Rotundus.com

After his experience in Queens Family Court, Mihai Muset has a slightly different perspective on the system of justice in his native Romania. During Communist rule in 1982, when he was 24 years old, he was arrested for carrying a protest banner in Bucharest.

"I was sentenced to two months in prison," he recalled, "but at least I got to appear in court and talk to the judge. That's more than I got in Family Court."

Source: The New York Times (where a bunch more details may be found about this case)

The professional pessimist sees one half the picture, the professional optimist the other. The former calls the latter superficial and is in turn pronounced defeatist. Each possesses a distorted fragment of the Christian truth. The Bible's realism exceeds that of the worst cynic, for it know what man has done to God. At the same time its hope surpasses the wildest utopian fantasy, for it has concrete experience of what this same God will do for man.

- Edmon LA B. Cherbonnier, cited on p. 101 of Seeing through Cynicism

The last while I've been experimenting with a new strategy for getting work done: don't be productive before noon. On the upside, it seems to have meant an improvement in productivity. On the downside, I probably won't set things aside until 10pm or so.

It has long been held that the early bird catches the worm. But it is the night owl that lasts the distance, research shows. It found that late risers tire less quickly than those who make a point of getting up at the crack of dawn.

The study is likely to be embraced by anyone tired of being branded lazy for their love of a lie-in. And it adds to growing evidence that it is night owls that rule the roost.

Previous studies have found that those who rise later tend to be both cleverer and richer than early birds.

- Excerpted from The Daily Mail

According to the study [of around 2,000 elementary school teachers throughout Germany] released this week, which is based on an extensive online questionnaire, the great majority of teachers make assumptions about the academic performance and behaviour of children based merely on their first names.

... The study reveals that the traditional names ... are consistently linked to strong performance and good behaviour. Non-traditional names ... , on the other hand, are associated with weak performance and bad behaviour.

- Excerpted from TheLocal.de

Will this lead to sanity when it comes to people naming their kids?

HT: the Freakonomics Blog