Thursday, December 15, 2022

Coldest Days of the Year

 December in Arizona is the coldest time of the year, just as June is the hottest. As I kid I remember reading this in a book about weather. It surprised me, because it aligns well with the actual solstices. In the middle of the country where I grew up, the hottest and coldest times of the year do not align with the solstices but are offset by weeks. The hottest time is in July or August. The coldest is in January and February. Not so in the southern regions, like where I live now. I still fascinates me that in December we experience the coldest times when the days are shortest, as they are now.

The last few years, since 2018, I have had a daily schedule which has me getting up as early as 4 AM, sometimes earlier. These last few weeks, I have found myself sleeping in until 6 AM, even later. It feels so decadent to me to wake up at 6 AM now, as if I've slept away half the day. Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine keeping the hours I did when I was in college, or graduate school. 

It's easier to sleep in when the sun is so late in rising. Also lately I have waking up in the middle of the night, and after an hour or so of wondering if I should just get up and start my day, then falling back asleep until late in the morning. One day I slept almost until 7 AM. It felt scandalous to me.

This week it has been particularly cold, some of the coldest days we have had since we moved to Arizona. It got down into the Thirties last night. The rabbits are fluffed in their fur.

Of course one cannot talk about the weather lately without it becoming political quickly. How they have ruined the small talk we used to be able to have, at least about this subject.  If I talk to a liberal friend or family member, I expect any remark about the weather to be greeted with a sermon regarding the need to institute a world government in order to control our behavior. So I avoid even talking about the weather. If I get the sermon, I usually play dumb, as if I didn't understand them. I do this kind of thing a lot for the sake of the peace of the moment. There is no reasoning with such people. We know that all evidence must support their point of view. If it's hotter than normal, colder than normal, or just too normal---it all means the same thing. World government, ASAP! 

In the near future, it is possible I will doing a streaming show on Rumble regarding the War on Science, which I recently began writing about, as part of my comeback as a physicist. The comeback feels in full swing. I feel my thoughts pulled to particle physics a lot lately.  There is a part of me that knows there is no changing people's minds, unless they want to be changed. If I focussed on that, it feel lousy. One could despair. As always, I think to the future. I think of the generations to come, and the legacy we leave them They will have to pick up and carry on after the world-destroying utopian tantrums of madness that people are falling into lately (see the previous post).  They will wonder how we let it all happen. They will be very angry that they were deprived of the normalcy that we got to experience in our youth, from Baby Boomers on down, and then turned around and said "yes but now we need to dismantle all that, because we know better." 

We at this moment can help them rebuild by leaving behind as much truthful evidence of our convictions as possible, so they can start from a higher state than if they had to start from scratch. 

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