Today is Earth day! And I'll be here on Earth all day celebrating the unique combination of oxygen and nitrogen.  Earth is one of my favorite planets.  It is so full of ironies, and contradictions.  Here in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere some places experienced the worst winter in 15 years.  Yet, global warming is threatening to cook us all like Canadian bacon. 

Earth has seen many ups and downs in its 4.55 billion years.  No one can forget the rockin' Mesozoic Era.  There was a party every night.  Volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, meteors showering the planet blocking out the sun and killing all life (or most?).  Those were the days. 

But my favorite time of all was our most recent ice age, because the Wooly Mammouth is my favorite mammal.  The present ice age began 40 million years ago with the growth of an ice sheet in Antarctica. It intensified during the late Pliocene, around 3 million years ago, with the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere, and has continued in the Pleistocence.  This of course dwarfs the amount of time Vanilla Ice had mainstream success with his 1990 smash hit "Ice Ice Baby".

It also dwarfs the amount of time humans have even been on Earth.  But its been a heck of a party since we arrived.  Al Gore (a one time politician) says that humans are turning up the heat on the stove, and might cook this baby to a black crisp thereby killing everything.  John Coleman (Meteorologist and founder of the Weather Channel) says, "It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming... it is a SCAM."  Gotta love it.

The only time I felt more decieved by creatures who could create powerful illusions was on Talos IV with Captain Pike.  Ultimately it turned out alright for everybody, and Captain Kirk took command of the Enterprise about a decade later.

So happy birthday, Earth!  Its been a wild ride, but just keep on keepin' on, like you've done for billions of years buddy.

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