Rotundus.com

The parental happiness curve

"[A]ccording to the Survey of Marital Generosity, the happiest husbands and wives among today’s young couples are those with no children and those with four or more children. ... the Survey of Marital Generosity suggests that fathers and mothers of large families are partly happier because they find more meaning in life, receive more support from friends who share their faith, and have a stronger religious faith than their peers with smaller families."

In schools, self-esteem boosting is losing favor to rigor, finer-tuned praise

"A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities. ... Dweck’s studies, embraced in Montgomery schools and elsewhere, have found that praising children for intelligence — “You’re so clever!” — also backfires. In study after study, children rewarded for being smart become more likely to shy away from hard assignments that might tarnish their star reputations. But children praised for trying hard or taking risks tend to enjoy challenges and find greater success."

California’s $500K Earners Dwindle

What might happen when you try to increase taxes on the rich? "Tax returns with adjusted gross incomes topping $500,000 fell to 98,610 in 2009, the latest year available, from a recent peak of 146,221 two years earlier ... California’s share of top-earners has dwindled even as their numbers climbed nationally" (How much of this might also be due to the economic downturn?)

Why Women Don't Want Macho Men

"New research suggests that women from countries with healthier populations prefer more feminine-looking men."

The Montreal Gazette's article today on Tim Hortons upping (Americanizing?) its coffee sizes noted that this would likely result in consumers consuming larger volumes of coffee with a clear conscience. It also seems like a to try to increase revenue, with given that the new large has the old extra-large's price tag if I understand things correctly.

What I also wonder about is the impact of simply drinking crappy coffee, and the need to disguise the taste with cream and sugar. A Tim Hortons Large (soon to be medium) double-double, is as I understand it perhaps the most common coffee order there. It also comes with 230 calories versus virtually nothing for the equivalent volume of black coffee (it may have up to about 5 calories by some estimates).

With 3500 calories being the estimated amount to gain a pound of wait, drinking a Tim Hortons double-double 5 days a week instead of black coffee comes up as about 17 pounds of additional weight per year. Depending on how many of these calories are offset elsewhere, it seems that better coffee could go a long way towards solving obesity problems.

Climate Proposal Puts Practicality Ahead of Sacrifice

I'd describe this article as climate-change-meets-reality. It's a lot easier to talk the talk than actually do anything about it, e.g.: "The Kyoto Protocol was supposed to put Europe on a new energy path, but it contained so many loopholes that the rate of “decarbonization” in Europe did not improve in the years after 1998, when the protocol was signed, or after 2002, when it was ratified. In fact, Europe’s economy became more carbon-intensive in 2010, he says — a trend that seems likely to continue as nuclear power plants are shut down in Germany and replaced by coal-burning ones." (Some interesting policy ideas though).

Israelis Facing a Seismic Rift Over Role of Women

It's not just places like Afghanistan where you see this sort of thing.

Bright white headlights: are they safe?

"Driving at night on dark, two-lane, undivided, winding roads has become even more challenging in recent years. The introduction of super bright high-intensity discharge (HID) headlights ... [allows] owners to see farther down the road and to spot pedestrians and animals from a distance, but at the same time they can create visual chaos and temporary impairment to on-coming drivers, pedestrians and cyclists."

New York pastors and lay people arrested for praying in protest

Compare to the treatment of the Occupy protesters. This group being one which is willing to pay money to rent otherwise unused facilities (which generally seems like a win for both sides).

The Rise of the New Groupthink

An interesting read: "Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic."

The Washington Post points out a lot of the problems that ebooks are presenting to libraries, with long lineups and lots of titles being completely unavailable.

Want to take out the new John Grisham? Get in line. As of Friday morning, 288 people were ahead of you in the Fairfax County Public Library system, waiting for one of 43 copies. You’d be the 268th person waiting for “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” with 47 copies. And the Steve Jobs biography? Forget it. The publisher, Simon & Schuster, doesn’t make any of its digital titles available to libraries.

Given how ebooks are typically licensed rather than sold and restricted by DRM, I'm not sure how much hope I hold out over the long term given the current trend towards copyright extensions.