# The Post Office Opened My Mail

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-post-office-opened-my-mail/941386>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 4, 2021, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-post-office-opened-my-mail/941386 "2021-05-04T19:17:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 118

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**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2021, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-post-office-opened-my-mail/941386/118 "2021-05-09T14:54:13Z")

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> [@Jim\_B](#):
>
> EDIT: My [Circasepian Rhythm Theory](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-medical-theory-circasepian-rhythms/492914).
> 
> And really did you people give my theory a fair chance?

It’s not a “theory”, it’s a few sentences of casual observations. And even those few sentences don’t hold together into a coherent idea.

You draw a parallel to Circadian Rhythms, but it appears that you don’t understand the basic principles. A Circadian Rhythm originates _within the organism_, and operates on a fixed cycle that is _refractory_ to modification. The classic phenomenon is jet lag. You feel sleepy during the day in the new time zone because your body’s internal clock thinks it’s the middle of the night. Even though it looks like daytime, and you would prefer not to sleep, your body still feels like it wants to sleep.

> [@My Medical Theory: Circasepian Rhythms.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-medical-theory-circasepian-rhythms/492914/1):
>
> I noticed, for example, early on that when it was Sunday or Saturday, it literally “felt like” that particular day.

But you _know_ it’s the weekend, and you _know_ that you do certain different types of thing on the weekend, and that expectation puts you in a different frame of mind. So this is not evidence that there’s there’s any internal clock with a 7-day cycle that’s generating the “weekend feeling”.

> [@My Medical Theory: Circasepian Rhythms.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-medical-theory-circasepian-rhythms/492914/1):
>
> And why (I also noticed) does some day suddenly _feel_ like a Sunday or Saturday when there is an unusual interruption in your routine, like when you do something you normally do on these days.

And this observation directly _contradicts_ the idea that there is an internal 7-day cycle that is determining these feelings. The fact that the feeling can easily be modified by different activities supports instead the explanation that I just gave - that it’s simply the knowledge and expectation of what you are _doing_ on any particular day that puts you in a particular mood and frame of mind.

Again, what you need to be doing is not spamming the world with this, but (a) studying what we already know more carefully to make sure you understand it fully, and (b) developing your own critical thinking skills to think carefully about whether your own ideas are _good_ ideas that stand up to scrutiny.

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