If you often find yourself in arguments with creationists then 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense from Scientific American magazine is a must read. It’s detailed refutation against the 15 most common misconceptions that creationists bring up.

I was playing the the Super Bowl between the Patriots and Cowboys after taking the ‘boys through an undefeated season where my top five receivers finished 1-5 in yards, TDs, and catches.

But I digress, here’s the last play of the game. I’d call this a pretty serious bug in the game AI - which I’ve noticed gets a little flaky late in games. Maybe it had something to do with the 56-3 whipping it was getting.

Click here to see the video.

RealClimate.com (RC) reports that the island of Svalbard, an Arctic island in the Northern North Atlantic, has recorded a 5 sigma event. That means that an event with a probability of one in a million.

You can get the details from the source at RC.

As it was pointed out at RC this does not prove global warming is happening much less anthropogenic GW. It is however worth noting that there have been a run on highly improbable weather patterns in the past few years. RC mentioned the heatwave in Europe as one and of course the 2006 hurricane season certainly deviated from the norm, whatever that is.

This reminds me of a quote I read somewhere, “Million to one odds happen 6 times a day in New York City.” The question is, “How many abnormal weather events should we expect as the norm and how many have been happening?”

Cold, Hard Facts : An op-ed by a climatologist who’s data has been distorted by Global Warming skeptics.

Global warming skeptics have used this man’s study as evidence that the globe is, in fact, not warming. I’m not sure which makes me feel better: that they were just too stupid to understand what was really being said. Or, that they did understand but took things out of context to purposely mislead people. Neither one is very comforting.

I signed up for this blog action day thing to help focus attention on the issue of global warming. But really, what can I say that you don’t already know? The North polar icecap has reached an all time low this summer - 2007. Al Gore shared a Nobel prize for his efforts educating the public. Even GB himself has used the GW words.

Every public poll I’ve seen indicates that the majority believe global warming is for real and is being caused by human civilization. So kudos for awareness. But, carbon dioxide levels continue to go up. Not only are greenhouse gas concentrations going up but they’re going up at an ever increasing rate. I’m pretty sure that’s a bad thing.

So here’s my forecast: It’s going to suck. It’s going to suck soon. And it’s going to suck for some a whole lot more than it is for others.

But remember, what does not kill you makes you stronger. And hopefully this will apply to the human race as a whole.

In my opinion humanity is in it’s early childhood. You can see a whole lot of similarities between a bunch of children playing in a sandbox to the machinations of the United Nations.

I can’t imagine the world actually working together on something, like cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, any more than I can imagine a bunch of kids spontaneously coming together as a whole to treat everyone fairly.

But kids grow up. And in the process small few of them gain the perspective to see that they were being childish when they were young and playing in that sand box. And they could have had more fun and been happier.

Hopefully humanity will suffer through the affects of global warming and come out the other side happier, healthier and wiser. Maybe we’ll grow up through the coming crises that are sure to arise.

I guess you could say that I’m pessimistically optimistic about humanities long term future. But the short term future is going to suck.

Xbox 360 Standoff: I heard that this was shouted down because of the implied violence but it’s still a favorite around the Xbox office.

Here is a roughly chronological list of the events of mine and Jill’s moving experience to Crestline, California.

It all starts in late 2007 when Jill and I decide to move to the mountains outside of Los Angeles to be closer to our families. It’s a bit of a rush to move, and what complicates matters is that we don’t have a place to move into. Fortunately, our local real estate agent has a vacation cabin that she is willing to rent to us cheap, because it’s usually unoccupied during the winter months anyway.

We drive down the coast
The final packing begins on December 28th, after my last day at Smilebox.com. I picked up a 6×10 Uhaul trailer and loaded it to the roof. We took off on December 31st and made it just a few miles down I-5 before we stopped to spend the night in a shit-hole town near Long View, Washington.

I was sound asleep when the New Year rolled in. I think Jill was reading a book.

Day Two comes and the weather is a bit nasty as we make it down US 101 along the Oregon coast. Jill found a great little hotel in Newport, right on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the stormy Pacific. The problem was that the entrance to the hotel was far too steep for me to drive the Pathfinder up while hauling a Uhaul trailer.

Unfortunately, one of the owners suggested we could park at a vacant house next door. I drive down a few hundred feet and turn into the driveway. Problem: there is not enough room for me to turn around and I end up getting stuck in their gravel driveway. (Note: getting Uhauls stuck becomes a theme of this adventure. )

Uhaul fun, part one
So me and this guy work together to get the trailer turned around, and I unhook the Pathfinder and drive back to the hotel. Now I’m a bit edgy because I have no idea how I’m going to get that trailer out of the driveway. But, as fortune would have it, the guy who suggested I park there in the first place goes down early the next morning. He kindly uses his truck to pull the trailer out and down to a nice paved and flat storage area not far away.

Jill and I ended up staying at the hotel for 3 nights, just relaxing. During this time one of the worst Pacific storms in years is coming ashore. We sat by the fireplace and watched the crashing waves.

After resting up we drive on down the coast a bit further to Bandon and stay in a place for two nights with an even better sea stacks-type view.

After this stop we drive pretty long days to get to LA. This is where the fun really begins.

The Crestline vacation cabin
I unloaded the Uhaul trailer into a storage unit down in San Bernardino and we take just the essentials, computers, desks, and such, up to the cabin we’re staying in up in Crestline.

Remember that storm that I mentioned earlier? Well, it didn’t just hit Oregon. It covered the entire coast and dumped about 2 feet of snow in Crestline. By the time we get there the roads are plowed and clear but no one had been to the cabin yet to clear a path.

Unfortunately, someone had stolen the snow shovel, and the only thing I had to use was a little iron shovel that’s supposed to be for the fireplace. It doesn’t take long to break that flimsy little thing. I end up on my knees shoveling icy snow off the steps with this tiny utensil so that I can carry our electronics into the cabin.

The next day the cable guy comes out and installs cable Internet access so that Jill and I can work. That much goes well and after a few weeks we are just about caught up with work when another big storm comes through. This one dumps more snow and knocks out the power. Not just to our house. Not just to the neighborhood. But to the entire mountain top community.

No power, no heat
We spend the night under every blanket in the cabin as the temperature drops down near freezing. The next day - Friday - we head down to Jill’s parents house in San Diego to relax in a warmer climate while they work on getting the power restored.

By Sunday, I’m pretty sure they have the power back on, so we head back up to the cabin. I was wrong. The power is still out. There’s nothing to do but get back in bed under all the blankets and hope the power comes back on soon.

Around 10 AM on Monday the power finally comes back on. And then goes out. And then comes back on. And so on. For days.

Now Jill and I are behind on our work again but finally the power is back on for good and the weather is warm. And to top things off, we have found a permanent place to move into starting February 1st. All good news!

Looking for rentals - back and forth at the whims of fate

• Okay, we’re not moving into our first choice so we’ll go with our second choice.

• No, wait, first choice is still an option, maybe. Lets go with that then.

• Oh, wait, now we’ve lost our second choice.

• And now the first choice is in question again.

• Oh, good. We can move into our first choice.

( Note: it’s a bit stressful to get bounced between choices. )

A stuck truck - Uhaul fun, part two
The week leading up to our move has great weather. The snow is almost all melted. Roads clear. Here we go.

Day one we move everything from the cabin over to our house. One little problem is that the owner hasn’t gotten everything out of the house yet. So we have a mixture of our furniture and his cluttering up the house. The house is also dirty and swimming in spiders. Not a good start.

Day two of the moving and I go down to San Bernardino and rent a Uhaul truck to bring the rest of our stuff up from storage. This is going to be a quick move. I’ll load up the truck, haul it up the mountain with all the big stuff that won’t fit in the Pathfinder, unload real quick and head back down. One day and get it over with.

Once I get the Uhaul truck unloaded I start to drive back up the access road. No go. The tires just spin on the wet asphalt. I should mention that our access road is as steep as a road can be and still get paved. The Uhaul just doesn’t have the traction on the wet asphalt to get up the hill.

Okay, so I’ll just wait till the next day and get down to San Bernardino to pick up the Pathfinder. I’m sure that I can use it to help pull the Uhaul up the road.

Next morning I get up. Look outside and there’s a fresh 8 inches of snow on the ground. I’m not going anywhere!

I start the day by shoveling a path up to the top of the hill. It’s only about 300 feet or so. There’s not much else I can do. It snows some more and I shovel some more. Repeat all day, fall into bed exhausted.

The path here at the bottom leads beside the Uhaul. The Uhaul truck is just out of frame to the right.

The next day I get a ride down to San Bernardino to bring the Pathfinder back. At least we will finally have transportation.

It turns out I can only get the Pathfinder about 1/4 of the way down the access road. I’ll have to carry things down the rest of the way. I counted 45 trips - give or take a few. At least it’s good exercise.

Still stuck and now one handed
After shoveling all this snow I’ve injured my right wrist. At first it’s just tender and difficult to grasp and twist things. But after another day it becomes debilitating. But, work must go on so I’m still out there shoveling, carrying and making it worse and worse by the day.

Finally I get a guy to come out with a small tractor with rubber treads to clear away enough snow to get the Uhaul truck out. After he clears away most of the snow we realize that there’s no way he can pull the truck out until the next day when the remainder of the ice/snow melts.

The next day the owner of the house we are renting shows up to get his stuff out of here. He’s a retired man and not used to the 5000 + foot altitude here so I help him out - even though it’s killing my wrist.

He realizes that it’s going to take days to get everything out with his small little trailer and get his furniture down the mountain. But then we have an idea. Why not load it all in the Uhaul? The extra weight will help it get better traction going up the hill. When the guy shows up with his tractor we’ll zip right no out of here.

Well, the guy with the tractor shows up with just his truck. He thinks he can get me out with that so we hook up and give it a try.

The extra weight in the Uhaul definitely helps. I can get much further up the hill than before. The problem: the guy trying to pull me can’t get out himself. Now he’s stuck. His wheelbase is much wider and he’s spinning in the snow.

So I run up the hill, back the Pathfinder down and hook on.

Zip, right up the hill we go. No problem - except that I tied onto his crash bar and ripped the hell out of it. Whoops! He said he has a welder and stuff to fix it, no worries. I feel bad that he’s the one who got his truck stuck.

Now I back down with the Pathfinder and hook up to try and pull the Uhaul out. Mind you that we have to clear a bunch of snow again because the guy with the truck has made a mess out of our clean path up the hill. I take more Ibuprofen and grit my teeth.

This is the final leg to the house. The Uhaul truck is just out of frame to the right.

After injuring my wrist even more I start pulling the Uhaul up with the Pathfinder. Zip, up and out, no problem. When I get to the top the guy driving - the guy who owns the house we’re moving into - says, “You know, I had the emergency break on all the way up.”

The Pathfinder is a stud. That much is certain.

Moved in at last and Uhaul-free
Now we have all the stuff that’s supposed to be in the house here. And everything that’s not supposed to be here is finally gone. The Uhaul truck was returned 6 days late but at least it’s done. Now we can get down to organizing, and putting things together. The fun part of the move.

Jill and I both agree: the next time we move we’re paying someone to do it for us.

Note: I’m playing fast and loose with history here. The details aren’t important. It’s the perceptions that I’m speaking to.

In college I had a professor who was talking to the class about the Napoleonic wars. He set the stage for us by telling us how Europe was transitioning into a modern society and they knew it. For the first time in history people were looking at their present and realizing that it was different than the past.

You know how sometimes someone will ask you how your day was and you say, “Same old. Same old.” That’s how life was before around the 1700s, give or take a few hundred years. Point is that most men and women did what their mothers and fathers had done and that’s pretty much how life had been for generations enumerable.

The point here is that Europeans in the 1800s had a sence that they were permanently different than their ancestors and that maybe they wouldn’t even have any more wars. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Then of course everything went to pot when Napoleon started marching around the continent. Not only were they disappointed that they were back at war but this was really bad. They had cannons and muskets and things that made a real mess out of some really nice estates. Not to mention the raping and pillaging that the soldiers did along the way which is pretty much what soldiers had always done.

So just when they thought they were finally pulling themselves out of the mud they fell into a shit hole.

That’s the essence of what my professor was communicating to us.

I raised my hand and said, “But you know, we did get Beethoven’s 9th Symphony out of it.” That pretty much got me a “globber” from everyone in the class including the professor.

My point was that, while it may have been really crappy for those stuck in the mess it’s really pretty far removed from us now. Plus we’ve seen things like the Holocaust and such that makes the Napoleonic wars look like a garden party.

But it was the tragedy of those times that inspired Beethoven’s 9th. That symphony will endure. When the Alps are worn down into gentle rolling hills the air will still occasionally vibrate to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th.

So were the Napoleonic wars bad? Is it appropriate to label something historical in that way? Certainly as we distance ourselves from it we are more inclined to focus on the greatness that they produced instead of the horror they suffered.

So what of today? How will people of the future view the events of today and near future? I think of this often when I think of what might be in store for humanity if global warming turns into a worse case scenario.

Perhaps in the generations to follow they will think of us today, the agents of global warming, as the unknowing saviors of the human race. It could be our actions that in the immediate future will be universally considered “bad” that leads to the next evolution of humanity into a true global society. And so our distant children will be thankful that we blundered yet gave birth to something they cherish.

Then again, maybe we’re all doomed. At any rate. I often think of Shakespeare’s quote in Hamlet who said, “There is nothing neither good nor bad. But thinking makes it so.”

You know that scene in 2010 when Floyd asks Chandra to reprogram HAL to return to Earth early because of the new “feature” they discovered on Jupiter? Think back to Chandra’s reaction. He’s calm and responds, “Well, I just finished programing HAL for a 1000 day return trip back to Earth and now you want me to scrap all that and reprogram HAL for …

Nope, Chandra would have reacted more like this, “Are you fraking kidding me? Do you know how hard it is to program a holistic computer? I’ve had to hack my code so many times because of your screw ups that it’s become a house of cards in there. No wonder HAL went nuts. You’ve got code telling to do all sorts of contradictory things.”

Fifteen minutes later he would be sitting at a console, sipping an espresso, and mumbling to himself, “Okay, I’ll just comment this code out and then make this class dynamic . . . I think this is going to work. . . ”

Yeah, nothing like this has never happened to me.