April 28, 2008

A Great Leap Backwards

The upgrade to MT4.1 has not gone smoothly. My sidebars have dropped into the basement for some reason. Comments don't show up - I have tried to make several of my own, I get an acknowledgement, but nothing in the pending comments or the blog. How much time and aggrevation do I want to spend on a hobby? I'd rather spend money, since I have too little time and too much aggrevation already.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | Inside Bloging

Funmurphys Looks At The News

In a recent post , I highlighted the following claim about journalism:

The breakdown of journalistic conventions about point of view. In an earlier era these standards -- favoring austere, stoical language conveying voice-of-God authority -- were designed in part to ensure that stories betrayed no hint of the writer's real feelings.

But the convention was a pretense. There is a generally laudable move toward more conversational -- and more candid -- language in stories. This shift allows a respected pro like the Associated Press's Ron Fournier to unsheathe a knife and write this sentence earlier this year about Mitt Romney: "The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponents' record and continued to show why he's the most malleable -- and least credible -- major presidential candidate."


I'd like to pick up a couple of threads from this - one is the generally laudable move toward more conversational and more candid language. Is this a top down or bottom up move? I'll argue that it is a bottom up move, as journalists first push and then find that editors will let pass more and more conversational and candid language in stores. Of course, by candid I mean biased. i.e. representing the candid views of the journalist. At first you read stories where the reporters voice would be cloaked by euphamisms such as "experts say" - without ever naming a single expert who said any such thing. Now you just read the reporter in so called objective news stories not just unsheathing the knife, but sticking it in and then twisting it. So let's be honest about the new honesty, you aren't reading factual coverage anymore, you're reading opinion from cover to cover. And editors let this pass because it conforms to their own prejudices.

And on to the second thread - why did objective journalism sicken and die when it did? Objective journalism was good for the business of journalism. Our new candid journalism has been terrible for the business of journalism but has done wonders for the egos of journalists.

But why can you pick up a newspaper today and find editorializing in every news story where 30 years ago you would find straight news?

I'd say first liberals within the media, just like at universities, became predominant by first making the environment chilly for conservatives and then flat out not hiring them. Now that we have an overwhelmingly liberal media, why not drop objectivity? It's not like a conservative AP writer is going to be able to unsheath the knife, let alone stick it in a twist it because they don't exist. Nor is there a conservative editor or fellow journalist to privately dispute the liberal view in newsrooms. There is simply no hope of a group that is overwhelming composed of individual liberals to produce a product that is anything other than overwhelming liberal. The old convention didn't break down because it didn't suit the consumers of news, it broke down because it didn't suit the producers of news.

The move to objective journalism was driven by concern for the bottom line - an objective AP could sell stores to any newspaper, an objective newspaper could sell itself to any subscriber. The move away seems to be driven by demographics within the profession itself.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:37 PM | Comments (0) | Media Criticism

April 25, 2008

Today's Quote: More On Thinking

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."

------------------ William James (Are you thinking what I'm thinking?)

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 11:33 AM | Comments (0) | Quotes

Obama's Major League Weapon

I read this story, Obama's Secret Weapon: The Media the other day and I was struck by a couple of thoughts (thankfully, not too hard).

The first, most obvious is that the media isn't Obama's Secret weapon, it's his Obvious weapon. I mean, come one, the media long ago shed any shred of objectivity, and the open rooting for and gushing over Saint Barry has been clear to anyone who isn't Obama Girl. Who's being arrogant and condescending here - does the media really think (1) we're not biased, and (2) the public doesn't notice? How clueless can one be?

And on to the second thought. The story touched on it only the briefest way:

The response was itself a warning about a huge challenge for reporters in the 2008 cycle: preserving professional detachment in a race that will likely feature two nominees, Obama and John McCain, who so far have been beneficiaries of media cheerleading.

Unlike the stock market, I think past media performance is a pretty reliable indicator of future media performance, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that McCain will be covered like all other Republicans before him - with dislike. What Clinton has had to face in the primaries is what every Republican in the last 40 years has had to face in national elections - a media that prefers, or much prefers the other guy. The only reason Hillary Clinton gets any sympathy, or at least a fair shake, in this article is because she's a Democrat and there actually are Hillary partisans within the ranks. McCain benefits from media cheerleading only when he is acting in concert with the Democrats, something he does routinely (and which allows him to claim with far greater effectiveness the position of uniter and bridge to the other side than Saint Barry).

But the authors can't actually face that truth, and instead we get this:

The breakdown of journalistic conventions about point of view. In an earlier era these standards -- favoring austere, stoical language conveying voice-of-God authority -- were designed in part to ensure that stories betrayed no hint of the writer's real feelings.

But the convention was a pretense. There is a generally laudable move toward more conversational -- and more candid -- language in stories. This shift allows a respected pro like the Associated Press's Ron Fournier to unsheathe a knife and write this sentence earlier this year about Mitt Romney: "The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponents' record and continued to show why he's the most malleable -- and least credible -- major presidential candidate."


Ron Fournier is respected by whom exactly? Adam Clymer? I laud the move to partisans within the press coming out into the open, but I don't laud the press for having so many liberal Democrat partisans. Why not pour the cup full - if there is no way reporters can hold in check their real feelings - which is a central thrust of this story, and an accurate one, how then can Americans rely on them for accurate, unbiased information? If it's opinions I want, I'd much rather talk to friends than listen to strangers with no particular ability or knowledge beyond the ability to write to length and deadline.

We're into syllogism land. Liberal Democrats clearly prefer liberal politicians from the Democratic Party -- that's what makes them liberal Democrats. The press is overloaded with liberal Demorats; consequently the press prefers liberal politicians from the Democratic Party. The coverage of national politics is partisan, and hopelessly so. Reading the New York Times, or watching a national news broadcast doesn't inform aobut what happened, it informs you about what liberal Democrats think about what happened.

This article is just a part of the press groping their way to this conclusion, but they haven't even begun to contemplate the ramifications of that truth - only part of which is that their audience is only a third to a quarter of the nation, not the whole nation as they expect. Another is that they don't speak truth to power and never did - they speak the liberal Democratic party line to the faithful. These are hard truths and I don't expect most of them to ever come to grips with them. I wouldn't.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 11:29 AM | Comments (0) | Media Criticism

April 23, 2008

Today's Quote: On Complaining

"I can't complain, but sometimes I still do."

---------- Joe Walsh (Speaking for all of us)

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 11:36 AM | Comments (0) | Quotes

April 22, 2008

Movie Review of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"

Last night I went to see Ben Stein's film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" at my local hexadecaplex. For $9.75 I got to see a terrible movie, and you got this review. I recently served as a guest speaker for an adult Sunday School class entitled, "The Harmony of Faith and Science" at a local Christian church, so this topic is fresh in my mind. I brought a clipboard with me and did my best to take notes in the dark: 5 pages of notes, and 3 more afterwards out in the cinema lobby.

The "Expelled" movie starts right off with an amateurish cinematic device: displaying old black-and-white newsreels of bad historical events while the narrator intones something you're supposed be scared of. The opening sequence features the construction of the Berlin Wall. Throughout the movie we see clips of tanks, guns, Nazi soldiers, fistfights, a condescending school teacher, even Eddie Haskell beating up The Beaver! - flashing up on the screen whenever Ben Stein talks about Something Bad. When the film makes claims of repression and academic unfairness, you can bet that another old newsreel with scratchy sound is coming. My audience even laughed at a guillotine coming down on an empty block, it was so ridiculous! These clips are a childish device for trying to convince people. I don't know why anyone over the age of 10 would fall for them.

Anyone expecting a Christian movie here will be disappointed. By my count Jesus is only mentioned in a background song, and the word "Christ" is spoken once. The Bible is mentioned a couple of times, but the Book is never opened. God is mentioned a fair number of times, but mostly in the general sense. The movie contains no in-depth discussion of God's revelation in the Bible or in the person of Jesus Christ.

The movie reviews at Wikipedia and Scientific American are scholarly reviews, with proper citations and clear reasoning. They leave you with the unfortunate impression that "Expelled" is in the same class of scholarship. But make no mistake - "Expelled" is a really bad movie! Even those bad reviews make the movie sound more sophisticated than it really is. Think of Ben Stein blundering his way through a series of interviews and you'll have a better idea of what "Expelled" is about.

The movie makes some astoundingly wrong claims. David Berlinski states, "We don't even know what a species is!" Huh? What has he been reading? A species is "often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are often used, such as based on similarity of DNA or morphology." It is true that species distinctions are sometimes fuzzy, but this fuzziness is evidence for evolution. Berlinski is citing evidence for evolution in the very act of denying that there is any.

I was amused to see how the filmmakers used bad lighting and unusual camera angles to make Richard Dawkins look like a vampire. Dawkins The Vampire appears throughout the movie, the very embodiment of all that is evil in modern science. He even gets his own theme music; my fellow movie-goers were very polite not to holler out "Don't go in there!" Dawkins The Vampire is extremely useful to Ben Stein for creating Outrage, and this is the same use that creationists have for him.

"Expelled" attempts to make the usual creationist connection between "Darwinism" and atheism. This is bunk. Looking for theology in Origin of Species is a bit like looking for fishing techniques in the Gospels; you can find valid information, but it's obvious that the main message is something else. Nevertheless, here is how Charles Darwin closed his Sixth Edition:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
The "Creator" is Darwin's reference to God in the Victorian language of his time. Darwin may be a Deist or an agnostic, but the theological view expressed here is certainly not atheism.



If anyone cares what Adolf Hitler said, here is a quotation from Mein Kampf regarding God:

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord (Adolf Hitler, 1943, in Mein Kampf. Translated by R. Manheim. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Volume 1: A Reckoning, last sentence of Chapter 2: Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna).
If this blog were a Ben Stein "documentary" we would zoom in on the words "Almighty Creator", like he does with a quotation by Thomas Jefferson. However . . .



I need to review an important concept for everyone's benefit: The Christian Church does not formulate doctrine based on the views of Adolf Hitler. The Church does not derive its position on biological evolution by examining the views of Adolf Hitler. The Church does not take a stance on homosexuality based on what Adolf Hitler did. The Church does not learn about the Creator based on what Adolf Hitler wrote, either in a positive or a negative sense. I hope that's clear now. And by the way, checking against Mein Kampf is not part of the scientific peer-review process either.

My Anglican church uses the Bible to determine doctrine, and the Bible alone. Anglican Article Six states: "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." So what does the Bible say? Here are some verses from Genesis 1:

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
The Bible describes the earth as God's agent of creation - the earth brings forth life at God's command. This picture is in accordance with a theistic view of evolution, or BioLogos if you prefer the terminology of Francis Collins. Kenneth Miller also holds this view. Genesis 2 emphasizes that life is ultimately made from dirt, which is also in accordance with biological evolution.



Ben Stein raises the possibility that Christianity and evolution are compatible, citing the positions of the Catholic Church and most Protestant denominations, then quickly discards the notion based on quotations by Dawkins The Vampire and a reporter (with glasses; I didn't catch his name). I don't know why any Christian would expect theological truth to come out of Richard Dawkins' mouth. But Stein gets the brief quotes he wants and then quickly moves onward, but not so quickly that he can't mention the term "liberal Christians". Later Count Dawkula reads through a list of insulting terms for the God of the Old Testament.

I simply can't believe the claims of academic unfairness in "Expelled" without further investigation. The movie quickly and firmly establishes its non-trustworthiness through the use of those interspersed newsreel clips. If Ben Stein will do that, he'll do anything. Here in Boulder we are familiar with the recent case of Ward Churchill, and we know that there is often a large discrepancy between why a person says he was fired and what his employer says. I'm not going to sit there in a movie theater and say, "Gosh this is a "documentary"! Everything must be true!" I recommend reading the Wikipedia article for more information.

During many interviews it's obvious that the film editors have selected certain short film segments from a larger interview to make that person look bad or stupid. If the subject rubs his nose during the interview you're sure to see that clip. Ben Stein acts needlessly stupid and looks bored during most interviews. Is this some kind of clever interviewing technique? A particularly stupid comment from Stein is, "I thought science was determined by the evidence, not by the courts!" Kitzmiller vs. Dover did not decide a scientific question; it decided that Intelligent Design could not be taught in the public schools.

There were two people in the film for whom I have great respect: Alister McGrath and John Polkinghorne. McGrath is the author of an excellent book about the King James Bible that you should read. He delivers a convincing and well-deserved criticism of Dawkins The Vampire. The Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne is a Physicist and an Anglican priest. Elsewhere Polkinghorne has stated: "As all sensible people know, scientific Evolution is completely compatible with Christianity: so is Gravity, Relativity (and the rest of Physics, Chemistry and Biology for that matter)." Stein claims that nobody he interviewed believes that evolution and faith are compatible, but that's obviously not true.

The tour of the Nazi medical facility at Hadamar was sobering. Ben Stein exploits this event by prompting the tour guide to connect it with Darwinism. The only substantial connection between Darwin and Hitler was to interview Richard Weikart and talk about his book From Darwin to Hitler. But anti-Semitism existed for centuries before Darwin! Even Ben Stein concedes that "Darwinism does not automatically equate to Nazism, but was used to justify it." And Hitler was a psychopath who would twist any "hodgepodge of ideas" to suit his purposes.

Eugenie Scott comes across pretty well, despite the best efforts of Stein and the film editors. They do manage to show that she has a messy desk. There is very little of substance in this movie.

I was surprised to see Michael Behe, the Apostle of Intelligent Design, neither featured nor even mentioned in the "Expelled" movie. Perhaps he was not invited to appear in the film, or he wisely decided not to have anything to do with this farce.

I expected that the "Expelled" movie would make me angry. Instead, I was chuckling as I left the theater. I was chuckling at how pathetic the movie was! "Expelled" might become a cult film someday: "How Not To Make A Documentary", or "How To Make A Totally Unconvincing Movie While Looking Like A Buffoon". "Expelled" is just a terrible movie!

At the very end Ben Stein confronts Dawkins The Vampire one final time. It's hard for me to believe that Count Dawkula, as smart is he is supposed to be, did not see that he was being set up to be the villain. But that's exactly what happens. Count Dawkula also fell for the oldest interviewer trick in the book: Stein remains silent, and the evil Count thinks he has to fill in the awkward silence with something. So Count Dawkula rambles into speculation about how if there were intelligent designers who designed this planet, they must also have evolved. But it's mostly incoherent. Score one for Ben Stein.

Posted by Carl Drews at 7:18 PM | Comments (1) | Faith | Science

Today's Quote: On Failure

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody"

-------- Bill Cosby (Said perhaps after he started speaking out against cultural problems in the Black community)

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | Quotes

April 21, 2008

An Unforgiving God


Eamon Fitzgerald reflects on the Pope's visit to America :

Yes, of course, many crimes have been committed in the name of God, but no Christian leader was ever as barbaric as Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or Pol Pot or Saddam. Those monsters were not constrained by a moral order based on the dominion of a forgiving God. They were God. They were unforgiving.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | Faith | National Politics

April 18, 2008

My Debate With Senator Obama

Barry:

The AP reports Obama "dismissively" talked about the debate yesterday "and the line of questioning from ABC News' moderators, arguing that it focused on political trivia at the expense of the problems facing average voters." At a rally in North Carolina, Obama "drew roars of approval" when he "mocked" the "tough questions" sent his way during the event. ABC World News reports Obama "took issue" with the nature of the debate questions, saying, ""Forty-five minutes before we heard about health care; 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq; 45 minutes before we heard about jobs; 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices."

Kevin:

Birds of a feather flock together

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | National Politics

Left Out, As Always

I feel so left out. I slept through the first quake at 4:30AM. I was jamming to Joe Satrioni at work and so missed the big aftershock. But I can be part of today's big story by directing you to this story that details how republicans are responsible for midwest quake. Thankfully, no one was hurt and damage was minimal.

Hey, at least I felt the one in 1968 (plus a bunch during my six California years).

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:03 PM | Comments (0) | Current Events | Me

Today's Quote: On Deep Thinking

"The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think."

---------------- Søren Kierkegaard (Later paraphrased by famous philosopher Curly Howard as "I keep trying to think, but nothing happens")


Posted by Kevin Murphy at 11:43 AM | Comments (0) | Quotes

April 16, 2008

Don't Confuse Me With The Facts, My Mind Is Made Up

Here's the post I've been wanting to write all my life, but because of the lack of time, skill, ability, and seriousness I haven't been able to: Partisan Views Interfere with Rational Thinking.

You have to let your thinking be influenced by the best evidence you can find. Unfortunately, most people are unaccustomed to that way of thinking. Because of that, some liberals refuse to let go of the idea that Bush lied about Saddam's WMDs in the run up to the invasion, and some conservatives refuse to let go of the idea that Saddam really did have WMDs. You need to let go of both ideas. It is a truly liberating experience to let the evidence guide your thinking, and I encourage you to give it a try.

It builds from there, to lay bare the central conundrum of the invasion of Iraq - who lied. The conclusion shouldn't surprise you, but for some it will.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | War On Terror

Snubbed Again

At last I have something in common with Tom Maguire - neither of us were included in the Village Voices Top 10 Conservative blogs. Tom's not sure if it were an honor to be lambasted by them, but with a subheader of "A confederacy of Dunces" and a stupid/evil rating for each one, I can clearly state it would have been an honor to be so singled out by such an unworthy institution (only good article was by Mamet BTW). However, we here at funmurphys.com fully appreciate the importance of size (let me say I'm much bigger in real life than my internet presence) and so we are neither shocked or dismayed that we were once again snubbed, although I will allow to a smidgeon of disappointment.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:46 PM | Comments (0) | Inside Bloging

A Cosmic Back Of the Envelope Calculation

Scientists and engineers love equations. Not only do they make the modern world possible, they can be a lot of fun at parties. At least the kind scientists and engineers throw. And we (I'm just a country engineer) all love a good back of the envelope calculation, which is how one turns a WAG (Wild Assed Guess) into a SWAG (Scientific Wild Assed Guess). So I have to applaud Prof Andrew Watson for this Cosmic SWAG of a calculation:

Is there anybody out there? Probably not, according to a scientist from the University of East Anglia. A mathematical model produced by Prof Andrew Watson suggests that the odds of finding new life on other Earth-like planets are low, given the time it has taken for beings such as humans to evolve and the remaining life span of Earth.

Structurally complex and intelligent life evolved late on Earth and it has already been suggested that this process might be governed by a small number of very difficult evolutionary steps.

Prof Watson, from the School of Environmental Sciences, takes this idea further by looking at the probability of each of these critical steps occurring in relation to the life span of Earth, giving an improved mathematical model for the evolution of intelligent life.

....

His model, published in the journal Astrobiology, suggests an upper limit for the probability of each step occurring is 10 per cent or less, so the chances of intelligent life emerging is low - less than 0.01 per cent over four billion years.

I bet that makes him a big hit at all the parties, especially with the Panspermia-ists, who were a pretty lively bunch to begin with.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | Science

The Other Metabolic Clock

Or we've all got rhythm in our bones, even if it was discovered in our teeth.
Dr. Timothy Bromage discovered a pattern to growth rings in human teeth, and then in our bones as well. Then he discovered them in other organisms, including that lab favorite, the rat:

The newly discovered rhythm, like the circadian rhythm, originates in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that functions as the main control center for the autonomic nervous system. But unlike the circadian rhythm, this clock varies from one organism to another, operating on shorter time intervals for small mammals, and longer ones for larger animals. For example, rats have a one-day interval, chimpanzees six, and humans eight.

The article links short intervals to small size and short life:

Reporting his findings today in the "Late-breaking News" session during the 37th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research, Bromage said, "The same biological rhythm that controls incremental tooth and bone growth also affects bone and body size and many metabolic processes, including heart and respiration rates. In fact, the rhythm affects an organism's overall pace of life, and its life span. So, a rat that grows teeth and bone in one-eighth the time of a human also lives faster and dies younger."

Humans have by far the most variation in these long-term incremental growth rhythms, with some humans clocking as few as five days, and others as many as ten. Correspondingly, humans have the most variability in body size among mammals.

I assume you have the exact same question I do - namely, do human also have the most variability in life span among mamals as well? Should I be happy that my son, who just turned 14, still has some baby teeth left? Maybe people who live fast and die young are just metabolically programmed that way. Will life insurance companies request a tooth so they can set their rates appropriately? Maybe you should look a gift horse in the mouth.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:12 PM | Comments (0) | Science

Today's Quote: On Dishes and Idealism


"Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes."

-------- P.J. O'Rourke (probably engaged in that favorite pasttime of oldsters, complaining about the kids of today).

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 12:07 PM | Comments (0) | Quotes

April 15, 2008

Who Says Adventure is a Thing of the Past?

Have you ever desired to pit yourself against nature and see who comes out on top? Have you ever wanted to go off into the wild blue and bring back enlightenment? Have you ever seen a gladiator movie? OK, I have a deal for you - join a Russian Arctic drift expedition and spend 7 months drifting around on a piece of ice. You can follow the path blazed by Jürgen Graeser, the first German to take part in a Russian expedition. But floating around on a slab of ice and sending a weather balloon up every day wasn't all fun and games (unlike playing peek-abo with Polar Bears):

In spite of its importance for the global climate system, the Arctic is still a blank on the data map. Up to now, continuous measuring in the atmosphere above the Arctic Ocean is missing. „We are not able to develop any reliable climate scenarios without disposing of data series with high temporal and local resolutions about the Arctic winter. The data which Jürgen Graeser has obtained in the course of the NP 35 expedition are unique, and they are apt to considerably diminish the still existing uncertainties in our climate models" said Prof. Dr. Klaus Dethloff, project leader at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.

Eh, what's this, you mean there's still some real science to be done in Climatology? Say it ain't so, Al, say it ain't so.


I have to applaud Jürgen Graeser's dedication to science. Adventure and learning in one package - what a deal. Who says adventure is a thing of the past?

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | Science

Today's Aphorism: On Political Campaigns

"A political campaign starts when a politician stops working and goes about making speeches about all the work he intends to do."

----------- Unknown (probably becuase it's so old - Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.)

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | Quotes

April 13, 2008

Sci-Fi Sounds From My Youth

Kevin Kelly posted "The Scifi Sound Effects That Take Over Your Brain" and brought back a lot of happy (and scary) childhood memories. Sounds, like flavors, can trigger a memory and/or an emotional state much more than a picture. Listen to all of them but the Alien Heat Ray and the Alien Probe from the 1953 version of War of the Worlds. brought back some scary memories. The original Star Trek transporter sounds like wonder and awe to me. It was a very cool visual effect as well.

Posted by Sean Murphy at 8:41 PM | Comments (0) | Fun

April 12, 2008

Funmurphys 3.0

Hope you like the new look, I'd like to do some tweaking of the colors and sidebars and save my really old animated "humor enabled browser" gif. Time is always a problem, and after the heroic effort it took to get a blogroll back and the horrible Six Apart documentation, I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it. In many ways my favorite blog platform was the one I started with - Greymatter. I'm not a power blogger, I'm just a casual blogger who wants to do a few simple things easily. Movable Type seems to evolve with each incarnation towards dedicated IT support and away from me. I'm so hopelessly antediluvian that I can't figure out tags vs. Categories vs. Keywords.

Here's how I feel about the experience of upgrading from MT2.6 to MT4.1:

Laocoon struggles

That would be me in the middle and my fellow bloggers Sean and Carl on either side of me with the MT serpent coiled about us.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at 4:01 PM | Comments (0) | Inside Bloging

April 1, 2008

Three Words for My Singing in Church

  1. Awful
  2. Offkey
  3. Sprechstimme
A more succinct definition from the Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary: A vocal style in which the melody is spoken at approximate pitches rather than sung on exact pitches.
Posted by Sean Murphy at 12:34 AM | Comments (0) | Faith | Fun