http://books.google.com/books?sitesec=reviews&id=zUGQI-Zi6-UC
Review on "Wake"

Publishers Weekly vol. 255 iss. 13 p. 63 (c) 03/31/2008

excerpt from April 30, 2010, 9:00 PM
Dreams, Let Up on Us!
By DICK CAVETT
The New York Times

Some people claim they never dream. There are times when I wish I were one of them.

I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who hasn’t had the exam dream.
There are two types of dream that rate, for me at least, the word “nightmare.” The buggers are: The Actor’s Dream and The Exam Dream. If you’ve never endured either of these, count yourself lucky. Maybe I’m getting your share.

The question I can never find an answer to is the one that makes dreams so mysterious. When you watch a movie or read a story you don’t know what’s coming next. You’re surprised by what happens as it unfolds. You know that someone wrote the book or made the movie.

But who in hell is the author of the dream? How can it be anyone but you? But how can it be you if it’s all new to you, if you don’t know what’s coming? Do you write the dream, then hide it from yourself, forget it, and then “sit out front” and watch it? Everything in it is a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant. And, unlike a book or film, you can’t fast-forward to see how it comes out. So where does it come from? And who “wrote” it?

(I apologize if I’ve led you to think I have the answers.)

What shows you the dream and at the same time blinds you to its source? The mechanism has to be ingeniously complex to pull this stunt off. But it seems that the complexity of the human brain is too, well, complex for that same brain to understand.

A nice puzzle.

I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who hasn’t had the exam dream. (Do people who haven’t been to school get it, or are they immune to the torture?)

There you are in the classroom, trying desperately to get a peek at someone else’s paper, but they’ve just turned the page as you writhe in the realization that you forgot to study.

Why, this far from one’s education, does one (or at least I) still get the damned dream?

Once I awoke in a sweat from it, walked around a little to shake it off, calmed down, and went back to sleep, only to be blind-sided that same night by the actor’s dream.

Every actor gets it; even people who have only been in the school play. You’re backstage, about to go on, and desperately trying to find a copy of the play to get at least your first line or two, but no one has a script. How did you get to opening night and fail to learn a single line?

You’re plagued with: “How did I do this to myself?” and “Am I even wearing the right costume?” “Do I go out there and try to ad-lib a part I don’t know, maybe getting a few lines right by chance?” and “In a moment I’ll step out there and make an ass of myself, let down and embarrass my fellow actors and probably be fired on the spot as they give people’s money back.” It goes on and on and won’t let up on you.

The merciful release at the much-too-late-in-coming realization, “Oh, thank God it’s a dream!” leaves you limp.

Click here to read more.

Scientists from the Harvard Medical Schools propose in a new investigation that napping after
learning new information may help consolidate the recently-acquired data to memory. They
add that the correlation appears to be even clearer in the case of people who dream about what
they've just learned while sleeping. In a series of experiments, they demonstrated that not
sleeping or dreaming made people fare worse at remembering tasks or knowledge they
had just acquired hours before. 

more here: Click here to read more.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8643017.stm

A Bristol academic is to take part in a worldwide experiment to collect and analyse people's dreams using the social networking service Twitter.

Dr Jennifer Parker, of the University of the West of England, is asking people from around the world to tweet their dreams to her on Monday.

The 10 judged the best will be analysed by Dr Parker, who is a member of the Association for the Study of Dreams.

Dr Parker, who is from the university's psychology department, said even the dreams that will not be analysed publicly will help her with her research.

The contest is being run by streaming service blinkbox.

 

Irene Preisinger
MUNICH, Germany
Tue Jan 19, 2010 3:02pm EST
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60I3ZE20100119

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Frail Holocaust survivor Thomas Blatt told a court on Tuesday he still has nightmares about the months he spent at the Sobibor death camp, in moving testimony in the trial of accused Nazi guard John Demjanjuk.

Blatt, 82, whose family was killed at Sobibor, was composed but pale. His hands shook and he spoke quietly and with hesitation. At the age of 15, Blatt was ordered to sort out the belongings of Jews sent to the gas chambers at the camp.

A co-plaintiff in the case against Demjanjuk, who is charged with helping to murder 27,900 Jews in 1943, Blatt was giving testimony for the first time. Prosecutors say Demjanjuk, 89, was a guard at Sobibor at the time Blatt was there.

"My dreams are so real. I cannot escape. I am still there," Blatt, a co-plaintiff in the case, told the court in a confusing mixture of English and German. "We knew we would die, that we would be gassed."

Blatt said he did not recognize Demjanjuk from his time at Sobibor, an extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland that prosecutors say was run by 20 to 30 Nazi SS members and up to 150 Soviet prisoners of war.

Demjanjuk, lying on a bed in the court room did not look at or respond to Blatt and pulled a baseball cap low over his face so his eyes were hidden.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk fought in the Red Army before being captured by the Nazis. He is accused by prosecutors of working as a guard for the SS and helping them kill Jews at the camp.

The case, likely to be one of Germany's last major war crimes trials, has drawn major international interest.

Demjanjuk denies a role in the Holocaust and his lawyers dispute he was at Sobibor. His family say he is too frail to go on trial.

Blatt, who had difficulty hearing questions and looked exhausted by the end of the session, said if Demjanjuk was at Sobibor at the same time as him, he was a murderer.

"There were only 17 SS soldiers in Sobibor at any (one) time. The Ukrainian guards carried out the killings. They pushed people into the gas chambers," Blatt told reporters.

Jews at the camp died 20 to 30 minutes after inhaling a toxic mix of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, say prosecutors.

Blatt, who lives in the United States, said he did not know why he was selected to work. He was in the camp for about six months in mid-1943. He took part in an uprising at the camp in October 1943 in which prisoners killed SS guards and escaped.

Demjanjuk emigrated to the United States in 1951 and became an auto worker. Extradited from the United States in May, he could spend the rest of his life in jail if found guilty.

"I'm not looking for revenge. I want justice," said Blatt.

(Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Noah Barkin)

“Don’t leave your dreams in the bed,” Dr. F.D. Sampson told a full house at the Bethlehem Baptist Church Monday morning.

Sampson, the pastor of the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Houston, was speaking to those who had just completed the annual Freedom March from the Bee County Courthouse to the church in honor of the slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Commenting on the meaning of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1963, Sampson urged his listeners to “allow your dreaming to wake up. If you don’t, your night dreaming will become daydreaming. And daydreaming is nothing.”

Sampson called King a “human rights icon.”

He briefly recounted the life of the man many consider the father of the civil rights movement in America, saying that King was born on Jan. 15, 1929, and died at the age of 39 after being shot by an assassin on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn.

King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was later deemed the “greatest speech in the 20th century,” Sampson said.

Speaking to a crowd of about 200,000 people on Aug. 28, 1963, King said that 1963 was not an end but a beginning.

In the speech, King asked that his fellow countrymen no longer judge people by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The next year King became the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was only 35.

Sampson reminded those at the church that King originally was named Michael King. Jr.

But after a visit to Germany with his parents, King’s father changed his name and that of his son from Michael to Martin Luther in honor of one of the leaders of the Protestant movement in Europe.

Sampson explained that many historians over the years have tried to identify people who may have influenced King’s thinking. He debunked those theories and said he thought King was mostly influenced by his Savior, Jesus Christ.

Sampson said King asked people to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

“I encourage you not to just dream but to do more than dream,” Sampson said. “There ought to be an awakening for those who have a dream. Don’t leave your dreams in the bed.”

Although fewer people apparently took part in this year’s march, the crowd at the church was about average for the event.

Those who attended the service heard comments from Bethlehem Pastor Eric Tarver, Rev. Bill Duke of Beeville’s First United Methodist Church, Rev. Dr. Peter Muroko of First Presbyterian Church, Beeville Mayor Santiago “Jim” Martinez Jr., County Judge David Silva and state Rep. Yvonne Gonzalez Toureilles.

Again, one of the highlights of the program was the recital of parts of King’s dream speech delivered by the booming voice of Deacon Charles V. Hodge.

Those attending also were treated to the soul-stirring music provided by members of the Beeville Men’s Chorus and Bethlehem Baptist Church Choir.

Those attending this year’s march once again were accompanied by members of the A.C. Jones High School Trojan Band.

Breaking Down "Inception's" Dream Logic and Water Imagery
by Lauren Davis
http://io9.com/5436429/breaking-down-inceptions-dream-logic-and-water-imagery

...."We know so far that DiCaprio is playing a CEO-type who enters people's dreams to steal information from their heads and Page plays his assistant. In the trailer, we get some moments inside the dream worlds as well as hints at how you wake a dreamer from their sleep. In the first shot above, we see Leonardo DiCaprio spinning a top with great concentration. What is the purpose of the top? Later, we see several shots in which the laws of physics appear to be altered. Is the top some sort of test of the physics of a place?..."
 
hmmmmm.....

Here's the trailer:

http://io9.com/5435686/nolan-floods-your-brain-with-dark-surrealism-in-new-inception-trailer