word of the day: somnambulist

somnambulist: one who suffers from an abnormal sleeping condition where they perform normal actions, such as walking and talking, while still asleep.

usage (from robert heinlein's starship troopers):

SCENE: Futuristic high school teacher of History and Moral Philosophy Jean V. Dubois instructs his class on the economic meaning of value as told by one of his students.

"...'value' has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, it's use to him...and second, what he must do to get it, it's cost to him. There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted...and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears.

"Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain." He had been still looking at me and added, "If you boys and girls had to sweat for your toys the way a newly born baby has to struggle to live you would be happier...and much richer. As it is, with some of you, I pity the poverty of your wealth. You! I've just awarded you the prize for the hundred-meter dash. Does it make you happy?"

"Uh, I suppose it would."

"No dodging, please. You have the prize--here, I'll write it out: 'Grand prize for the championship, one hundred-meter sprint'" He had actually come back to my seat and pinned it on my chest. "There! Are you happy? You value it--or don't you?"

I was sore. First that dirty crack about rich kids--a typical sneer of those who haven't got it--and now this farce. I ripped it off and chucked it at him.

Mr. Dubois had looked surprised . "It doesn't make you happy?"

"You know darned well I placed fourth!"

"Exactly! The prize for first place is worthless to you...because you haven't earned it. But you enjoy a modest satisfaction in placing fourth; you earned it. I trust that some of the somnambulists here understood this little morality play. I fancy that the poet who wrote that song meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money--which is true--just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion...and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself--ultimate cost for perfect value."