The Land of TWS (aka Ian)

The 2013 World Championship is underway. I'm particularly intrigued as to how Ronnie O'Sullivan will fare after his sabbatical from the sport, but if anyone can come back "rusty" and put in a fine performance, it would have to be him.

I have the players as most likely to win the tournament as Neil Robertson, Mark Selby and Mark Allen. I think Judd Trump...

I quite often read about how society is becoming broken due to the decline of traditional family values since the 1950s.  I often read about how the 1950s were a golden era where people loved and cared for one another, families functioned as a strong unit and, since mothers generally stayed at home and raised children, children got more frequent parental...

There's usually a clash of "rights" when it comes to people being slow, say, at the front of a queue in a supermarket.  There's the right of the people at the front to be leisurely and not be in a rush, vs. the right of the people behind to be able to progress in the queue without being heavily delayed.

The need for consideration towards...

Like many forecasts, my forecast for December started off well then veered rather wide of the mark.
Changeable and generally cold, some snowfalls


During December 2012, the jet stream will be tracking from north-west to south-east over the eastern North Atlantic and Europe for most of the month, and this will enable a succession of northerly and...

The forecast ran as follows:
Changeable, near-average temperatures


November 2012 will be a changeable month with low pressure set to control the weather for most of the time. The long-range signals point to near-average temperatures and no significant cold spells during the first two-thirds of the month at least.

Low pressure centred over northern...

Here was my forecast for October 2012:
October 2012 will start off changeable with low pressure dominating, but high pressure over the Azores and mid-Atlantic will often influence our weather, particularly around the middle of the month.

After a showery spell during the first five days of October, with some longer outbreaks of rain on the 2nd, the...

High pressure will be dominant over central and northern Europe during the first half of September, which will bring plenty of warm dry sunny weather to most of southern and central Britain, although Scotland and Ireland will always be more prone to banks of cloud.  During the second half of the month, low pressure will take up residence to the west...

Here was the August 2012 forecast:
August will complete a full hat-trick of cool unsettled summer months, although the first third of the month will continue on from late July in the sense of offering more in the way of "summery" weather.

A slow-moving low pressure area will continue to drift eastwards across the British Isles between the...

I've stated recently that I'm not a big fan of the phrase, "rules are rules".

Firstly, what does the phrase mean? It's often not entirely clear, but in general there are two main interpretations:

Definition 1. "Rules must always be obeyed and infringements must always be punished"

For example,
X is...

Here's a recap on my month-ahead forecast for July:
With pressure often high in the Arctic and low pressure systems taking a relatively southerly track, it will be another cool cloudy wet month, though probably not as cloudy or wet as June was.

July has commenced cloudy and wet, but as we head through the first week the emphasis will shift...