You don't need to know anything.

Rembrandt was born in 1606 in what was the Dutch Republic, but is now the Netherlands. Two minutes ago I didn't know that. With a wave of my magic wand (actually The Big Red Laptop) I found the info. No need to suffer the gap between knowing and not knowing. A comedian recently stated this means the time between knowing and not-knowing is so short as to make them essentially the same. So I posit, is that such a bad thing?

Smartphones, smartwatches, smartglasses, smartcontacts, Gibson-esque nanotech brain implants... I'd say the ability to access any piece of human knowledge on the go is here to stay. (Barring zombie apocalypse. Those guys ruin everything.) I graduated from college without Google. We actually had to know stuff.

Plato was a student of Socrates. Aristotle was a student of Plato. They laid the foundation of western thought. I've known that for twenty years, thanks to Mrs. Mishler and her class on Philosophy. But is knowing facts so important? The sky is blue. Big fucking deal. Nitrogen in the atmosphere scatters the light in the blue wavelength. Now you know. Thanks Mr. Ganske, and 8th grade science teachers everywhere.

But knowing stuff is easy. It is also nearly instantaneous and fairly accurate. Yet we are graduating students through school- based on the idea that knowing stuff will make you successful and therefore you must know x,y, and z to graduate. Then you graduate and clumsily look up all the stuff you forgot when you need it most. A movement started by Simon has destroyed our minds and educational system.

Not to worry, I have a solution. We just stop teaching things you should know. Seriously. How about we teach stuff you do?

How about logic to think more effectively?
Languages
Search techniques (I'm biased there.)
Martial arts
Programming
Cooking and sewing even
Driving
Art and Music
Balancing a checkbook

Then later if you need to know when the American Civil War happened, you can buy a smartphone with your balanced checkbook and look it up with your advanced search skills. A world full of people who know how to do things is more valuable than one where we merely know things.

Dinosaurs like me who learned tons of facts and can recall with clarity will act superior for about a decade and we will still beat you at Trivial Pursuit. Feel bad about it all the way to your piloting lesson.

The Early Bird Eats Worms

You've heard "The early bird gets the worm." With my three hours of sleep last night I have decided to contest this little nugget. First, yuck. Worms. Here is what the night owl gets. Other birds. While that early riser eats worms, the owl (not even in bed yet) swoops down and devours him like a KFC bucket. True story. 

(I have eaten wings at midnight. So has Batman. Enjoy your worms.)

I've also heard that you can not catch up on sleep debt. Bullshit. Seriously. No one is collecting this debt. Take a nap if you are tired. It will not be rejected by the Sandman due to his requirement for you only pay on time. Somebody coined the clever little phrase "sleep debt" to make you afraid of not getting enough rest. Fear not. There is no lien. Just lean on a comfy couch and get what you need. It makes me think of charging your phone. Imagine if someone said, "if you don't charge it all the way now- you will never be able to charge it all the way again!" You would likely smack that person. And they should keep their eyes on their own phone anyway. This crap is private.

Early to bed and early to rise makes Ben Franklin healthy, wealthy and wise. Yet late to bed is a sign of creatives. Programmers, artists, inventors, writers and the like are more often most productive in the evening hours. Yes they may be starving artists, but they save a lot on Starbucks.

Less sleep has been correlated to weight gain. Who wants to be fat and tired? I prefer plump and alert. Or slim and alert when I can get it. 

Sleeping has been shown to improve memory, long term retention, and learning. So without enough you are fat, tired and stupid. This makes the "Why am I so tired?" question unsolvable; you are incapable of figuring out how to figure out the answer to your question and too fat to type it into Google.

While all of these things are great reasons to sleep in. I have a final thought to convince you. Sometimes, with a combination of booze and/or late hours we do something we know we will regret in the morning. You can either stop doing those things (boring) or you can SHORTEN YOUR MORNING. It has now been scientifically proven that people who sleep in have less morning. Less time for regret. The math may be complicated if you are tired, but sleep on it. You can thank me in the afternoon.