Like pretty much everyone in the US (is this a problem in other countries too?) I am so plagued with robocalls that I have stopped answering the phone and wait to see if I know the person who is leaving a message before picking up. But very often, the phone rings, the answering message picks up, but then the call is immediately cut with no message left. That puzzled me because I assumed that these calls were entirely automated and a computer would leave a recorded message. Was the computer able to distinguish between an answering machine message and a real person in a matter of a second or two? That seemed pretty sophisticated. Sometimes I do get a recorded message but that is rare.
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The U.K. brexiting pic.twitter.com/9MYXSjLGMo

— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) March 16, 2019

This same video can serve as a metaphor for any action that is initiated because it seems like a quick and easy solution to a problem that turns into a mess because the person did not really think things through about the possible consequences.

I am retired. However, I am extremely busy with my writing and my study of those areas of physics that I did not pay much attention to during my active career. Right now, I am studying general relativity in all its mathematical complexity and finding it enormously challenging but fun. These things keep me very busy and so I do not find time hanging heavy on my hands and thus do not need to find ways to fill the days. I am so busy that I do not have time to read all the books or see the films that I thought I would be able to catch up on when I retired.
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Today the temperature in Cleveland reached about 75F (24C), way higher than the normal average temperature for this day of 45F (7C), and was the first day that we spent a long time outside in the back yard. This is the earliest in the year that I can recall doing this. Baxter the Wonder Dog had a great time and even posed for a photo.

Via Carla Sinclair I came across this heartwarming story of a dog rescued in Scotland whose presence in the snowy region was first picked up by infra-red cameras.

It was a routine winter training mission in northeastern Scotland until the Maritime and Coastguard Agency crew spotted a stranded dog on the snowy Cairngorms mountains below.

They couldn’t fly away and leave the dog in trouble, so winchman Mark Stevens on Wednesday was lowered to the ground, scooped up the cold and frightened animal, and both were raised back to the helicopter.

The dog, named Ben, was cuddled and warmed on board before being rushed to a veterinarian.
It turns out Ben had been missing for two days in dangerous weather caused by Storm Gareth.

Officials say Ben has recovered from exposure and has been reunited with his owner.

Here’s video of the rescue.

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A little dog got stuck in a heavy snowdrift and could not make it back to the house. So a big dog came to the rescue, beating down the snow and creating a path for the little dog.

One obvious question is how the little dog got stuck in the first place. It may be that it was placed there to show off the big dog’s rescue.

But it is still a nice example of canine friendship.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Balto. Who is Balto? He was a sled dog who, in 1925 when he was six years old, played a key role in a heroic rescue effort. Laura DeMarco recounts the events.

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We are used to envisaging Abraham Lincoln as an older, bearded man, formally attired, the way he is presented in the memorial to him in Washington, DC. Pretty much all official representations of Lincoln adopt that basic look. Hence I was startled to come across this image of an 8-foot tall statue of a young Abraham Lincoln situated in a Los Angeles federal courthouse where he looks like he was posing for a Ralph Lauren ad, though the statue was commissioned eighty years ago.

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My return from visiting my grandson took much longer than anticipated. After arriving at the airport at 2:30 pm yesterday for my 4:40pm flight, the flight kept getting delayed and delayed until finally they cancelled it, after I had been at the airport for seven hours. Fortunately, they were able to book me on a flight early the next day and they gave me hotel accommodation for the night. But staying in a strange hotel room knowing that one must get up early usually results in poor sleep and that was the case with me. But then the next day, after arriving at the airport at 6:30 am, that flight was delayed another three hours so I came home pretty exhausted and crashed for a few hours.

But now I feel refreshed.

One thing I have noticed is that long delays and cancellations makes people at the airport much more sociable, with mutual tales of woe being a good conversation starter. I had enjoyable chats with many people who happened to be either sitting next to me or when we were standing in line to reschedule our flights, which confirms my view that people are in general nice and we miss out by not interacting more. I had a particularly long chat with a couple who, when they found out I was a physicist, asked me a ton of questions about physics involving dark matter and energy and cosmology in general. I essentially conducted an hour long tutorial.

Why is it that it seems like it is only adversity and problems that break down the barriers between people?