The Mosquito Effect — Why Small Annoyances Become Invisible Cages
The lamp is off and the room is almost asleep when the whine arrives at the left ear: thin, rising, gone. A slap in the dark lands on your own cheek. Then stillness, and the stillness is no longer rest. It is surveillance. Ten minutes later you are standing on the mattress with the light on, scanning the ceiling for a speck the size of a comma, more alert than you were at any point during the working day. The insect weighs about two and a half milligrams. It has just reorganized the night of an animal some thirty million times its mass. …