Those of us who live in the northeast of the US have all been remarking on how warm it has been, with temperatures often running at twenty degrees Fahrenheit over normal. Today is expected to be in the mid 60s, about 30 degrees above normal. It is truly strange to see people wearing shorts and walking their dogs past green lawns on Christmas Eve in Cleveland. In response to yesterday’s post, commenters who live in Australia also weighed in with how much of a heat wave they are going through right now.
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2014 had the record for the warmest year ever but its hold on that title will be short-lived since it looks like 2015 is going to eclipse it quite easily. In the UK, the British gambling firm Ladbrokes has for the first time ever stopped offering bets on a white Christmas, instead offering bets on record temperatures instead.
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Forrest M. Mims III is an award-winning inventor who attends conferences all over the world. This requires him to travel with all manner of gadgetry that contains exposed circuits and the like. Naturally this results in airline security becoming alarmed and he writes about his experiences, including one that ended up with him being put in a chokehold by the pilot of his plane.
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In our social interactions with others, there is often some touching involved, such as handshakes, hugs, pats, kisses, and so on. Clearly the limits are also influenced by the relationship of the two people and some things that are acceptable with friends may not be so with acquaintances. Complicating matters are gender and culture, with some societies seeking to eliminate contact entirely between strangers or acquaintances. This whole area is full of pitfalls that accompany inappropriate touching and I tend to take the cowardly way out and let the other person initiate the level of touch.
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Residents of a North Carolina town reject solar power plan because they think it will use up all the sunlight and kill the plants.

A town meeting in Woodland, North Carolina heard public comments on a proposed solar farm in which citizens, including a retired science teacher called Jane Mann, spoke out against the proposal.

Ms Mann opposes the solar expansion because she believes it would lower her property values. She also said that plants near solar farms do not thrive because there wasn’t enough sunshine left over for them to photosynthesize. She also evinced a belief that solar panels cause cancer. Her husband added that solar panels “suck up all the energy from the sun.”

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Encryption has been in the news ever since Edward Snowden revealed to the world the massive spying operation that the US and its allies in English speaking countries (UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) perpetrates on the communications of people all over the world. The backlash has resulted in some curbs to the US government’s spying powers but the greater impact has been on the increased use of end-to-end encryption on the internet.
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It is always interesting when conventional wisdom is challenged. A new study provides a classic example of the danger of inferring causation from correlation. There have been studies that show that people who are unhappy have higher mortality rates and thus shorter life spans. It has become conventional to think that being unhappy is bad for you. But a new large ten-year study says that rather than unhappiness leading to increased mortality, it is poor health that leads people to be unhappy and that is the reason for the correlation.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a statistician and risk analyst. He recently sent out a tweet that defended homeopathy as being harmless and even beneficial since after all people were only taking a placebo and that it may prevent them from over-treatment of marginal symptoms. He followed up with another tweet saying that “Superstitions can be rational if 1) harmless, 2) lower your anxiety, 3) prevent you from listening to forecast by economists & BS “experts””
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