Scientists and atheists are among groups of people who value rational thinking, the former because being rational and logical in one’s thinking is essential if one is to be able to navigate one’s way through the complexities of trying to understand the workings of nature, the latter because taking a rational approach to life would make the absurdities of religious beliefs and the behaviors they generate more manifest. But of course, none of us can be purely rational beings in every aspect of our lives. The emotional centers of our brains respond to stimuli in ways that can overpower the centers that govern rational and logical thinking, as all of us can testify from personal experience when we have done soothing impulsive and stupid.
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I grew up in Sri Lanka where there was none of this business of changing clocks twice a year because being close to the equator, the days were pretty much the same length the whole year round. It is only countries that are far from the equator that do this and even then not all do so. So it took me a while to get used to this practice.
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In Cleveland yesterday March as usual came in like a lion with a mixture of snow, rain, and sleet that covered things with an icy mess. While temperatures went above freezing after a long, cold period, later this week will see it plunge again, as winter socks us one last time before going out like a lamb. Dennis Mersereau has been monitoring the weather and he says that we just coming to the end of a weird winter in the US, highlighted by this chart. He says that despite our subjective impressions in the eastern part of the US, for the contiguous US as a whole this winter will be warmer-than-average and drier-than-average.
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So I was not unjustified when I complained last week that the sustained cold and snow had made me fed up with winter. It turns out that February was the coldest February and the second coldest month in Cleveland history.
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Those who have read about quantum mechanics have heard about the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) proposed by Hugh Everett in 1957. It is an idea seems unbelievable when one first hears of it because it implies the existence of many, a huge number in fact, of unobservable worlds that exist in parallel to our own but of which we are unaware. One needs to get over the initial feeling of incredulity before one can judge it properly on its merits.
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The story of the plane that mysteriously disappeared last March and was never found has gone from the news pages, consigned to be one of those stories that we will never find the truth about. While this story captivated many people around the world for a while, most people have gone on to other things.

But not all.

There is still a small group of people who are painstakingly going over the most minute bits of information, trying to figure out the truth.
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I am not fond of winter but I put up with it for the most part. I live in Cleveland and it is to be expected that it will get cold in winter and that it will snow and there is no sense complaining about it. And for the most part I don’t. But almost every year there comes a point, around this time of year, when I get well and truly fed up.
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