[for su-lin and julian in particular]

Anne Fadiman, in her new book of essays, At Large and At Small, talking about circadian rhythms, and people who were "owls":

'"Unfortunately in my case there is never very much of the morning, and it is curious that although I do not despise people who go to bed earlier that I, almost everyone is impatient with me for not getting up." Connolly put his finger on the human owl's perennial problem. The natural world discovered the benefits of shift work long ago: it is easier to share a given territory when not everyone is out and about at once. No one faults the bandicoot for prowling after dusk; no one chides the night-flying cecropia moth for its decadence; no one calls the whippoorwill a lazy slugabed for sleeping by day and singing by night -- but people who were born to follow similiar rhythms are viewed by the other nine tenths of the population as a tad threadbare in the moral fiber department.'