Good Afternoon:
A storm currently depicted here:https://en.sat24.com/en/is/visual has developed a circulation typical of tropical storms that impact areas such as the eastern seaboard of the US. This type of storm is termed a Medicane.
You can read about the history of Medicanes here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/10/24/rare-hurricane-like-medicane-strike-egypt-israel/
Our forecast shows the storm moving eastward and then southeastward into the Sinai and southern Israel, with the strongest winds and heaviest rains near the intersection of Gaza, Egypt, and Israel.
We're hoping to finish an ensemble forecast of this storm to see what is the probability that the storm might turn further north than currently forecast.
Heavy, flooding rains should be expected from south-central Israel to Eilat, with showers and thunderstorms into central Israel.
Barry Lynn
Friday, October 25, 2019
Monday, October 21, 2019
Weather It Is (Fall Storms)
Good Evening:
The holidays are now past, and we're all looking forward to two plus months of "normalcy." What does that mean for us weather-wise?
It means that October will both feel and look like fall: the temperatures will head quite a bit downwards starting mid-week, and they could be preceded by thunderstorms. Moreover, as the cold weather filters in, there should be both rain showers and even periods of rain. The greatest likelihood of rain will occur from the center of the country to the north, but thunderstorms over the southern areas should not be ruled out, especially ahead of the cold air.
The chilly weather should last into early next week. At that time, there will likely be a short warming trend before colder air and another bout of rain brings in the new month.
The good news is that with the cooler weather, it will be okay to leave your butter on the counter -- it won't get too soft (for those who refuse to turn on the heat until December). "Butter," you say? "What's that?" That is what you put on your bread, if you could actually buy it in the store. Not mentioned in this article (https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israels-butter-shortage-seen-continuing-1001281402) is that Tnuva was sold to a Chinese company and from what I read the butter we used to buy from Tnuva is now buttering the bread (or Wontons) in China. My guess, though, is that most folks don't know that it's actually pretty easy to make butter. In fact, I made my own. One should probably take note that when the butter separates from the what become buttermilk, the buttermilk will spray all over the place unless you cover the mixer or turn it off at just the right moment. https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/42264/homemade-butter/. As to why we don't have butter to buy?...?
The other day a tragedy happened. A family enjoying an outing at the beach was struck by lightning. As you can see on the lightning tracking system of Weather It is (ITLN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SZnUn0m9xM)), the cloud to ground and intracloud lightning (called Total Lightning) can be tracked as it approaches the beach. A quick look at the time suggests that there was about an hour's time before the lightning struck the beach where a warning could have been issued to seek safety. So, why wasn't a warning issued? Why isn't there any butter?
It looks like the Prime Minister will turn over the mandate to form the next government. The Prime Minister made a pact with more right wing and religious parties to stick together, or to sink or swim together. Why is our Prime Minister so afraid to form a government with the other "centrist" party, Blue and White? Why isn't there any butter?
Things are clearer at home, or at least they were for a few days. My wife, and other wives, went on strike before the last holiday. There were few parting words, except perhaps: "you do the cooking." Of course, I was up to the task, since I love to be in the kitchen. The amazing thing was that the mess I usually make when my wife is in the kitchen was nowhere to be found. She's still looking for it.
Perhaps, then, it is only appropriate that today was not only the holiday when I did the cooking, but when I accepted with solemn responsibility the task of making it rain this coming winter. Usually, this task is reserved for G-D to decide -- for instance, how much and when rain will fall in the Land of Israel (https://www.yeshiva.co/midrash/6316). However, a few weeks ago I decided to ask for and just received confirmation that I would be able to make these big decisions myself. Strangely, it happened the same day I made my first batch of butter. Where's the butter? It's on my toast.
Barry Lynn
The holidays are now past, and we're all looking forward to two plus months of "normalcy." What does that mean for us weather-wise?
It means that October will both feel and look like fall: the temperatures will head quite a bit downwards starting mid-week, and they could be preceded by thunderstorms. Moreover, as the cold weather filters in, there should be both rain showers and even periods of rain. The greatest likelihood of rain will occur from the center of the country to the north, but thunderstorms over the southern areas should not be ruled out, especially ahead of the cold air.
The chilly weather should last into early next week. At that time, there will likely be a short warming trend before colder air and another bout of rain brings in the new month.
The good news is that with the cooler weather, it will be okay to leave your butter on the counter -- it won't get too soft (for those who refuse to turn on the heat until December). "Butter," you say? "What's that?" That is what you put on your bread, if you could actually buy it in the store. Not mentioned in this article (https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israels-butter-shortage-seen-continuing-1001281402) is that Tnuva was sold to a Chinese company and from what I read the butter we used to buy from Tnuva is now buttering the bread (or Wontons) in China. My guess, though, is that most folks don't know that it's actually pretty easy to make butter. In fact, I made my own. One should probably take note that when the butter separates from the what become buttermilk, the buttermilk will spray all over the place unless you cover the mixer or turn it off at just the right moment. https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/42264/homemade-butter/. As to why we don't have butter to buy?...?
The other day a tragedy happened. A family enjoying an outing at the beach was struck by lightning. As you can see on the lightning tracking system of Weather It is (ITLN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SZnUn0m9xM)), the cloud to ground and intracloud lightning (called Total Lightning) can be tracked as it approaches the beach. A quick look at the time suggests that there was about an hour's time before the lightning struck the beach where a warning could have been issued to seek safety. So, why wasn't a warning issued? Why isn't there any butter?
It looks like the Prime Minister will turn over the mandate to form the next government. The Prime Minister made a pact with more right wing and religious parties to stick together, or to sink or swim together. Why is our Prime Minister so afraid to form a government with the other "centrist" party, Blue and White? Why isn't there any butter?
Things are clearer at home, or at least they were for a few days. My wife, and other wives, went on strike before the last holiday. There were few parting words, except perhaps: "you do the cooking." Of course, I was up to the task, since I love to be in the kitchen. The amazing thing was that the mess I usually make when my wife is in the kitchen was nowhere to be found. She's still looking for it.
Perhaps, then, it is only appropriate that today was not only the holiday when I did the cooking, but when I accepted with solemn responsibility the task of making it rain this coming winter. Usually, this task is reserved for G-D to decide -- for instance, how much and when rain will fall in the Land of Israel (https://www.yeshiva.co/midrash/6316). However, a few weeks ago I decided to ask for and just received confirmation that I would be able to make these big decisions myself. Strangely, it happened the same day I made my first batch of butter. Where's the butter? It's on my toast.
Barry Lynn
Friday, October 11, 2019
Weather It Is (Seems Too Hot)
Good Afternoon:
It seems too hot out there -- and if you think so, you're probably right. Temperatures have been close to 30 degrees under southerly breezes, with not too humid, but slightly too humid air.
Shabbat will see a small decrease in temperatures but Sunday through into late Wednesday should see uncomfortably warm if not hot temperatures. The hot temperatures should arrive with some mid-level and upper-level moisture, which means we could see a repeat of the thundershowers that affected the southern and central areas last Shabbat.
Yet, you might want to shake the dust off those winter clothes soon because the outlook beyond Wednesday is for the arrival of much cooler temperatures and much more humid air as winds switch to the west and northwest. The cooler air should build in during Sukkot, but it looks like the coldest air and a more general rain should hold off until early the following week, perhaps to just after the end of the holiday.
Enjoy the summer like weather because fall, if not winter looks poised to bless us with rain.
Hag Samaech!
Barry Lynn
It seems too hot out there -- and if you think so, you're probably right. Temperatures have been close to 30 degrees under southerly breezes, with not too humid, but slightly too humid air.
Shabbat will see a small decrease in temperatures but Sunday through into late Wednesday should see uncomfortably warm if not hot temperatures. The hot temperatures should arrive with some mid-level and upper-level moisture, which means we could see a repeat of the thundershowers that affected the southern and central areas last Shabbat.
Yet, you might want to shake the dust off those winter clothes soon because the outlook beyond Wednesday is for the arrival of much cooler temperatures and much more humid air as winds switch to the west and northwest. The cooler air should build in during Sukkot, but it looks like the coldest air and a more general rain should hold off until early the following week, perhaps to just after the end of the holiday.
Enjoy the summer like weather because fall, if not winter looks poised to bless us with rain.
Hag Samaech!
Barry Lynn
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Weather It Is (Moving Along)
Good Afternoon:
We're moving along into fall, and the weather is changing accordingly. The seasonal forecast from the "ECMWF" (seasonal forecasting system: https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/applications/seasonal-forecast/) continues to show above normal temperatures through November, but increasingly above normal rain amounts as we move from October to November, and then November to December. December's temperatures should be average, so perhaps we'll see a late December snow. That's exciting news, but you can also note that January is supposed to be drier than normal.
We'll have to wait and see if these forecasts are going to be accurate; I hope we don't have to wait similarly as long to see what Knesset parties will make up our new government.
One thing we do know is that the days just prior to Yom Kippur are going to be quite a bit cooler than these past few days, but Yom Kippur itself could be a tad too warm. Moreover, there may even be warmer days that follow. Still, temperatures in the upper atmosphere are forecast to fall quite steadily, and we'll need these temperatures to be relatively low before we can get any substantial fall rains.
Even though the future is uncertain, the past seems less so. For instance, the weather days of Rosh HaShanah were really quite nice. I saw plenty of people outdoors, and most seems quite happy to be heading home around lunch time after the morning Shofar blowing. Of course, we all know that the day long (if not longer) prayers of Yom Kippur will soon be upon us. I have it on good authority that there are some synagogues that pray so slowly they don't even finish by nightfall, and that there are a few that continue all the way to Passover. That's what's called dedication, especially since the fast doesn't end until the shofar blowing at the end of services.
It's strange to see people with such dedication, but a stranger thing happened to me. I had a broken dryer fixed about the same time that my laundry room fan broke. The heating element was broken and the fan didn't spin fast enough to remove the room humidity (the latter independently confirmed). Of course, a day or so later I called the repair-person to let him know that the element was broken again, and of course he came and pointed out that it was working fine. Strangely enough the fan also works fine again.
There are three possibilities that can explain these strange happenings. The first is that both the dryer and fan fixed themselves. The second is that I was mistaken about the dryer -- but this doesn't explain the broken fan that now works even though no one came to fix it. The third is that our dryer was temporarily replaced with a broken dryer from another universe, and some poor soul now has both a broken dryer and a broken laundry room fan.
I think that the third option is the most likely, but I'd rather spend my next few months forecasting weather (I can hypothesize, pontificate, and expound, and even be wrong -- yet still have a shred of credibility), then speculate about dryers that fix themselves.
Have a nice holiday.
Barry Lynn
We're moving along into fall, and the weather is changing accordingly. The seasonal forecast from the "ECMWF" (seasonal forecasting system: https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/applications/seasonal-forecast/) continues to show above normal temperatures through November, but increasingly above normal rain amounts as we move from October to November, and then November to December. December's temperatures should be average, so perhaps we'll see a late December snow. That's exciting news, but you can also note that January is supposed to be drier than normal.
We'll have to wait and see if these forecasts are going to be accurate; I hope we don't have to wait similarly as long to see what Knesset parties will make up our new government.
One thing we do know is that the days just prior to Yom Kippur are going to be quite a bit cooler than these past few days, but Yom Kippur itself could be a tad too warm. Moreover, there may even be warmer days that follow. Still, temperatures in the upper atmosphere are forecast to fall quite steadily, and we'll need these temperatures to be relatively low before we can get any substantial fall rains.
Even though the future is uncertain, the past seems less so. For instance, the weather days of Rosh HaShanah were really quite nice. I saw plenty of people outdoors, and most seems quite happy to be heading home around lunch time after the morning Shofar blowing. Of course, we all know that the day long (if not longer) prayers of Yom Kippur will soon be upon us. I have it on good authority that there are some synagogues that pray so slowly they don't even finish by nightfall, and that there are a few that continue all the way to Passover. That's what's called dedication, especially since the fast doesn't end until the shofar blowing at the end of services.
It's strange to see people with such dedication, but a stranger thing happened to me. I had a broken dryer fixed about the same time that my laundry room fan broke. The heating element was broken and the fan didn't spin fast enough to remove the room humidity (the latter independently confirmed). Of course, a day or so later I called the repair-person to let him know that the element was broken again, and of course he came and pointed out that it was working fine. Strangely enough the fan also works fine again.
There are three possibilities that can explain these strange happenings. The first is that both the dryer and fan fixed themselves. The second is that I was mistaken about the dryer -- but this doesn't explain the broken fan that now works even though no one came to fix it. The third is that our dryer was temporarily replaced with a broken dryer from another universe, and some poor soul now has both a broken dryer and a broken laundry room fan.
I think that the third option is the most likely, but I'd rather spend my next few months forecasting weather (I can hypothesize, pontificate, and expound, and even be wrong -- yet still have a shred of credibility), then speculate about dryers that fix themselves.
Have a nice holiday.
Barry Lynn
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Weather It Is (Changes Are A-Foot)
Good Evening:
"Tell no one we have spoken, for all shall reveal itself in due course (Everafter: A Cinderella Story)." One has the feeling that whether we speak about it or not, we're pretty much going to find out what happens next Tuesday, election Day, by sometime next Wednesday. If we wait a few more months, we'll also know whether this coming winter will be rainy just like the last.
Actually, the next two weeks pretty much look the same. Some meandering of the temperatures up and down -- just like the poll numbers -- but nothing really changing over time. Election day should be quite nice, weatherwise. However, if we head up to the upper atmosphere (at 500 mb), we'll find a dramatic decrease sometime before election day. This means the upper air circulation associated with the Indian Monsoon is weakening and moving away from our area, and our skies can now start to produce puffy cumulus clouds as a prelude to fall and winter.
Interestingly, there are plenty of rumors about this coming fall and winter's weather. We heard that it's going to be very rainy in the next few months from those who prefer to reveal what will be instead of to wait until it actually happens. The American forecast model actually shows warmer and drier weather than usual, but the more reliable European model shows a fairly rainy fall with temperatures a bit warmer than usual. December is forecast to be have quite heavier than normal rain amounts, with normal temperatures. The New Year could bring in normal temperatures and normal amounts of rain.
The predictions are also out for this Tuesday's election -- and they show no change from the previous election result.
Afterall, the folks down south have been living with the the occasional and not so occasional missile attack for the last several years, so why should more people vote for the government than before. Perhaps than it was poetic justice that our Prime Minister had to be rushed off the stage because of such an attack. "You can't stop me," they probably shouted from somewhere in Gaza.
Of course, the true response would be: we didn't try because we'd rather live (or let someone else live with) the situation than take concrete and difficult steps to stop the attacks.
While focused on its reelection, one wonders if our government ever stops to think that you can only "buy" quiet so long before you just can't. Like a Ponzi scheme that can only be sustained so long, I worry that the payoffs will one day be too small to maintain the quiet, and then it won't be safe for our future Prime Minister to campaign in Tel-Aviv as well.
As for the rest of us, we'll be like all those Ponzi scheme losers. Out of luck, but hopefully not out of life as well.
Barry Lynn
"Tell no one we have spoken, for all shall reveal itself in due course (Everafter: A Cinderella Story)." One has the feeling that whether we speak about it or not, we're pretty much going to find out what happens next Tuesday, election Day, by sometime next Wednesday. If we wait a few more months, we'll also know whether this coming winter will be rainy just like the last.
Actually, the next two weeks pretty much look the same. Some meandering of the temperatures up and down -- just like the poll numbers -- but nothing really changing over time. Election day should be quite nice, weatherwise. However, if we head up to the upper atmosphere (at 500 mb), we'll find a dramatic decrease sometime before election day. This means the upper air circulation associated with the Indian Monsoon is weakening and moving away from our area, and our skies can now start to produce puffy cumulus clouds as a prelude to fall and winter.
Interestingly, there are plenty of rumors about this coming fall and winter's weather. We heard that it's going to be very rainy in the next few months from those who prefer to reveal what will be instead of to wait until it actually happens. The American forecast model actually shows warmer and drier weather than usual, but the more reliable European model shows a fairly rainy fall with temperatures a bit warmer than usual. December is forecast to be have quite heavier than normal rain amounts, with normal temperatures. The New Year could bring in normal temperatures and normal amounts of rain.
The predictions are also out for this Tuesday's election -- and they show no change from the previous election result.
Afterall, the folks down south have been living with the the occasional and not so occasional missile attack for the last several years, so why should more people vote for the government than before. Perhaps than it was poetic justice that our Prime Minister had to be rushed off the stage because of such an attack. "You can't stop me," they probably shouted from somewhere in Gaza.
Of course, the true response would be: we didn't try because we'd rather live (or let someone else live with) the situation than take concrete and difficult steps to stop the attacks.
While focused on its reelection, one wonders if our government ever stops to think that you can only "buy" quiet so long before you just can't. Like a Ponzi scheme that can only be sustained so long, I worry that the payoffs will one day be too small to maintain the quiet, and then it won't be safe for our future Prime Minister to campaign in Tel-Aviv as well.
As for the rest of us, we'll be like all those Ponzi scheme losers. Out of luck, but hopefully not out of life as well.
Barry Lynn
Friday, August 23, 2019
Weather It Is (Summer Heat)
Good Afternoon:
They call them the "Dog Days of Summer," and our own dog was quick to take advantage of the heat to stretch out in the sun. She actually objects to the fact that the Romans named these days after the brightest star in the sky: the Star Sirius, or the "Dog Star," rather than her ancestors.
The heat she so enjoys has been courtesy of low pressure situated to our east and a persistent counter-clockwise flow around it. Such winds are good to bring the heat, and they also limit the build up of wave heights, so this is a perfect time to go to the beach. By the way, we leave our dog at home because nothing smells worse than a dog that "smells like a dog" (and wet at that).
While slightly cooler weather may meet our mid-week time, we can expect a return to hotter weather again as the month of August ends, and turns into September.
Really -- it's hot, and it was actually a good time to head over to Cinema City in Jerusalem for a movie. We saw "Dora and the Lost City of Gold." I thought that it would be a movie for our teenage girls, but I couldn't stop laughing. In fact, folks young and not so were laughing so loudly it was sometimes hard to hear the movie.
Yet, it was both a fun movie, and a funny -- make you laugh movie, especially when the producers mixed real live scenes with a bit of fantasy. It also had an interesting story line, to keep you on the edge of your seat.
One interesting thing about movies is that we begin to feel that they are happening to us, or at least to the characters in the movie. In fact, if we think back about the movies we saw, our minds will fill in the scenes between the actual movie scenes -- because that is what happens to us in real life. We actually have to eat, burp, etc, and it takes more than a moment to go from one place to another. We actually create a reality for these characters that never existed.
Newspapers (writers and editors) also try to shape our perception of events, but in this case real events. For example, The New York Times made its top of the page news when Israel refused entry to the two congresswomen from Minnesota (all day). They even were sure to mention Congresswoman Tlaib's vile tweet when she refused to visit her grandmother. I thought the real news was that her supporters didn't even want her to visit her grandmother if it means actually speaking with an Israeli representative to do so. I guess she was going to parachute out of her plane instead of landing at Ben-Gurion Airport, first. When explaining the law used to bar the two women, The New York Times continued their biased reporting when they added the word "just" as in the decision to bar them "rests on a law passed just two years ago." (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/world/middleeast/bds-israel-boycott.html). The editors and writers of the times were really trying to put out the message that Israel is a really bad place and the law is not really a valid law since it was passed "recently." Where else would they write that?
Here, our own reality is quite sad. A young man was murdered outside our town, just on the road to the town across the hill. Two neighbors from the town over were just run-over. A young woman was just murdered in an explosion while out for a swim. Ihttps://www.timesofisrael.com/three-israelis-seriously-hurt-in-explosion-at-west-bank-spring/).
In response, our Prime Minister says that: "We will reach them. Our long arm will pay them their dues.” His word were not IRONY? Avi Issachoroff points out that our Prime Minister and his government have transferred 10s of millions of dollars to buy quiet from Gaza (https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/selling-the-fantasy-of-transfer/). But the money used to buy quiet in Gaza is being used to murder Israelis in Judea and Samaria. We're paying all right -- both ways.
We all know that movies are not truly reality, but to paraphrase my late mother-in-law: time has passed and new generations have arisen, but there has always been terrorism -- and now our own policies facilitate its vile ends.
Barry Lynn
They call them the "Dog Days of Summer," and our own dog was quick to take advantage of the heat to stretch out in the sun. She actually objects to the fact that the Romans named these days after the brightest star in the sky: the Star Sirius, or the "Dog Star," rather than her ancestors.
The heat she so enjoys has been courtesy of low pressure situated to our east and a persistent counter-clockwise flow around it. Such winds are good to bring the heat, and they also limit the build up of wave heights, so this is a perfect time to go to the beach. By the way, we leave our dog at home because nothing smells worse than a dog that "smells like a dog" (and wet at that).
While slightly cooler weather may meet our mid-week time, we can expect a return to hotter weather again as the month of August ends, and turns into September.
Really -- it's hot, and it was actually a good time to head over to Cinema City in Jerusalem for a movie. We saw "Dora and the Lost City of Gold." I thought that it would be a movie for our teenage girls, but I couldn't stop laughing. In fact, folks young and not so were laughing so loudly it was sometimes hard to hear the movie.
Yet, it was both a fun movie, and a funny -- make you laugh movie, especially when the producers mixed real live scenes with a bit of fantasy. It also had an interesting story line, to keep you on the edge of your seat.
One interesting thing about movies is that we begin to feel that they are happening to us, or at least to the characters in the movie. In fact, if we think back about the movies we saw, our minds will fill in the scenes between the actual movie scenes -- because that is what happens to us in real life. We actually have to eat, burp, etc, and it takes more than a moment to go from one place to another. We actually create a reality for these characters that never existed.
Newspapers (writers and editors) also try to shape our perception of events, but in this case real events. For example, The New York Times made its top of the page news when Israel refused entry to the two congresswomen from Minnesota (all day). They even were sure to mention Congresswoman Tlaib's vile tweet when she refused to visit her grandmother. I thought the real news was that her supporters didn't even want her to visit her grandmother if it means actually speaking with an Israeli representative to do so. I guess she was going to parachute out of her plane instead of landing at Ben-Gurion Airport, first. When explaining the law used to bar the two women, The New York Times continued their biased reporting when they added the word "just" as in the decision to bar them "rests on a law passed just two years ago." (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/world/middleeast/bds-israel-boycott.html). The editors and writers of the times were really trying to put out the message that Israel is a really bad place and the law is not really a valid law since it was passed "recently." Where else would they write that?
Here, our own reality is quite sad. A young man was murdered outside our town, just on the road to the town across the hill. Two neighbors from the town over were just run-over. A young woman was just murdered in an explosion while out for a swim. Ihttps://www.timesofisrael.com/three-israelis-seriously-hurt-in-explosion-at-west-bank-spring/).
In response, our Prime Minister says that: "We will reach them. Our long arm will pay them their dues.” His word were not IRONY? Avi Issachoroff points out that our Prime Minister and his government have transferred 10s of millions of dollars to buy quiet from Gaza (https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/selling-the-fantasy-of-transfer/). But the money used to buy quiet in Gaza is being used to murder Israelis in Judea and Samaria. We're paying all right -- both ways.
We all know that movies are not truly reality, but to paraphrase my late mother-in-law: time has passed and new generations have arisen, but there has always been terrorism -- and now our own policies facilitate its vile ends.
Barry Lynn
Friday, July 26, 2019
Weather It Is (Stings Like a Bee)
Good Morning:
Europe is sweltering under intense heat. It must certainly be a manifestation of global warming (run amok). After all, where could such hot temperatures come from?
It turns out that while Europe is sweltering other places are not, and are actually unusually cool for summertime temperatures. For instance, countries in the eastern Mediterranean -- on the other side of the ridge located along the western spine of Europe -- are benefiting from winds blowing from a more northerly direction. Moreover, it doesn't look next week's warmth will last more than a couple of days before temperatures cool back down both in coastal areas and the Jerusalem mountains. I just came back from Atlanta Georgia which was so cool we almost needed to put on a light coat as evening set in. Unheard of in July!
So, is it because of global warming? The very strong and northward penetrating ridge of hot air over Europe is actually adjacent to an unusually deep and cold low pressure system west of England -- but no one but jumping fishes live over the ocean. The world has warmed since the 1970s (when it was unusually chilly), and the added energy could be amplifying the waviness of the circulation patterns. Yet, the warmth is no where near what was predicted by the climate change models, which also have failed to predict the "ups and downs" of the temperature changes over the last 20 or so years.
So, what is the reality of the situation? What is our own reality that we personally experience?
One of the laws of Kashrut is that bugs, like crabs, etc, are not kosher and should not be eaten. This morning I picked some wild raspberries, gave them a quick glance, and then ate them in one lump. I told myself that they tasted really good, but wondered how I could possibly tell if I had eaten a bug.
Then, shortly thereafter, a very large bug flew into my mouth (a person has to breathe while running). I managed to eventually cough the bug out, or perhaps the bug flew out on its own, but not before the bug-bee stung the inside of my mouth. It was one angry bee, and my mouth was perhaps too big.
Some years ago, Russell Baker wonder where all the lost socks went, and so have others (https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-20090209-2009-02-09-0902080158-story.html). Surely, they haven't just disappeared!
Or, had they? Perhaps there is a whole slew of unmatched socks in someone's reality. A colleague of mine lost his keys, only to find them the next day in a pocket of his bag he had already checked a dozen times. My missing coat eventually "showed-up," and so have other things that had no right being found in the place where they were supposedly lost.
A good number of folks read books, and a good number go to movies. Did you ever try to change the ending of a book or movie after you've read it or watched it, but didn't like the ending? You can't do it, yet we all know that fictional books and movies are not real because the characters never go to the bathroom.
Are dreams real? They certainly seem so. Yet, most of us usually wake up from them.
I and many others suppose that thing that are real are things that we observe. But is this true? For instance, when very small particles are shot one at a time at 2 small slits, they will produce a wave like pattern on a detector. However, when scientists try to observed which slit the particle goes through, the wave like pattern disappears (called "wave function collapse"). This happens even if the second slit is opened after the particle should have passed through the the first slit! (https://physicsworld.com/a/do-atoms-going-through-a-double-slit-know-if-they-are-being-observed/)
The end result is that one needs to accept "backwards causation," or (perhaps) the idea of Everett that the wave-function doesn't collapse when an observation is made, but universes splits into different realities (I would be writing from one of them, but you might be reading this from another). If you wonder where could all of these universes be, just remember that "our" universe is supposedly expanding (but into what)?
One idea in Jewish thought is that people are rewarded or punished for their behavior -- and if not in this world then in the world that exists after death. Yet, there is also an idea that people do not really have free choice, which would ironically be consistent with the idea that we are just part of a probability continuum that describes some deeper reality (Everett's many world hypothesis). I don't know which idea of reality is correct, but I do know that we have a number of unmatched socks and that the bee stung me -- and that it hurts.
Barry Lynn
Europe is sweltering under intense heat. It must certainly be a manifestation of global warming (run amok). After all, where could such hot temperatures come from?
It turns out that while Europe is sweltering other places are not, and are actually unusually cool for summertime temperatures. For instance, countries in the eastern Mediterranean -- on the other side of the ridge located along the western spine of Europe -- are benefiting from winds blowing from a more northerly direction. Moreover, it doesn't look next week's warmth will last more than a couple of days before temperatures cool back down both in coastal areas and the Jerusalem mountains. I just came back from Atlanta Georgia which was so cool we almost needed to put on a light coat as evening set in. Unheard of in July!
So, is it because of global warming? The very strong and northward penetrating ridge of hot air over Europe is actually adjacent to an unusually deep and cold low pressure system west of England -- but no one but jumping fishes live over the ocean. The world has warmed since the 1970s (when it was unusually chilly), and the added energy could be amplifying the waviness of the circulation patterns. Yet, the warmth is no where near what was predicted by the climate change models, which also have failed to predict the "ups and downs" of the temperature changes over the last 20 or so years.
So, what is the reality of the situation? What is our own reality that we personally experience?
One of the laws of Kashrut is that bugs, like crabs, etc, are not kosher and should not be eaten. This morning I picked some wild raspberries, gave them a quick glance, and then ate them in one lump. I told myself that they tasted really good, but wondered how I could possibly tell if I had eaten a bug.
Then, shortly thereafter, a very large bug flew into my mouth (a person has to breathe while running). I managed to eventually cough the bug out, or perhaps the bug flew out on its own, but not before the bug-bee stung the inside of my mouth. It was one angry bee, and my mouth was perhaps too big.
Some years ago, Russell Baker wonder where all the lost socks went, and so have others (https://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-xpm-20090209-2009-02-09-0902080158-story.html). Surely, they haven't just disappeared!
Or, had they? Perhaps there is a whole slew of unmatched socks in someone's reality. A colleague of mine lost his keys, only to find them the next day in a pocket of his bag he had already checked a dozen times. My missing coat eventually "showed-up," and so have other things that had no right being found in the place where they were supposedly lost.
A good number of folks read books, and a good number go to movies. Did you ever try to change the ending of a book or movie after you've read it or watched it, but didn't like the ending? You can't do it, yet we all know that fictional books and movies are not real because the characters never go to the bathroom.
Are dreams real? They certainly seem so. Yet, most of us usually wake up from them.
I and many others suppose that thing that are real are things that we observe. But is this true? For instance, when very small particles are shot one at a time at 2 small slits, they will produce a wave like pattern on a detector. However, when scientists try to observed which slit the particle goes through, the wave like pattern disappears (called "wave function collapse"). This happens even if the second slit is opened after the particle should have passed through the the first slit! (https://physicsworld.com/a/do-atoms-going-through-a-double-slit-know-if-they-are-being-observed/)
The end result is that one needs to accept "backwards causation," or (perhaps) the idea of Everett that the wave-function doesn't collapse when an observation is made, but universes splits into different realities (I would be writing from one of them, but you might be reading this from another). If you wonder where could all of these universes be, just remember that "our" universe is supposedly expanding (but into what)?
One idea in Jewish thought is that people are rewarded or punished for their behavior -- and if not in this world then in the world that exists after death. Yet, there is also an idea that people do not really have free choice, which would ironically be consistent with the idea that we are just part of a probability continuum that describes some deeper reality (Everett's many world hypothesis). I don't know which idea of reality is correct, but I do know that we have a number of unmatched socks and that the bee stung me -- and that it hurts.
Barry Lynn
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