Cold weather and polar circulation

Outdoors it is above freezing at the moment though frost lingers in the shadow. I had forgotten to mention how pretty the frost has been on surfaces like the cars' body panels: the crystals appear to grow perpendicularly so as to form a miniature ice forest.

Despite my ignorance of meteorology I thought I would do some reading about this moderately cold weather. As best as I can piece together, the summary appears to be: it's complicated but it may indeed often be unseasonably cold here this winter. There appears to be some story in the Arctic involving oscillatory phases and whatnot that has, perhaps somehow due to lack of sea ice, weak polar vortices letting the cold air out; also, blocking patterns stopping the warmer Atlantic air from reaching us, maybe encouraging high pressure systems to sit on the UK and to its north. To what extent this will actually keep our weather colder and whether that is due to shorter-term cycles versus larger climate change trends I am in little position to even guess: the main conclusion seems to be that I ought not put great predictive stock in historical averages.

Large stories dominating television news

When there is a larger story than usual then television news appears to give it coverage that rather exceeds what the new facts demand by including background context and many people's reactions. One sees this now with Fidel Castro's death: he has not run Cuba for years yet not only is his death reported but we even get extended retrospectives on his life after which we relearn the news we already heard (yes, it turns out that he's still dead). This non-news filler has been a longstanding pattern: in my own memory it goes back at least as far as the collapse of the Iron Curtain. In recent years it even includes interviewing reporters who are standing around waiting for something that hasn't even happened yet.

I wonder if any news sources are better or worse for this than others: if there are some who more tightly focus on reporting actual news, instead filling the available time by reporting on a wider selection of stories beyond the current headlines and leaving the viewer to fill in background and commentary separately if they want a lot of it.

I would be quite content for such wider coverage to be afforded by using local reporters from affiliates instead of sending familiar faces around: when NPR would tell us that they need our donations because it costs a lot to send the esteemed Kai Ryssdal to China it seemed to me that they were overlooking the cheaper but no less adequate solution of having him telephone somebody suitably competent who was already there.

Playing hymns on the piano

I have taken to simply skipping lower notes when they look to be a painful stretch away from upper ones. Still, today in trying to play Tell Out, My Soul (in my very slow, hesitant way) I nearly ran out of keyboard as there was a very low C♯ that took me a moment to figure out what it was. In some hymns I notice that a switch of staff seems to indicate that I should play the same note first with one hand then the other. It makes sense overall; perhaps I am just noticing it more now.

Update: I also spy a low C in Away in a Manger.

Fast food competence

A principal selling point for fast food chains is predictability: the food might not be great but you know exactly what you're walking away with. In the US there might be the occasional outlier delivering disappointment but those were remarkable.

I don't know if this is specific to Tayside or more general to the UK but the typical level of incompetence at local fast food outlets leaves me surprised that they stay in business, at everywhere from McDonald's where even if you leave with the right number of sandwiches they might have forgotten the meat in some, to Subway where even if they know how to cut the bread (!) they may not know which meats go into which kinds of sandwich.

Perhaps the problem is a cultural one of customers being more willing to accept substandard products and just mutter about it ineffectually to one another or a legal one of it being more difficult to fire mediocre employees. Maybe here in Scotland I am simply wrong to dare to expect to be sold what I ordered.