Butterfly Effect

Meteorologist Philip Merilees once posed: "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" Well, does it? The technical notion of 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' expounded in Edward N. Lorenz's Chaos Theory seems to suggest so.

Without delving too deeply into the Mathematical aspects of things, let's just say an Applied Science major like myself does comprehend the consequence(s) of, say, sneezing in public: It may cause a bystander's document to fly into a drain. What if he's the star stockbroker for NASDAQ securities? Will the world economy crash? Will countries wage WWIII? Will it mark the end of mankind?
I'd better carry a hankerchief.