Einstein’s lock

Sports Illustrated’s current cover says it all.

Green Options reports environmentalists aren’t the only ones talking about global warming anymore: it’s affecting ski resorts, insurance companies, and a host of cultural institutions like the wide world of sports:

The Miami Dolphins have built a climate-controlled bubble to avoid the extreme Florida heat during practices, seven World Cup ski racing events in Europe have been cancelled this season because of warmer temperatures, and Alaska’s Iditarod dogsled race hasn’t started at its traditional location in five years because of lack of snow.
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This is a story about love, writes Erin McClam … About inscrutable complexity and remarkable simplicity, about the promise of forever. It is about obsession and devotion, and grand gestures and 4,000-word love letters.

It is about a curious group of people with an almost religious zeal for a mind-numbing string of numbers. Actually one number, made up of a chain that is known — so far — to be more than one trillion digits long. They are the acolytes of the church of pi.

And once a year many of them gather to talk about pi, rhapsodize about it, eat pi-themed foods (actual pie, sure, but so much more), have pi recitation contests and, just maybe, feel a little less sheepish about their unusual passion.

That day falls on Wednesday this year: March 14. Or 3.14. Obviously.

It also happens to be Einstein’s birthday.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

Albert Einstein

It’s time to launch Einstein’s lock — and the USA’s move to extra daylight saving is worth celebrating — for, according to the BBC:

The US is switching to daylight saving time, or summer time, three weeks earlier than usual to cut fuel consumption and help the environment.

At 0200 EST (0700 GMT) clocks will move forward by an hour, shifting an hour of daylight from morning to evening.

Summer time will last until 4 November, a week later than in previous years.

The extra four weeks are expected to help cut energy consumption, as demand falls for electricity in the evening if it is still light.

The measure was signed into law in two years ago as part of the Energy Policy Act which aims to encourage new energy technologies.

Representatives Edward Markey and Fred Upton, who sponsored the amendment to the original bill, said it was expected to save $4.4bn in energy bills by 2020 and avoid the need to build more than three large electric power plants.

They said it also would save 279 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and avoid nearly 10.8 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

About time.

Our Escher-inspired art was created by Sam Rohn of New York Locations and emerged on his Flickr page.

Welcome to the new Einstein’s Lock. I’d like to thank the inimitable Shelley Powers of Burningbird fame for passing on the baton.

Fresh content is being prepared behind the scenes and I’ll be relaunching the new look sometime soon. — Allan Moult