Two Interesting Facts

From the “Psychomotor Repository” Dept.”

Hey all,

Just wanted to talk about two facts that I found out recently…something that I’ve been wondering for years…

Sometimes as I lie in bed, right before I fall asleep—I’ll jerk up awake in a rather violent “twitch”.

Now I know that this doesn’t sound to interesting, in fact, I’m sure all of you who are reading this right now know that this is a common occurence.

Well, over the years I’ve come to realise and sense this “half-awake, half-asleep” state. I also observed that the “twitch” was localized to a specific body part; the body part that I was half-dreaming about.

So let’s say if I was in this “half-awake, half asleep” state. If I enivisioned myself throwing a punch with my right hand, my right arm would violently jerk up, waking me in the process.

Now the amazing thing is that this phenomenon actually has a name.

It’s called a “Myoclonic Twitch“ or “Hypnic Twitch“.

How did I find this out? Well, I was reading a book, a graphic novel, written by Neil Gaiman….

I checked the word out, apparently “Myoclonic Twitch” is a little old, and the correct, or modern way to say it is “Hypnic Twitch”.

I’m finally glad that this phenomena has a name. Byron is happy because he can now explain why he punched Cris in the face while sleeping.

From the “Big Brother is Watching” Dept.

Aneil and Eric pointed this out to me.

Apparently there is a list of words that cannot be used as your MSN Messenger handle. They include, but are not limited to:

• problem
• member
• message
• MSN

Weird.

As Eric said in the following MSN conversation: