Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

A Season For Every Activity

Sep 24

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Me | No Comments

The Fruit of the Murphy Loins are just a touch older than Da Goddess’s, so I have to respond to her observation:

It doesn’t matter if I just saw her the day before or two weeks ago or whenever, the simple fact is, she’s growing up so fast. In just over a month she’ll be 15. Little Dude is going to be 11 about a week from now. Both of them are constant reminders that I’m getting older.

I hate to break it to you, but at some point you stop getting older, and you start getting old. And as much as it pains me to say, I think I’m already there. I carry a light and magnifying glass with me so that I can read the menu in a restaurant. The hearing isn’t what it once was. I look back at the days of my youth and am convinced that things were better back then. When smaller children (i.e. under the age of 25) are having fun in the neighborhood I feel an urge to go out in nothing but my underwear and yell at them from my front porch and afterwards mutter about the kids of today under my breath. OK, maybe not the last part, but I have no doubt that within a decade, AKA a blink of an eye, it will be true. And as Ecclesiastes would have it, there is a season to be a crotchity old fart, so I’m thinking that it isn’t all bad.

Tags: ,

Sep 21

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | 1 Comment

The flying nun got everybody stirred up the other day by saying:

“May they be seen, may their work be valued and raised, and to especially the mothers who stand with an open heart and wait  – wait for their children to come home for from danger, from harm’s way and from war. I’m not finished. I have to finish talking – if the mothers ruled the world there would be no goddamn wars in the first place.”

The left is decrying “censorship” because FOX cut the cussing (and the rest of the statement with it) out.

Personally, this underscores you’re on solid PC ground claiming women are superior to men (not just the flying nun, but entire women’s studies departments claim this), but you’re in trouble if you claim men are superior to women – just ask Larry Summers who was disinvited to speak by the University of California Regents after they were reminded of Dr. Summers remark that it would be worth researching whether the dearth of female professors in the hard sciences was due to innate sex differences. How is this different than saying mothers are more innately fit to run the world than fathers? Just asking.

I also have to wonder at the condition, if moms ran the world.

Umm, don’t they already?

Saint Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) famously observed “Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man”. I not so famously have observed that women in general, and mom’s in particular, have the children — boys and girls — to at least seven. I’d pay money to see a discussion between Mr. Jason Whitlock and Mrs. Sally Field on this subject do we have insufficient fathering in this country?

At the risk of raising ire from the right people, I’ll also point out that “momma’s boy” is not a compliment.

So my answer to the question What would life be like if moms ran the world, I have to say not much different. Actually, I take that back. If we mean only moms ran the world in a dictatorial fashion, then there would be more emphasis on reducing risk across the board – physically, economically, etc. And there would be more emphasis on religion. And we’d all wear clean underwear under penalty of law. I say this because these are two areas where men and women are different – women are more risk averse and more religious, and everybody knows about moms and clean underwear.

But an end to war altogether? No.

Tags: ,

Ann Coulter Interview

Sep 21

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

I’m not a fan of Ann Coulter’s an insult too far style of attention getting, but I did find this interview funny:

FB: Sexual harassment is a big issue in certain industries such as politics and the modeling business. Do you think people who trade sexual favors really get ahead?
AC: It seems to have worked for Hillary.FB: You are a brilliant self made and accomplished woman. Would you ever date a model?
AC: Is the model a Republican?

FB: Which is the Bigger Disaster… a) Britney Spears at the VMAs… b) The New York Times.
AC: At least there’s hope for Britney.

The comments would be even more funny if they weren’t such a sad commentary on the current state of political discourse.

Tags:

Death Is The Best Insect Repellent

Sep 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Scouting | No Comments

Our troop recommends the use of Permanone applied to clothing when hiking or camping to keep the bugs (ticks especially) away. Permanone uses Permethrin.

It works.

I went with 40% DEET on arms and legs for my night out at the OA campout and got 2 tick bites under my clothes for my trouble.

I read with interest that the DOD is having field uniforms made with Permethrin to keep the bugs (mainly mosquitos) away. Maybe it will come to a scout uniform near you one day.

Tags: ,

No Highway

Sep 17

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Books | No Comments

I read Neville Shute’s No Highway a couple of weeks ago and really enjoyed it, so much that I even checked the movie made from it, No Highway In the Sky from the library and watched it last night. As per usual, the book was better than the movie.

A scientist (Theodore Honey) at the Royal Aircaft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough has developed a theory about fatigue in light alloys and has obtained a test article to test his theory. Since the book was written in 1948, the theory is laughable now, but that itsn’t important. When Dr. Scott takes over the metalurgical section at the RAE, eventually he gets around to asking Dr. Honey what he’s working on. So when Dr. Honey explains he’s testing his new theory of fatigue and he’s using a Rutland Reindeer tail to do it with. Dr. Scott, clearly an engineer, instantly notices a detail that escaped Dr. Honey’s attention – the Rutland Reindeer is a brand new plane that has just become basis of trans-Atlantic travel for the national (and monopoly) airline BOAC. When Dr. Honey tells him that his theory predicts the tail will fail at 1440 flight hours (shades of the deHavilland Comet), the story really begins.

The story is straightforward and told without villains. Just the natural working of different organizations and their interests provide conflict. The biggest reason I liked the book was that it was about aviation engineers – and there’s no better 1-2 combo than that. Sadly, it’s a combination rarely seen in print or pictures. Since I’ve worked on a couple of different British projects, I had a ball reading about the RAE and Boscombe Down. I was also pleasantly surprised by how little aeronautical engineering has changed in 50 years. The same personality times, the same organizational types, right down to the manager who flips from the biggest doubter that something is a problem to being the champion of the solution.

Tags:

Cereberus Now Has Three Heads

Sep 14

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Economics | 1 Comment

I suppose I’m a bit of an oddity – an ardent free trader who only buys American nameplate cars (kind of the exact opposite of all those “progressives” who decry American companies sending jobs oversees but who will only drive a foreign nameplate car). I’m not a car guy, but I have paid some attention to Chrysler if only because of friends who work there. While Ford and GM continue their slumber, Chrylser has been shocking – first being bought by Daimler, then being sold to Cerebus, then hiring Robert Nardelli of all people, and now hiring Toyota’s top American (in both senseis of the word). Now that Oldsmobile has gone the way of all flesh, I can say without risk of legal intanglements that this isn’t your father’s Chrysler. I suppose it just shows you that it’s the company closest to going the way of Oldsmobile that makes the biggest transformations.

Now Cereberus has Lasorda, Nardelli, and Press to run their car company – three heads are better than 1!

Tags: , ,

OA Weekend

Sep 12

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Me, Scouting | No Comments

If you live in the St. Louis area, you can thank me for the rain over the weekend. Yep, I went camping. The OA Fall Reunion was held at S-F Scout ranch and I was there. Friday night I had to undergo me pre-ordeal since I was unable to complete it due to broken toes at summer camp. I thought there would be maybe about 5 of us, but it was more like 80. Apparently a bunch of troops went out of council for their summer camp and were completing their pre-ordeals that night as well.

At 3 AM most of us bugged out when it sprinkled; the decision looked much better in retropspect when it poured at 4AM. It poured on us Saturday morning and Saturday evening, so we were grateful New Horizons moved up the candidate ceremonies to the afternoon so they could take place without rain. But that meant we were done by 6PM so the boys all voted to pack up in the rain and leave Saturday night instead of Sunday morning. The vote wouldn’t have been different if we were an adult led troop.

Tags:

9/11 + 6

Sep 11

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | No Comments

Six years ago America was attacked. It was not the first attack. It has not been the last attack carried out by al Qaida.

Some people just wish that it would all go away. It won’t go away on its own.

We have to understand the threat, not our projections, prejudices, or preconceptions.

The war has split open a major, pre-existing fault in not just America, but Western Civilization. The war did not cause the fault, and the end of the war will not eliminate the fault. But with the fault wide open, the full strength of civilization cannot be brought to bear on our enemy.

We are fighting both persons and ideology, but once a person gives up that ideology there is no need to fight them; as long as they hold on to that ideology, however, they must be opposed.

Tags:

Craig, Gore, and Begley: Hypocrisy Examined

Sep 10

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

I think charges of hypocrisy are thrown around far more than warrented. The most common case is where someone who advocates what we shall call virtue is found not to always act in accordance with that virtue. For me the person would be a hypocrite not just because they sometimes failed to live up to their standards (only the standardless person would not then be a hypocrite), but the person who advocates something as a virtue they really don’t think is a virtue and who have no intention of living up to it as a standard.

So do I think for example that Senator Craig is a hypocrite as some have suggested for being a closeted conservative homosexual while not supporting a liberal homosexual agenda? No, I don’t think so. I think he should resign for soliciting sex in a public restroom, but I don’t think he’s a hypocrite because his politics don’t match someone else’s idea of what they should be because of his sexual orientation.

I think Al Gore is a hypocrite because while he tells us that because CO2 emissions are going to wreck the planet and kill millions, we need to change our lifestyles to reduce carbon emissions, he has not made any such changes in his lifestyle (nor is he alone in this).

Which brings me to Ed Begley Jr. I’ve seen his show on HGTV a couple of times (it’s on after Design Star) and he’s the anti-Gore. While I’m a global warming sceptic, I appreciate that making changes in the atmosphere’s chemistry may not be a good idea without a much better understanding than we possess. Begley seems to live the lifestyle he advocates, and he makes a fear free pitch. He doesn’t say you need to change everything or we’re all going to die; instead he tries to give practical advice on how you can save energy (and money) in a pretty non-judgemental way:

I think there will be a lot of takeaways; that’s the thing that we’re going to try and stress, that people should grab the low-hanging fruit first. Not everybody is going to buy a hybrid car, an electric car, put up solar panels, or maybe even do solar hot water – that may be out of people’s budgets – even though it’s a lot less than solar electric. But people can afford a light bulb. They can afford a thermostat if it’s going to put them into profit in six months. They can afford perhaps some insulation, if they have a little piece of dirt in their backyard or front yard, they can plant some vegetables, they can afford to compost, or ride a bike or take a bus. Those things are quite affordable; indeed they’re quite cost-effective.

Who gets better press coverage – Al Gore, or Ed Begley Jr. Who should? I’ll take Ed any day of the week.

Tags: , , ,

We’ll always have No Way Out

Sep 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Inside Blogging, Movies | No Comments

Maybe I was too harsh on Waterworld.

Tags: