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Lyrics - As a public service, I offer the following so that you know the actual words to the song.

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero año y Felicidad

If you're like me, you get the song title right, but then don't know the next line. The singing then picks up once again with the English lyrics "I want to wish you a Merry Christmas." I'd imagine it gets worse after a few beers.

Barbeque - Yesterday's lunch at work was brought in from KC's Ribshack in Manchester. We had joked that since one of my coworkers was moving to Austin, TX, this would be a warmup for him. The food was awesome -- a nice break from the usual pizza lunches that we have one a month. I was surprised that after having lived in southern NH for over a decade now I had never heard of the place. I'll have to keep it in mind for the next time family comes to visit.

Timothy - Lately Timothy has been driving us crazy with switching light switches. With his current height he can only move the switch one way, but he loves going around the house to set them all that way. What's particularly annoying is that he keeps turning off the ceiling fan in the room with the wood stove. We count on that fan to help push the heat into the rest of the house. In a similar fashion he's had a resurgence of climbing up on the computer desk to press the keyboard and mouse. The other day when I checked the iMac most of its desktop files and drives were renamed into random gibberish. I think that perhaps it's time to use the Mac's screenlock capability...

Crichton - I know I put a lot of links at the side bar but I wanted to point out a somewhat long article by Michael Crichton entitled "Aliens Cause Global Warming". Those who disagree with his speech immediately jump in and mention that Crichton is a writer, not a scientist. Crichton does a lot of research for his books and is well educated. I'll admit that I'm still working through the article, but it's been good so far and I wanted to encourage its distribution. A couple of excerpts:

But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought---prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

He opens with the Drake equation, a meaningless equation about the probability of life on other planets and the decades of work at SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.

He goes on:

The fact that the Drake equation was not greeted with screams of outrage-similar to the screams of outrage that greet each Creationist new claim, for example-meant that now there was a crack in the door, a loosening of the definition of what constituted legitimate scientific procedure. And soon enough, pernicious garbage began to squeeze through the cracks.

The article goes on to discuss other similar episodes of what I'll call "belief science". SETI is a case of "what's the big deal", but a similar attitude on belief science and what he later discusses as "consensus" science touches on areas that more directly impact our daily lives.

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

He goes on to list numerous examples where scientific consensus was wrong, very very wrong. Interesting article if you get some time to read it.