>On Wed, 18 Feb 1998, Pam Blythe wrote:
>
>> Crazy or crazed?  Was the history of Edison v. Tesla passed on through the
>> generations or did you do some research on your own?
>>
>> ------------ Previous Message from  Ken Follett <[log in to unmask]>  on
>> 02/17/98 06:14:24 PM ----------
>>
>> Tesla was also quite eccentric.
>> ][<en Follett (formerly Sparky, raised by a tribe of crazy electricians)
>
>I'm not an electrician, but I saw an article a some years back in the New
>Yorker about the Edison Lab historic site in New Jersey, which mentioned
>quite a few odd things about Edison's behavior.
>
>Ever notice that in photos of Edison, he looks a bit rumpled?  According
>to that article, he did not believe in taking baths, taking off his
>clothes, or sleeping in a bed.  Instead, he slept fully dressed in a
>storage closet on a pile of old newspapers.
>
>---
>Lawrence Kestenbaum, [log in to unmask]

Speaking of sleep patterns of the extremely productive, the reason they are
so productive is they don't waste precious time sleeping.  Buckminster
Fuller slept approximately one hour a day...in three 20-minute nap
segments.  At the first sign of fatigue or tiredness, he would
_immediately_ stop whatever it was that he was doing, and go take a
20-minute nap.  And I mean, he meant business...when it was time to nap, he
napped...didn't matter what he was doing, or doing it with.  <hypothetical>
If he felt tired during a meeting with the President or the Pope, he would
excuse himself and go take his nap. <\hypothetical>  This could be somewhat
unnerving to his students as well as his clients.

During my "Fuller Infatuation" phase in architectural design school, I
adopted this pattern.  (Those of you familiar with architecture students
know they tend to stay up late, even pulling all-nighters as a way of life)
It worked for me for nine weeks.  Regrettably, we were on the 12-week
semester program.  I crashed hard, just when I didn't need to be sleeping,
in the home stretch of the semester.  Fortunately, I was ahead of schedule
because I hadn't been sleeping much, so everything worked out OK.

By the way, fans of trivia and fans of the written word as expressed in
what has to be the world's longest grammatically correct run-on sentence
will enjoy reading Fuller's manifesto/tract: _I Seem To Be A Verb_.

_______________________________________________
Dan Becker,  Executive Director       "Conformists die, but
Raleigh Historic                                 heretics live on forever"
Districts Commission                                   -- Elbert Hubbard

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