The Exhausting Assault on Our Rest

A major thank you for the April 14 editorial, “While You Tried to Sleep.” I’m not too old yet, but I’m sure noticing that we Americans have almost no shelter to turn to for escape from the 24-hour-per-day blitz of information and noise. I would submit that these are the negative consequences: not enough time to reflect on the best decisions; to study other points of view; to step aside, face-to-face, and ponder further; and almost no time left to sit alone and troubleshoot an important decision.

Example: The Cuban missile crisis and how the Kennedy administration was able to systematically think it through, and avoid World War III. Today, we have much more information to study, but far less time to evaluate it -- if it even has a chance of reaching us. National decisions made (and heard) seem to be reflecting that daily.

Lee Ferrero

San Luis Obispo

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Your editorial touched on how television interferes with sleep. But you didn’t mention television’s greatest contribution to sleeplessness: news helicopters hovering over residential neighborhoods, sometimes as early as 5:30 a.m. The moguls who sponsor this assault on a good night’s sleep apparently get theirs by rationalizing that one 20-minute aerial video of a stalled truck on the freeway justifies 10,000 people starting the workday barely conscious -- and driving on the freeways.

Jan C. Gabrielson

Los Angeles