Delicious intersection

It's a delicious 70 sunny degrees in Philadelphia, and I just drove past construction workers in short-sleeved shirts. An unremarkable sight, you say, but it struck me as quite remarkable today.

Perhaps we are approaching the Evolution thing all wrong. We keep arguing the case for a Designed, rather than Accidental, universe by adducing esoteric facts of biochemistry, which most of us can't see firsthand. But here is something not remote from anyone's experience --- the happy intersection of your "sweet spot" physical comfort zone and the total possible range of temperatures in the universe.

A thermostat placed on the surface of the sun would register roughly 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But that's nothing. Temperatures in the overall universe range from millions of degrees in the hottest stars to absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius). The thermal spectrum that allows for life as we know it is 1 or 2 percent of that. How much smaller again is the slice that makes me suddenly look up from my housework and notice how nice the air feels on my skin.

We don't need to talk about the fact that our planet could not support life if it were as far from the sun as Jupiter or as close as Venus, nor that carbon molecules need 120 to -20 C. We just have to ponder a calibration --- and a love --- so sensitive that a five degree rise or lowering of temperature makes the difference between me putting on my sweater or leaving it home.