Poor memories for weather

Last Sunday was a mild, pleasant day, one on which you could easily say, 'Winter is over,' or, as Solomon put it rather more poetically: 'For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth.'

Except that Solomon would have been wrong, as were two of our pastors that morning, who both got up and announced - one at some length - that Spring was begun. By mid-afternoon, the warmth had gone (rather than the Winter) and a nasty chill arose, and has continued on since. Today is blustery and wet, after drizzling most of yesterday. In other words, Winter has decided that it's not over and gone, and it has a fair bit more up its sleeve as yet. 

Which brings me to the question: how is it that people have such short memories when it comes to the weather? We'll have a wonderfully warm Summer followed by a lengthy mild Autumn, and a few weeks later people will be saying how miserable the Summer had been - just because Winter has arrived. 

We'll have a mild Winter, with no snow, and by Spring people are claiming it was the worst Winter ever...having conveniently forgotten the Winter of the previous year, in which it snowed ten times, 

Here in Dunedin when a bit of snow arrives everybody shuts up shop, especially the schools, who instantly proclaim a 'Snow Day', (hopefully they make it up later in the year.) When I was a kid, if it snowed, you walked to school, as I did one bitter morning. I arrived, rather late, only to be greeted with some derision by my classmates because I was allowed to stand shivering for a time in front of the one or two bar heater that the schoolroom possessed until some of the chill dissipated.

Nowadays no one would think of sending their little (or big) darlings out in the snow to walk to school. The fact that they stay home and play in the snow is neither here nor there. My mother used to talk about the Big Snow that settled in the city for I think several days, and when even the business district down at sea level was snowed in. Now that's a snowfall, and rare these days. 

In view of all this it's probably not surprising that Climate Change people get away with so much nonsense about increased flooding, severe weather, more tornadoes and the like. It's because people in general have such poor memories for weather conditions that the CC people can say what they want, and those with poor memories will believe them. If you want to know about weather go and ask a farmer. They're much more reliable. 

Of the making of books there is no end...

"We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire." That is, "unless we try to prevent this danger by separating those books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from those which one should save and within the latter between what is useful and what is not."

A quote from someone in the 21st century? Nope, the words of a 17th century scholar - and he was only echoing what Vincent of Beauvais in the 13th century said: "Since the multitude of books, the shortness of time and the slipperiness of memory do not allow all things which are written to be equally retained in the mind, I decided to reduce in one volume in a compendium and in summary order some flowers selected according to my talents from all the authors I was able to read."

Even Solomon is known to have said something along these lines: Of the making of books there is no end. The problem ain't new!

The two quotes come from an excellent article by Alan Jacobs on the subject of information overload.

John Pratt

The picture of Solomon's Temple in the previous post comes from an article by John Pratt which I discovered on the Net. But who is John Pratt? He tells us that he loves 'puzzles, science, math, calendars, and enjoy connecting ideas from a wide variety of disciplines.' He has degrees in physics and math from the University of Utah, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Arizona. He teaches astronomy at a state college and keep notes for that class on this web site. He also does computer programming, has three software patents, and hosts a few websites such as for the Utah Table Tennis Clubs.

(By the way, my wife and I purchased a table tennis table - and bats and balls, of course - last Christmas, and have it set up in our upstairs lounge. We've played heaps, and get plenty of exercise rescuing the balls from under tables and chairs and sofas. I've actually improved, and can almost give my wife as good as she gives me.)
To continue on about Mr Pratt. Most of his publications have been about chronology, and he says it's unlikely you'll want to read them. (The sort of thing that most people would take as a challenge, I suspect!) He's also written a calendar conversion program to convert from our calendar to others.
On top of this he's invented a pictorial periodic table which he hopes might make chemistry more fun. It can be used as memory pegs for memorizing long lists of other items too. (There you go, another reason to check Mr Pratt out further. Anything to do with memory is always of interest to me.)
He finishes by saying, 'If you like tough brain teasers, I think I have found a great logic puzzle in the Bible which you might want to try.'
I've just had a very quick look at his memory pegs idea, and it's very sensible. As he points out, most memory pegs are random, whereas his approach is more intelligent. Good on him!