The foam on my latté is more appealing to me than the espresso.

Kill me now.

But seriously, the foam is the best part. Mmmmmmmm...

I've always enjoyed logic (even if I haven't been very logical my whole life) and I predict that one of my regrets in life will be dropping my Logic and Arguement class in my final semester of school so that I could concentrate on my Computer Engineering classes. I actually ended up keeping the books because I found them so interesting.

Lately, it's become fashionable to point out logical fallacies in your opponent's  arguement and, even if they don't necessarily counter his claims, the accusation might make him stumble for a second or confuse him into conceding a point. "Let's not devolve this into an ad hominem" is a typical line. Often, people on the losing side of an argument will search for logical fallacies in order to try to dismiss the other person's claims. This can be quite irritating, as the logical fallacies are often misapplied. Some, however, are very useful in countering claims by an opponent that you don't readily have evidence to defend against.

My favorite logical fallacy is "false compromise." This is where two opponents take polarly opposite stances on an issue. Let's say the opponents are a creationist who says that God created everything on Earth 6,000 years ago and a geologist who claims that the Earth is actually hundreds of millions of years old and that life evolved. The two bicker and banter and present their sides. Unfortunately for the creationist, the geologist has a lot more evidence on his side and is swaying the audience. So what does the creationist do? He commits the "false compromise" fallacy:

"Well, you claim the Earth is millions of years old and that life evolved on the Earth. I claim the Earth is very young and that God created life from thin air. In all honesty, the truth is probably somewhere in between. For example, there may have been some evolution, but God guided it."

The audience likes this. They are used to hearing that the truth lies between two extremes, especially when it comes to politics. But the truth isn't always between two extremes. Sometimes, the truth is at one extreme. If I claim that I wrote this in the United States and you claim that I wrote it in Nepal, the truth is certainly not that I probably wrote it in the Pacific Ocean.

This is how we got intelligent design.

Last Thursday afternoon, Steven Sinofsky treated the entire Windows division (which includes me) to go to a special screening of JJ Abrams's new Star Trek. We got free popcorn, candy, and ginormous drinks. The best part was that the screening was actually 14 hours before the premier at midnight, so the only people who got to see Star Trek before us were the critics. There are certain perks to working for The Evil Empire. :-)

Overall, although I'm not a huge Star Trek geek, I thought the movie was really solid. I was fully expecting Abrams to go off-the-wall crazy with the plot and special effects, but I was pleasantly surprised that the plot was sane and the acting was actually quite good. The twists were believable and the story came together in the end. Maybe this summer I'll go through the Star Trek canon; I could use another geeky series.

Everyone loves a good cat video, right? This one is our cat, Nemesis, performing some feats of acrobatic prowess:

I'll never forget (well, until senility) the night in our camp at Noosa, Queensland the first week I was in Australia when Jack lent me his glasses as we did some manly stargazing. Trust me, it was very manly. The sky came alive in a way that I never realized it could before that moment. There were at least ten times more stars in the sky than I thought there were. It was a wakeup call. Now that I'm enjoying Microsoft's amazing health benefits, I decided it was finally time, after about six years, to get an eye exam. So, I got some trendy glasses which the totally closeted salesman assured me "complemented my wintry complexion" and are very "architectural."

I can't wait for my next camping trip.