Factory farmers fight push for humanely produced eggs » « No evidence that Planck graininess slows down light

March came in like a lion alright

The winter in Cleveland has been relatively mild so far, and the last two weeks in particular saw warm temperatures and no snow at all. The forecasts seemed to indicate that this would continue but just yesterday the forecast changed suddenly because of the emergence of a storm in the northeast and we had a major snowstorm last night that dumped a large amount of snow on the ground as we slept.

Because the temperatures are still above freezing, the snow on the roads and driveways are melting away quickly though they remain on the grass, and the forecast calls for warm weather and clear skies to quickly return.

What is interesting is that three nights ago, while the predictions were still for continued balmy weather, I had a dream in which I went out lightly clad and suddenly found myself in the middle of a major snowstorm. Was this a premonition? Do I possess psychic powers? Or course not. It is just another example of how we tend to be impressed by coincidences and remember the positive correlations and forget all the dreams that did not come true.

Factory farmers fight push for humanely produced eggs » « No evidence that Planck graininess slows down light

Comments

  2. Friendly says

    “Alright”? The retired professor who says he loves words and has been having fun with them since he was very young uses the non-word “alright” — in a headline, no less?

    Sniff…

    All of my atheist heroes are failing me. LOL!

  3. Mano Singham says

    Friendly,

    I have used that form for as long as I can remember. “All right” seems to me to be more appropriate for “everything is right”.

    As Merriam-Webster says,

    Although the spelling alright is nearly as old as all right, some critics have insisted alright is all wrong. Nevertheless it has its defenders and its users, who perhaps have been influenced by analogy with altogether and already. It is less frequent than all right but remains common especially in informal writing. It is quite common in fictional dialogue and is sometimes found in more formal writing.

  4. says

    warm temperatures

    Pedant mode on.
    This common usage really bugs me. How can a temperature have a temperature? Measures of something can be high, low, average etc.. “Warm conditions” perhaps.
    /P

  5. Rob Grigjanis says

    Lofty @4: “warm” isn’t a temperature. Temperature is a measure. Warmth is a perception, which, unlike temperature, can be highly contextual. So “warm temperatures” can mean “temperatures at which I feel warm”, or “temperatures higher than expected”. Nothing wrong with that, as far as I’m concerned. And less awkward, I think, than “warm conditions”.

  6. says

    First, let me suggest that folks check out linguist John McWhorter’s “Lexicon Valley” podcast over at Slate. (And McWhorter was on The Late Show this past week.)

    Second, if you study language and its evolution, after a while you realize that words (and phrases) just mean what they mean, not what some sort of logic says they ought to mean.

  7. Johnny Vector says

    I am reminded of Ciardi’s Law, first enunciated by poet/translator/etymologist John Ciardi: “Language works the way it does because it does.” That seems to apply here.

  8. says

    Back to the weather, we received a little over a foot and a half of wet, dense snow. The ground was already bare (a little odd for this time of year but it’s getting less surprising). Better than last year’s Stella storm which dropped three feet on us in mid March (the all time local record).

    March is crazy weather month around here. I know the old saying “March comes in like a lion but goes out like a lamb”, but for our weather, I think March comes in a like a drunken hyena and goes out like a rabid bat. You just never know what will come next.

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