn’t men? Why should men be responsible when women refuse to look into the mirror at their own lack of accountability?”...

By far the most important philosopher of the Menaissance is Charles Darwin. The theory that human sexual preferences evolved from the time that hominids successfully reproduced in the primeval African grasslands can explain the mystery of women’s preference for macho—or alpha—males. At the same time, evolutionary theory gives the former wuss permission to pursue massive amounts of sex with an endless assortment of women. Finally, the emphasis that Darwinism places on natural selection encourages him to adapt to the brutal current sexual ecosystem. Culture, in both its feminist and Emily Post forms, hasn’t won him any favor with women, so he will embrace Nature in all its rude harshness.

(Paging Bob Wright.)

Hymowitz proceeds to tell us about something called the Seduction Community -- "a loose network of dating coaches, gurus" who teach something called Game, by which men can pick up women and use them however they like.

Teachers encourage clients to project confidence and sexual energy, what is called, depending on the guru, “cocky funny” or “amused mastery.” In The Aquarian, a New York–based music magazine, Kevin Purcell describes his experience at a Game workshop: “One of our first tasks was to walk around the hotel silent, repeating in our heads ‘I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about me.’ This mentality, it was assumed, would help lower the wall of anxiety and make us less prone to the pain of rejection. Like soldiers responding to a drill sergeant, when asked ‘What are you?’ we were instructed to loudly proclaim, ‘A fucking ten!’ ”

Wait! How much do guys pay for this training? Are Penn & Teller working on an episode of "Bullshit" on about Game? I'd say it's asking for it. I want to cameras at that hotel, pointed at those would-be pick-up artists wandering about thinking "‘I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about me." Presumably, they wouldn't object to the cameras, since they don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about them. To be fair, the guys are getting fucked... one way or another.

There's much more at the link. You can read it or not. Your call.

As I said, I read it in the middle of the night, in that strange mental peak between first and second sleep. And it freaked me out. Oh, so this is what life is like now, for those people in that most important part of life, the place from which the next generation springs (if it is to spring at all)? (I've been reading Mark Steyn's "America Alone," and that laid the groundwork for disturbing thoughts about a culture's failure to bring men and women together in reproductive success -- which is, of course, the real Darwinism.)

I clicked over to Metafilter for some fresh air, and the first thing I saw was a post about "Love in the Time of Darwinism." Everyone was trashing Hymowitz. It wasn't exactly comforting. In fact they sounded... SYMish. But it unfreaked me out nontheless. It broke the spell. And, anyway, my iPhone power was close to 0% and that's as good an indication as any that it's time for second sleep.

Cat-napping — taking advantage of the little spaces — is a super-power, not a weakness.

But you said nothing when Trump did similar. https://t.co/Ggv2IZH0w3

— V Daniels (@funkapunk) October 22, 2022

Here's a 2021 column in The Guardian: "From Aristotle to Einstein: a brief history of power nappers/Churchill took naps for at least an hour, Da Vinci for 20 minutes and Dalí for just a second" by Caroline Davies."

Salvador Dalí, in his 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship for aspiring painters, outlined tips for the one-second micro-nap, including sitting upright, key in hand and upturned plate beneath. Once asleep, the key will drop and the ensuing clang ensures instant revival. Albert Einstein deployed a similar technique, using a spoon or pencil instead of a key.

Notes in preparation for a second viewing of last night's "Sopranos." [With second-viewing additions scattered throughout.]

Speaking of Amba, she already has a lot to say about last night's "Sopranos." Lots of spoilers over there. Me, I can't write about a "Sopranos" episode until I see it twice. The first time, I'm just getting used to it, seeing the lay of the land. I only really get it the second time around. But I will say a couple things. Spoilers here now.

Two days ago, I spent 5 hours writing about the previous episode, "Kennedy and Heidi," exploring a theory that turned out to be wrong. So I have some resistance to this new episode, "The Second Coming." All that weird stuff in Las Vegas turned out to just be an actual trip to Las Vegas. The peyote revelations evaporate into nothing.

TONY: "Sun came up."

SIL: "Oh yeah?"

Just like the day after any given idiot's psychedelic trip.

Much as I love "The Sopranos," I often get the feeling that the shows are parceled out as separate units, assigned to writers who work out a story arc for that episode. There are threads that go through the whole season (and the whole series), but there are a lot of things that seem to be there for the sake of the story within a single hour. The "Kennedy and Heidi" story had a big ending, but last night didn't take it from there.

Now, again, I'm bad at appreciating the show after only one viewing. The first time I saw "Kennedy and Heidi," I was disappointed. I thought: So, they needed something for Tony to do and they dragged in another beautiful woman character for him to have sex with. She means absolutely nothing to us. And because we've seen so many scenes of Tony having sex -- ugh! -- they threw in some drugs for a little variation, and it was like the big cliché that was in seemingly every movie circa 1970s. A guy takes drugs and sees things a different way. Big deal. But looking at last night's episode, it's like my attitude after the first viewing was right. "Sun came up." "Oh yeah?"

But this is what I'm saying about "The Second Coming" after the first viewing. [ADDED: And now I've watched it a second time, so I'm just going through and putting additions like this in. Actually, writing these notes brought together a lot of my thoughts, causing the second viewing to be less revelatory than I had thought it would be.]

Now, there were lots of things that drew me in and made me excited about getting to my second viewing so I can see what's really there. The title comes is the title of the poem by William Butler Yeats. A.J.'s lovely teacher read us the first verse in class:

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

A.J., in bed, reads us the second verse:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[ADDED: Actually, they didn't read the whole text of the poem. More like about half.]

You need to study the poem as you rewatch the episode. It's not enought to say "Things fall apart... Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," so there's going to be an all-out war between Tony and Phil. Or "somewhere in sands of the desert... what rough beast... Slouches towards Bethlehem," so all that talk about the Mideast and terrorism is going to have to be part of the series dénouement. There must be endless depths there. You're just getting started.

Perhaps Tony will find his humanity (or is he the "rough beast"?). He gives an expensive watch to Carmela, which is typical for him, but what was that inscription? He tries to connect with the guys talking about his peyote visions, but he fails. He tells Phil he wants to talk to him "on a human level." Which also fails. He saves his son from drowning. ("blood-dimmed tide... innocence is drowned.") The water imagery from last week. He cradles the son he saves. Mother imagery from last week. He starts saying "poor you," the way his own mother Livia did. More mother references. Before saving his son from drowning, he eats the "Lincoln log" food Carmela made to try cheer up A.J. Imagery carried over from last week: mother, phallus, assassinated President.

Speaking of Presidents and the Middle East, A.J. is worried about Bush bombing Iran, and he's taken to reading al Jazeera. (Is he in on the terrorism plot that better be cooking up after all the references?)

Carmela kills me. Her son is completely depressed, and she makes him Lincoln logs. That's like saying "You need to grow a dick." Then she announces inanely, "I'm going to Nordstrom's." After his suicide attempt, she says, "He was always so happy. He was our happy little boy." Edie Falco is a brilliant actress to be able to fascinate us with a character whose primary trait is utter blindness. She makes emptiness seem so full. She does throw the watch though. Is she going to find her humanity?

Then there's the conversation between Dr. Melfi and her therapist, who tells her -- in one of the least ambiguous things ever said in the series -- that talk therapy validates sociopaths, that they learn how to shape their souls. [ADDED: I misread my handwriting. It wasn't "shape their souls," but "sharpen their skills."] But how does that fit with Tony's grasping after humanity? Considering that Tony -- along the way -- tries to be a good father to Meadow by smashing a guy's teeth out and sits through his son's therapy session with one of the bloody teeth stuck to his pantleg, I'm guessing that he's shaping his soul in preparation for some big sociopathic adventures.

I scrawled notes in the dark, and some of them I can't quite place: "It's all a big nothing." Did someone say that? [ADDED: A.J. repeats this as something Livia once said to him.] "You're at the precipice of an enormous crossroads." Someone said that. But who? [ADDED: Carmine says it to Tony.]

And some of those notes... well, can you read them?



Click here to enlarge the notes. I will enlarge on these thoughts after a second viewing.

PRIMARY NEW OBSERVATION ON SECOND VIEWING: The biggest mystery is what was wrong with the FBI agent who showed Tony the photographs of the suspected terrorists. He was having stomach trouble and referred to a "microbe." I'm going to guess that the terrorism is a kind of bioterrorism and -- going out on a limb here -- it involves tainted meat. There are references to meat: the steak pizzaiola and the Lincoln logs, A.J.'s little speech about meat sprayed with virus, the FBI agent's refusal of meat in a scene at the meat store. There are references to bad chemicals: the asbestos, A.J.'s "self-medicating," Sil's diagnosis of A.J. as having a "chemical imbalance." Admittedly, all this imagery of meat and taintedness suits the general theme of the show -- death, evil, decay, corruption. But I can't get over all the references to terrorism all season and the ominous "microbe."

In the comments, some people wondered that I thought A.J. would be involved in the terrorist plot. (Some people seemed oddly outraged as if this wasn't fiction and I was violating his rights by accusing him without the evidence.) I sort of see the point. He's very depressed and inert, and now he's hospitalized. With only 2 episodes to go, you may think this character has had his big episode, and now he's over. But his story has been linked thematically to the terrorist story over and over. I find it hard to believe that won't pan out in some way. And it should be noted that the black bicyclist who got beaten up in the "Kennedy and Heidi" episode was Somalian. It's possible he'll get together with A.J. inside the hospital. Hospitals have provided the setting for some important doings over the years on this series, you know.

The two most useful health stories of the year.

1. This one, explaining why your brain will be sharper if you stay a bit hungry. Maybe you've been trying to lose weight, but feeling that it's always important to stave off any feeling of hunger, for fear you might become weak or dim-witted. No! The opposite is true. We evolved to perform especially well when we feel the need for food. Sate yourself, and you'll be duller. Using this information, invent a better weight-loss diet.

2. And this, about how the natural sleep pattern is to have a first and second sleep, with a wakeful period in between. Until I read this piece, I regarded this as an unfortunate sort of insomnia, and knowing that it is natural and that, years ago, people used the inter-sleep period to accomplish things has completely transformed how I think about sleep.

Naked as a clam.

I'm reading "Don’t sleep naked — the nine best tips on how to sleep in the heat/Struggling to drop off then waking at the crack of dawn? Boiling nights can be a challenge. Here’s what to do" (London Times).

9 tips are needed because air conditioning is not one of them. In first place is the one that begins the headline, "Don’t sleep naked." We're told "Wearing loose-fitting cotton PJs is a better option than sleeping in the nude, according to the sleep consultant Alison Jones, a spokeswoman for the sleep technology company Sealy. 'A light fabric helps to wick away moisture so that you are less likely to feel clammy,' Jones says."

I think the phrase "Don't sleep naked" is just click bait. If cotton were good for "wicking away moisture" then those who like the freedom of naked sleeping could just cover ourselves with a cotton sheet. But didn't cotton lose that reputation. Hikers these days are advised to avoid cotton. It may wick moisture, but it stays damp. And isn't that what we mean by feeling "clammy"?

By the way, were clams called "clams" because they were seen as clammy or did the word "clammy" postdate the use of "clam" as the name for the familiar mollusk, so that things were being called "clammy" because they seemed clamlike?

I guess I'd better rake my leaves tomorrow.

It was about 70° on Thursday, but they're saying there will be 4 inches of snow tomorrow, starting at noon. The gap between my first sleep and second sleep tonight is really long, but I can't go out in the middle of the night and do the leaves. That would be crazy!

Why haven't I done them yet? I've been really busy. Doing the leaves is not high on my agenda. It's just: Do them before the first real snow. Those minor dustings don't count. Damn. I do not have time for this tomorrow.

Why don't I hire someone? It's more trouble to do that than to do the leaves, and doing the leaves can be sort of fun if you do them when you're in the mood. But if the mood doesn't strike you before the real snow forces the task on you, then it's not cool at all. And it's not good coming on a day when I'm busy and when I can't sleep in the middle of the night.

In my middle-of-the-night alertness, I'm furiously trying to think of a solution, and I'm attracted to the idea that the predicted snow will turn out to be rain. I can't slot in the raking tomorrow. Certainly not before noon. It's going to simply have to be rain. And if it's not, my back-up attractive idea is: What does it matter if the leaves stay on the ground all winter? I've been here more than 20 years without letting that happen. Isn't it about time I let one thing go like that? And if the leaves ruin the lawn, that's a sign that I should hire people to completely redo the lawn next year. It would be a good thing. They can make it thickly plush, satisfyingly level, and shockingly green.

In my middle-of-the-night furious thinking, I see I've got a whole ambitious set of ideas about the failure to rake.

"King Charles and Queen Camilla... occupy three bedrooms: one shared room and an individual private boudoir each."

"The arrangement has been hailed as a recipe for marital harmony: no recriminations about toast crumbs on the duvet or arguments over whether to invite the Jack Russell terriers aboard, and plenty of space to starfish. And it turns out that King Charles is a bedroom trendsetter. The latest YouGov sleep study reveals that one in five couples have switched to separate beds (or opted for sleep divorce, as it’s cheerily known), with women (41 per cent) more likely than men (33 per cent) to say they sleep better alone...."

From "Are you ‘sleep divorced’? Here’s why single beds are back" (London Times).

What, exactly, is a boudoir? I get it that there are 3 bedrooms, and like the idea of 3 connected rooms, which could work very well in a house to accommodate the varied sleep patterns of a married couple and also be usable as guest bedrooms, but what makes an extra bedroom into a "boudoir." That sounds exciting, but why?

I'm a morning person, obviously, or this would be terrible.

I'm interested in the "first sleep, second sleep" approach to sleeping. But what's the best interval? In the past 24 hours, I slept from 9:30 to 2:30 and then from 10 to 1. That can't be right! But I feel great, especially since I'm experiencing the day as 2 completely fresh mornings.

Anecdote in "What Couples Want to Know But Are Too Shy to Ask" seemed much more interesting at first.

It's in the Wall Street Journal, which does sometimes have articles about sex:

About 10 years ago, Ms. Madsen started to feel unhappy and unfulfilled....

Ms. Madsen went to bed around 8:30, woke up at 5 and liked to have sex at night. Mr. Madsen went to bed at midnight, woke up at 7 and liked it in the morning. When his wife asked him to come to bed earlier, he explained that he was still working. "I acknowledged that we needed to schedule time to have sex more often, but realistically, not much changed," he says.

Some of Ms. Madsen's friends were having extramarital affairs and encouraged her to do the same. "I wanted to feel sexually alive again, too," she says. Instead, she decided to try sex therapy, and several therapists helped her explore her desires. She read erotic books....

It took six months, though, for Ms. Madsen to get up the nerve to talk to her husband about her realization....

Then I read "Pamela [is] an author and blogger about topics including female sexuality" and I wasn't interested in her story anymore. It's not that I'm against blogging (or against other bloggers). It's that I'm reading an article that seemed like it was on a general topic and now it looks like it was built on that anecdote and that anecdote was concocted as material to flesh out a blog. What's all this stuff doing on a blog? Of course, I can answer that question, but the story loses authenticity. What is this relationship, if it was blogged about? Actually, looking at the details of the story, it seems pretty screwy. Or is it banal? She goes to a sex therapist for 6 months before talking to her husband? And she's someone who writes about sex?

(And, by the way, if you like to go to bed at 8:30 — 8:30! — and your husband likes to stay up until midnight, you need to learn about first sleep/second sleep. The interval between the 2 sleeps is a traditional time for having sex.)

Audible Althouse #37.

The new podcast is here. Snow and lightning in Madison, Dick Cheney shooting a man, oral surgery, sleep patterns and the interval between first and second sleep, old records, the Maharishi's plan for world peace, and the ongoing violence over those cartoons.

(Stream it live here.)

"Why Can't All Ashley Madison Hacking Victims Be Josh Duggar?" is the wrong title for this piece by Amanda Marcotte.

Because this is the core of it:

But cheating is about violating a deeply personal agreement between two people. If the person you’re with doesn’t care if you sleep with other people, it’s not cheating. It’s all about an agreement that you decide between yourselves, and like all such agreements, the only people who should care what you do are people who your behavior directly affects. It’s not the business of the world at large.

That's the second-to-the-last paragraph, the serious point. The final paragraph serves up some cheap political amusement:

Unless you’re Josh Duggar, of course. Or anyone else who fights publicly to use government interference to mess with the private sexual choices of consenting adults. If you fight for the government to limit or ban gay people’s marriages or women’s reproductive choices, then your sex life is our business. If only there were a way to do a targeted search of Ashley Madison data for that, while leaving everyone else alone.

I sort of agree with that observation, even though I'm a big proponent of equal justice and think it's an important test of any rules we have that we want them to apply to people we like just as much as to those we despise. But the Ashley Madison data dump isn't a rule we've adopted as a group. It's something a small bunch of hackers inflicted on us, and, like a car accident or a falling meteoroid, we can, without hypocrisy, hope that it hits someone we didn't like anyway. And, speaking of hypocrisy, there is something special about exposing the hypocrites. Anyone who's made a public show of disparaging the sexual morality of others had better uphold high standards privately, because there will be little sympathy if we catch them sinning (which seems to happen so often that I always assume public perseveration about sexual morality is motivated by guilt about sexual sin).

I've almost talked myself out of my original premise that the second-to-the-last paragraph is more significant. It is what I started this post to talk about. I want to take issue with the idea that "cheating is about violating a deeply personal agreement between two people," that "It’s all about an agreement that you decide between yourselves," that "the only people who should care what you do are people who your behavior directly affects," and "It’s not the business of the world at large." Hello?! We're talking about marriage. Why was same-sex marriage recognized as a constitutional right? It wasn't — I've read the opinion — so that couples could get access to the economic benefits of marriage. It was because same-sex couples deserved equal respect from society as a group. If it were just a "deeply personal agreement between two people," then the legal status of marriage would not have mattered.

Obviously, married couples can and do work out their own relationship in private, and they may have understandings about sex with outsiders to the marriage. Sometimes it's because — in Marcotte's crude language — "the person you’re with doesn’t care if you sleep with other people," and sometimes it's because "the person you’re with" — that is, your husband or wife — has pressured or talked you into accepting nonexclusivity. Sometimes it's because you blind yourself to something that, confronted, would destroy what you want to keep.

But when you take on the legal status of marriage, you are including the rest of the world. You may have the idea — perhaps based on enlightened self-interest and choice — that marriage for you isn't exactly what marriage is for the general public. It may be a festival of polyamory for you and your spouse. But it is not a thoroughly private arrangement. You invited the world in. You interacted with the government and acquired a status of "recognition, stability, and predictability." And that made it the public's business. Flooding into your personal life came all these outsiders' ideas about what marriage means.

IN THE COMMENTS: Jane the Actuary said: "So Ann Althouse is publicly coming out as saying that marriage, by definition, requires sexual exclusivity? Good!" And I said:

How do you figure I said that?

I said that when you marry, you deliberately take on a status that is about public recognition of your relationship, and that closes off your argument that what you are doing is purely private. You've invited public judgment.

You could still say: 1. The public are jerks to express judgment especially where they don't know the details of our relationship. 2. I'll ignore what people say and do what I want and the govt still can't take away my marital status unless we seek divorce, and 3. Marriage ought to be understood to include the privately arrived at relationship between the spouses, including greater sexual freedom.

The Ashley Madison problem has to do with one's public reputation, which is based on the public's idea of what is good, and which tends to be that married couples should be sexually faithful. So, it's going to hurt your reputation to look like an adulterer. That doesn't say thing about what marriage is "by definition."

Analogy: It hurts your reputation (in present day America) to be known to be an atheist, but that doesn't establish that God exists. 

The 10-year-old boy did a great job of standing there stoically at 3 a.m. Imagine being thrust into the public spotlight like that!

Rousted out of a deep sleep, suited up like an adult, and stood on the stage to be gawked at by a billion people. It was a surreal moment for all of us, but what was it to the boy? Now, a GIF has been made of the funniest second of the child's struggle, and people a Facebook watch it loop and they laugh.



Now, he must go live in the White House. When is the last time a boy has been made to live as the only child in the White House? John John had a sister. Poor Barron! My heart goes out to him. He's doing a great job. The idea that this GIF shows that he doesn't respect his father makes me sad. How hard he tried at 3 a.m. to do what was right, but the boy's eyes rolled back for a second, perhaps into sleep, and it amused the crowd.

An Althouse blog first — since I don't see anyone else doing it right — a drinking game for the presidential debate.

Trump says "And by the way." 1 sip.

Clinton coughs. 1 sip for each second beyond 1 second.

Lester Holt corrects something Trump says. 1 sip.

Lester Holt corrects something Hillary says. 1 large gulp.

Clinton claims to have been a champion of women and children all her life. 1 sip.

Anyone mentions "the glass ceiling." 1 sip.

Somebody says "basket of deplorables." 1 sip.

Trump says "We have to do it" or "We have no choice." 1 sip.

Anyone says "Still dicking bimbos at home." 1 large glass.

Either candidate refers to the other as a big liar. 1 sip.

Clinton uses her long career in government as a positive factor/Trump disrespects a long career in government. 1 sip.

Trump portrays himself as a newcomer to politics in a positive light/Clinton disrespects newcomer status. 1 sip.

Clinton refers to the times Trump has insulted a woman. 1 sip.

Trump brings up Clinton's efforts to discredit Bill Clinton's women. 1 sip.

Clinton is referred to as "The Bitch America Needs." 1 large gulp.

Anyone gets caught up in the meaning of the concept of being "qualified" to be President. 1 sip.

Any reference to Trump steaks. 1 sip.

Any reference to Skittles. 1 sip.

Any reference to anyone's hair. 1 sip.

Any reference to how much sleep either candidate needs. 1 sip.

An answer begins with "Well" and then a pause. 1 sip.

Trump says his father told him not to attempt to build in Manhattan. 1 sip.

Hillary says her mother worked as a maid. 1 sip.

Either candidate refers to the other's supporters as under-/over-educated. 1 sip.

Hillary calls Trump "Donald." 1 sip.

Trump calls Clinton anything other than "Hillary Clinton" or "Secretary Clinton." 1 sip.

Anyone says "What have you got to lose?" 1 sip.

Hillary delivers a laugh line that you are 100% sure is scripted. 1 sip.

Hillary delivers a laugh line that you are at least 90% sure is spontaneous. 1 gulp.

Someone mentions Arnold Palmer. 1 sip.

Someone mentions the new Museum of African American History and Culture. 1 sip.

Anyone says "Citizens United." 1 sip.

Any reference to Americans as "hard-working." 1 sip.

Any comprehensible explanation of how Hillary will or will not repeal the Second Amendment. 1 sip.

Any mention of dogs or cats. 1 sip.

Any reference to something that will be done on the first day. 1 sip.

Hillary uses one of Trump's characteristic hand gestures (such as the index finger poised on the thumb). 1 sip.

Either candidate — except at the very beginning or end — leaves his/her place behind the lectern and moves into the other person's territory. 2 large gulps.

"[T]his moronic New Republic thing, 'Liberals Are Killing Art: How the Left became obsessed with ideology over beauty'..."

"... my response to which, based on years of bitter experience with actual kulturkampfers, is basically WTFingF. For the moment I will only mention that author Jed Perl cites absolutely no allegedly art-killing liberals of the present time that you've ever heard of, and that his first references are to Robert Hughes' Culture of Complaint (1993) and Lionel Trilling's The Liberal Imagination (1950), which basically makes me want to say, why don't you and Roger Kimball go back in time and fuck each other on a pile of old New Criterions?"

Roy Edroso reads and reacts to a New Republic essay that I noticed in the middle of the night, between sleeps, endeavored to read, but I nearly lost my mind. I was saved by second sleep, overslept, and awoke refreshed enough to know I didn't ever have to figure out whatever it was Perl meant to say or what nightmares I might have had and forgotten about Lionel Trilling and the rest of the old-time culture-cogitators who beset the minds of old men.

But how old is Perl? Wikipedia tells me he was born in 1951, and I am brought up short. I was born in 1951. "Jed Perl initially trained as a painter." Well, hell, I was initially trained as a painter (not that "trained" is the right verb, but I did squander my undergraduate journey in the painting studios of my university's art school).

I should be sympatico with Perl, but he seemed to be citing all the characters that seemed so important to our parents' generation. I can't believe it matters, but then again, I can't seem to care at all about any art that got made in the 4 decades since I escaped from art school. If Perl knows, he's not expressing it in a form that gets past my filters.

"On the second floor of their home right by the National Mall, Melania has the master bedroom all to herself."

"Her husband Donald goes to bed in what used to be a living room. But with a little creative thinking, as Kevin McCloud would say on Grand Designs, he has transformed it into a curated sleep space all of his own.... Trump appeared... to be engaged in a decorating arms race with Melania in the room next door. Trump was 'determined to have the better room'.... To this end he was said to have removed gold pieces that his wife had selected for the hallway and brought them into his own bedroom to sleep among them.... Sleep scientists, and Cameron Diaz, will tell you that separate bedrooms does not imply an unhappy marriage...."

From "Trump 'steals Melania’s decor to make his bedroom better than hers'/The latest insight into life inside the White House pits the president against his wife in a decorating arms race" (London Times).

The details in that article are taken from the new book "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (commission earned).