A while back, Peter wrote a Hulk story with Nightmare, and his growing power after a warm day in September, with millions of people wishing, “Please, let it all be a dream…” which allowed Nightmare a permanent foothold in the real world.
Now we have this:
New Study Finds That Dream Imagery Became More Intense After 9/11:
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have not only affected the real world that we live in today, but also the intensity of our dreams. Dream imagery became more intense following that fateful day, according to a research abstract that will be presented at the 20th anniversary SLEEP meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) at Salt Lake City’s Salt Palace Convention Center from June 17-22.
The study, conducted by E. Hartmann of Tufts University in Newton, Mass., consisted of 44 persons living in the U.S. who had been keeping a record of their dreams both before and after 9/11. The results showed that while dream imagery became more intense after 9/11, dreams were not longer, more dreamlike or more nightmarelike. There was also no direct (“replay”) incorporation of 9/11 content. This, noted the author, is consistent with the “Contemporary Theory of Dreaming”, which states that the connections of a dream, along with the imagery, are guided by the dominant emotion of the dreamer. It also adds that the intensity of the central image of a dream is a measure of emotional arousal.
(Via News Unfiltered.)
• 
If they say so. I never noticed any difference.
I’ve been interested in dreams for a long time, from dream influence to dream interpretation, to the What-the-hëll-did-I-eat-last-night? variety. So, the first question that popped into my head as I read this, was were the DREAMS more intense, or merely the recollections thereof? And by what was this measured, seeing as how dream interpretation is one of THE most subjective of topics? Although, I gotta admit, when I was awake, I was a lot more aware of my surroundings. Like the industrial air conditioners that kept kicking on at work that I hadn’t noticed at all for the previous nine months of working in the building.
This report is silly. 44 people is hardly a sufficient pool to work with, there is no objective critieria with which one can measure “intensity” of dream imagery (which is completely subjective) for peer review, and no mention is made as to whether other causal circumstances in these people’s lives were ruled out as casual factors.
My dreams have been more intense lately, but that’s probably because I cut my caffeine intake drastically, and sleep longer and more soundly at night. Did these researchers consider things like this? Concluding that 9/11 is the cause of any alleged change in these people’s dreams is at best, premature, and at best, pseudoscientific.
And in what way does this indicate a “predictive” ability on Peter’s part, Glenn? All he did was write a story in which 9/11 allowed a dream motiff-based supervillain and his island to grow. As I recall, Peter’s rationale was that the event had this effect becasue of the sheer number of people who are affected simultaneously, and not necessarily that their dream imagery was more intense.
This is the second time I can recall you making a blog entry of your own invoking 9/11 on Peter’s blog, despite the fact that Peter admonished you some time ago for doing this. I intend no offense by this, but do you have some type of fetish for 9/11? Or can you simply not restrict yourself to your own blog because barely anyone goes there?
Luigi,
I think, whether you intended offense or not, that the end of your post was a little harsh. While I don’t post that often on any of the PAD related blogs, I read all of them. I’m sure that the lack of comments on his blog is not indicitive or correlated to the lack of readers. That said, I am also sure that PAD’s blog gets geometrically more hits than Glenn’s and as he does so much work keeping the blogs running smoothly, I can’t see why he shouldn’t post here for a wider audience occasionally.
If someone wants to study sleep, Utah is the place to do it. Nothing to do out here _but_ sleep.
Wow.
Luigi Novi sure got ticked.
Don’t start marching out any of your psuedoscience before this guy. Don’t try and use specious reasoning to to justify your position. Don’t try and use logical fallacies to prove your point.
Because if you do?
HE’LL KICK YOUR ÃSS.
Yes, Karen, it was a bit harsh, because the point was inherently harsh. I didn’t know how else to put it without mincing words. As I said, this is the second time Glenn has used 9/11 to promote some point through an entry on Peter’s blog (though admittedly a far less inflammatory one than the one he made a couple of years back), despite the fact Peter (IIRC) admonished him for using his blog not too long ago.
As far as the comparative dearth of comments on his blog, yes, I do think it’s logical to assume a correlative number of readers. Yes, I myself have read his blog too. That doesn’t really mitigate the point about his readership, though.
Yes, that comment by me was a bit more harsh than what I generally express here. Perhaps I simply have a personal reaction when people use 9/11 in this manner. I pretty much expressed this point last year when explaining why I didn’t care that much for that storyline in Hulk. To each their own. 🙂
So what you’re saying is that no one should write a story that references to 9/11. 9/11 is too traumatic of an event that no one can be inspired by it to write a story or work of fiction around it.
How dare Peter David use 9/11 to hawk Hulk comics. He should have had more concern than that.
I for one thought that was a real good story.
Randy: So what you’re saying is that no one should write a story that references to 9/11. 9/11 is too traumatic of an event that no one can be inspired by it to write a story or work of fiction around it.
Luigi Novi: No, that’s what you’re saying. I never said anything of the sort.
But say hi to Dorothy, the Lion and the Tin Woodsman for me. 🙂
Then maybe you should clarify what you mean when you say, “Perhaps I simply have a personal reaction when people use 9/11 in this manner.” What is the manner to which you refer?
Oh and I passed along you greetings to Dorothy, Tinny and the Lion. They didn’t know who you were.
1Call me weird, please I mean it. But I havn’t dreamed much since if any since 9-11. Of course maybe my problem is I had too horrors back to back: My wife died and then 9-11 happened just weeks apart. I guess I’ve been a mess ever since.
I remember a dream about a month after 9/11- I was standing on a bridge in Runnemede, NJ (the one that overlooks Route 42). The sky was the color of a hazy summer sunset, and the sky was full- FULL- of crashing airplanes.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever forget that one…
If this is true, I recommend no one watch Walker: Texas Ranger before bed, because Chuck Norris will beat you up in your dreams.
Randy: What is the manner to which you refer?
Luigi Novi: Regarding the aesthetics of one’s reaction to a work of fiction, as in the Hulk example, I’m not sure if it’s something I can quantify with words, and it’s been several months (a year?) since that storyline, and I don’t even remember exactly what I wrote in that blog entry. But I would not go so far as to say that 9/11 could not be used. In fact, I thought the superhero scenario Peter’s BID column following 9/11 was excellent. So were the tribute comics that Marvel and DC produced.
\red{Randy: Oh and I passed along you greetings to Dorothy, Tinny and the Lion. They didn’t know who you were.
Luigi Novi: Indeed. I’m not on as intimate terms with Straw Men. 🙂
Ack. I hate it when I mess up the formatting. Rassin’ frassin’, massin’……………..
Something’s been bothering me about this study. And no, Luigi, it isn’t your reaction to it, so calm DOWN, already.
What this study originally designed to track? I mean, I can’t see someone either proposing or getting funding for a study on something as ephemeral as dreams just in CASE there’s the worst terror attack in the country’s history. Why were they recording their dreams? And seriously, to get any kind of useful data, there needs to be a larger sampling. Everybody knows my feelings on polls and such thingies, (I don’t trust most of them, just in case you don’t) but even taking them as accurate for the sake of arguement, given the fact that people are sleeping when they’re dreaming and not concious at the time, how would you measure the intensity? What are the standards used for this?
Also, what TYPES of dreams are more vivid? The good ones? The nightmares? The ones where you’re making a presentation to your boss naked while a group of penquins walk through with signs complaining about ice? (Frighteningly enough, I know a few people who would enjoy a dream like that.) If I ever saw a potential case for false association this is it. What else happening in these people’s lives taht could have been influencing them? Even knowing that they were in a dream study could be making them, either conciuosly or no, trying to recall their dreams more accurately in a “Gotta Please Them” pattern.
Aaron Thall wrote:
“If this is true, I recommend no one watch Walker: Texas Ranger before bed, because Chuck Norris will beat you up in your dreams.”
Worse – he’ll SING to you in your dreams! 😉
Oh, and – nice alliteration, Glenn!
Sean: And no, Luigi, it isn’t your reaction to it, so calm DOWN, already.
Luigi Novi: Sean, I didn’t say anything, and would not have thought so even had you not said this.
If ‘you’ think dreams mean anything, let me sell you the swamp land I have. DREAMS DO NOT MEAN anything!!!! This is the easiest way to explain this. As you go thru life, your ‘brain’ records EVERYTHING.(on pieces of paper).As you sleep, your ‘brain’ takes these pieces of paper, mixes them up, and makes a story. Think about it, when you wake up, if you really think about it, you can attribute eveything in your dream to something/someone/etc. in your life from the past several weeks/months/etc.
Luigi: my site traffic is fine, thank you very much. I think it’s about a tenth of Peter’s, and I’m not posting as often as Peter does, nor have I been writing four comic books a month for the last decade or so. (In the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem for traffic, I’d be in the top 1500 or so. Peter would be in the top 250.)
I posted the article because it had resonance with Peter’s Hulk story, as I’ve done a few times in the past when I think that Peter’s audience would want to see .
Sean: I’m sure they would have loved to get a larger sampling, but there simply may not have been the people recording stuff in advance for a baseline comparison. As you point out, you couldn’t exactly plan for it in advance.
Posted by: dave w. at June 22, 2006 11:33 PM
If ‘you’ think dreams mean anything, let me sell you the swamp land I have. DREAMS DO NOT MEAN anything!!!! This is the easiest way to explain this. As you go thru life, your ‘brain’ records EVERYTHING.(on pieces of paper).As you sleep, your ‘brain’ takes these pieces of paper, mixes them up, and makes a story. Think about it, when you wake up, if you really think about it, you can attribute eveything in your dream to something/someone/etc. in your life from the past several weeks/months/etc.
From Wikipedia:
“It is unknown where in the brain dreams originate — if there is such a single location — or why dreams occur at all. However, there are many competing theories of the neurology of dreams.
“The activation synthesis theory developed by Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley asserts that the sensory experiences are fabricated by the cortex as a means of interpreting random signals from the pons…
“On the other hand, research by Mark Solms suggests that dreams are generated in the forebrain, and that REM sleep and dreaming are not directly related.
“Combining Hobson’s activation synthesis hypothesis with Solms’s findings, the continual-activation theory of dreaming presented by Jie Zhang proposes that dreaming is a result of brain activation and synthesis, and at the same time, dreaming and REM sleep are controlled by different brain mechanisms…
“Eugen Tarnow suggests that dreams are ever present excitations of the long term memory system, even during waking life — McCarley also observes that when asked to recall their last thought, subjects often reported somewhat hallucinatory thoughts…
“The English psychologist Stan Gooch suggests that dreams are a product of the Cerebellum, a part of the brain located at the rear of the cortex…
“The Problem Solving Theory is another interpretation of the meaning of dreams. This theory explains that a dream solves problems and works out your daily problems in creative ways…”
dave w., I’m curious: how were you able to arrive at a definitive answer to a question that has eluded the rest of the scientific community for centuries? What are your credentials in this field? And what was the research methodology you used to collect and interpret your data in order to arrive at this conclusion?
Still love to know how those particular people were chosen. Think if I e-mailed this Jim Arcuri he’d answer? This is definately a case of Art and Life being closer than anyone thought.
Dave, I don’t want to start a whole new arguement here, but your own statement points out the value of dreams. Taken as the whole truth (I’m no expert, but I have done SOME research) your idea of the dream just being the brain regurgitating what’s in it, maybe it could give a different view of events.
As for the connection to Peter’s story or the coincidence or the weird serendipity (is there a firefly in here?)or whatever, it shows how a good writer can touch on something that touches the readers or listeners or viewers or whatever media might be in use. I have to start buying more comics.
Glenn: Luigi: my site traffic is fine, thank you very much. I think it’s about a tenth of Peter’s…
Luigi Novi: A tenth? Let’s see…. Perusing the current blog entries displayed on your main page shows the number of comments made to each entry to be: 0, 0, 0, 3, 4, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, and 6. That’s an average of 1.13 comments. If this is a “tenth” of Peter’s then you must be under the impression that Peter’s blog entries generate something on the general order of 11 or so comments. While there is some variance, depending on the nature of the entries he makes (politically-oriented ones, for example, tend to generate longer comment threads), it’s obviously more than 11 on average.
Glenn: and I’m not posting as often as Peter does, nor have I been writing four comic books a month for the last decade or so.
Luigi Novi: And your point is…….?
Yes, I know you’re not a prominent writer as Peter is. That was kinda my point. You use Peter’s blog to make entries because you know that few or no comments will be generated if you made them on your own. And what does the frequency with which you post pertain to this?
As far as relevance to the story he wrote, I see little connection there, and as I stated, find the comments in that report to be methodologically flawed.
Peace.
Btw—
I realize I just used a particular criteria to measure a given phenomena (Using the number of comments made for each blog entry to measure “traffic”), when for all I know, perhaps you are using site hits with some type of counter. While the disparity between Peter’s hits and yours may be different from the respective amount of comments, I’d suggest that even if Comments are not considered by you to be a good judge of traffic, I’d be surprised if the disparity between the hits and comments were such that your one “tenth” estimation would be borne out. Then again, I could be wrong. 🙂
Take it from me and my weblog.
It doesn’t matter ultimately what the hitcount is.
What matters is how long each unique visit is, or what the average stay for a weblog reader is. A hit is a worthless track when it comes to content or meaning. How many people stay on PAD’s blog to read something and get something out of that reading, and then compare that to how many of Glenn’s unique visits are long enough to absorb content.
and for the record I’d guess that only about one out of twenty visits to my site is long enough for the reader to have read something meangingful. Of course, very rarely do I post stuff that would be interesting to other people.
As it is, plenty of people obviously visit PAD’s blog long enough to read and write. What are Glenn’s respectie stats?