I’ve been under the weather all day. Ergo, a few words about…the weather.<\/p>\n
I lived in Los Angeles for 22 years. Each of those 22 years had a rainy season, beginning in about November and ending in the spring. The first rain of the season always loosens a thin layer of dust and oil that has been baked on the pavement of city streets and freeways during the hot, dry summer months. Vehicles moving over a certain speed on pavement in that condition tend to hydroplane. Their tires ride not on the pavement itself but on the surface tension of the newly-freed grime. Braking becomes problematic, because the grime doesn’t offer much traction.<\/p>\n
Every Angeleno knows this. Every single one. Local newscasts chatter about it for days before the first expected precipitation. Yet every year, without fail, the first drizzle of the season produces a ridiculous slew traffic accidents, ranging from simple fender benders to freeway pile-ups. For some unfathomable reason, Angelenos *cannot* remember from one year to the next how to drive when the rain comes.<\/p>\n
In Las Vegas, we have a similar but slightly weirder problem with memory retention.<\/p>\n
Somehow, people in Vegas simply can’t remember from year to year that the desert gets *hot* in the summer. For a couple of weeks every annum, Las Vegans walk out of their homes, get moist and itchy under the collar, climb irritably into their cars, and take out their perspiration on the guy in the next lane.<\/p>\n
Birds remember migration patterns from generation to generation. A female cat can deliver a litter of kittens without attending a single Lamaze class. Humans — at least those living west of the Rockies — seemingly can’t remember how to drive in the rain or that the desert is hot.<\/p>\n
Offhand, I don’t recall what that suggests about the future of our species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been under the weather all day. Ergo, a few words about…the weather. I lived in Los Angeles for 22 years. Each of those 22 years had a rainy season, beginning in about November and ending in the spring. The first rain of the season always loosens a thin layer of dust and oil that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}