Mmmm, Steak

I know it's not an original title, but it was a good steak. Kroger had ribeyes on sale, and I had a taste for steak. I really like grilling, too. Just a man, meat, and an open flame. I did catch the grill on fire tonight, though. The actual grill piece. I know the whole thing is a "grill" (it's not a barbecue, whatever the BestBuy commercial might say), but the piece you put the meat on is a grill, as well. Anyway, when you cook stuff on it, it builds up a layer of char. Mostly it's fat that sticks to the metal, sometimes a useful piece of meat is lost to it, too. Well, I scrape most of that off before putting meat on the next time I use the grill. I did that tonight, too. After I had the steak on the grill, the flames got higher than usual (I generally grill on hot coals with little or no flame), and starting burning some of the char. It wasn't huge flames or anything, it's just that they eminated from the char layer on the grilling surface. I had never produced that before. Also, my steak was really, really good.

I was just reading an article from the Washington Post (by way of Google News) that some scientists have looked at the number of tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico / Atlantic Ocean over the past 100 years and concluded that the huge increase is due to global warming, and it got me started on my global warming kick again. Not so much the science of finding what you're looking for (which is what the study that everyone cites did), but the science of attributing correlation with causation. That is, the logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. For those who don't speak Latin or watch The West Wing, that fallacy stems from assuming that just because Event B happened after Event A, Event A must have caused Event B. The traffic light turned red, and I stopped is probably causation - I stopped because the light turned red. I woke up at 9 this morning, and it rained is probably not related in any way. Related, but not the same, is the idea that we could be looking at two effects from an unknown cause. More tropical storms AND a higher mean temperature caused by an unknown something. Maybe humans, maybe the sun, maybe we aren't smart enough to see what it is yet. I was surprised that the Washington Post presented the counter argument to the claim the researchers were making. They didn't present it very clearly, only citing some guy saying the researchers were inconsistent in their data usage (something like that, at least), but the claim didn't go completely unchallenged. Al Gore is stupid. (That had nothing to do with the article, but is still true.)

Someone at UTSI is getting into some big time trouble, seems like. I need some details. More tomorrow.