Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Breaking Up Is Easy; Dividing Up Is Hard

Jan 10

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Faith | No Comments

As a learned laywer once told me: Divorce is simple; the property settlement is hard. The Episcopalians seems to be learning that truth nowas the jockying for property ownership is starting to turn ugly.

I’ll offer just one bit of advice for those who are leaving the ECUSA for its abandonment of biblical teaching: The church is not the building the congregation meets in, the church is the congregation (and in a larger sense, all of us Christians). New buildings can easily be built by vital congregations; moribund congregations can’t support oversized buildings and a mostly empty building provides mute testimony for those who have ears for such things.

I understand the desire to continue to worship and fellowship in the same place you always have, but what is the witness that you stood firmer on the property than the teaching? If it comes to it, let the building be a millstone around the ECUSAs neck. What is the market for old church buildings? What will the witness be if the ECUSA keeps you out but sells the property either to another congregation or to a developer? If you really want it badly enough, you might be able to buy it back from the ECUSA rump in a couple of years. A few years of exile in the desert might even do your congregation some good as it helps you focus on Jesus and not the distractions of this world.

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The iPhones Are Here, The iPhones Are Here!

Jan 9

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

A lot of people make bold claims but few can back them up, but when Steve Jobs talks, people listen:

“Well, today, we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class,” said Jobs. “The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. The third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.””These are not three separate devices,” said Jobs. “This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone. Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”

No not everything turns out like the iPod (just don’t mention “Brain in a Beaker” or Newton to Steve), but Steve and Apple have been on a roll lately. I haven’t even seen the thing, and I want one. Of course, I’ve already drunk the Kool Aid, so what else would you expect?

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Keeping The Immune System On The Right Track

Jan 9

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

How’s this for a mystery: You have more bacteria living in your small intestine than cells in your body, and your immune system does nothing:

For years, scientists have wondered whether the same mechanism is at work in tissues that come in regular contact with bacteria and other microbial organisms. The small intestine, for example, which absorbs essential nutrients from food and drink and protects the body from invasive microbes, is literally teeming with bacteria, which help break down waste. The presence of so many bacteria is a potential trigger for an immune system response. Why do T cells almost always ignore the small intestine, leaving this vital tissue unharmed?

No, the butler doesn’t do it.

Normally, dendridic cells by displaying antigens teach the immune system what not to attack. But not in the small intestine. Instead, stromal cells in the lymph node do it. Why should you care? Scientist wonder if this method to keep healthy tissue from being attacked by the immune system can’t be used in autoimmune diseases such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

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Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?

Jan 9

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

I admit it – I love Scooby-Doo. Not the later, lamer cartoons, but the original. So I report with sadness that his creator, Iwao Takamoto, has died.

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Lawyers: Another Hazard of Research

Jan 8

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

Here’s another entry in why I think our current judicial system sucks: Fast-multiplying lawsuits can stymie medical science. Actually, I was surprised by one reason why:

The lead author, Brad A. Racette, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, writes from personal experience: His studies tentatively linking welding to increased risk of Parkinson’s disease resulted in a torrent of subpoenas for research data. Responding to them slows or stops his follow-up research.”Participation in the legal system can be a huge burden on a researcher’s schedule,” Racette says. “There comes a point where a scientist needs the right to be able to say, testifying in court is not what I’m supposed to be doing, I’m supposed to be studying disease.”

And the authors are grown up to realize conflicts of interest cut both ways (i.e. both plaintiffs and defendants):

The authors note that the substantial financial interests at stake in lawsuits often leads to biased research by well-paid expert witnesses. They cite the example of a Texas doctor found to be overdiagnosing a disease known as silicosis. The doctor had a financial interest in the number of patients diagnosed.Peer review is of course a part of the regular scientific process, Racette notes, but a knowledgeable expert can design a study with a predetermined goal of discrediting earlier studies that linked a suspected toxin to a disease.

Industries on the defensive have also attempted to impugn the credibility of researchers. As an example, the authors cite the case of Herbert Needleman, M.D., professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh and the first scientist to link lead exposure to low IQ levels in children. The lead industry attacked Needleman’s integrity, alleging academic fraud and triggering investigations by the Federal Scientific Integrity Board and his university. The investigations failed to find any evidence of academic fraud, and Needleman’s results were later replicated, leading to beneficial changes such as the removal of lead from gasoline.

Slow, capricious, expensive, and fails to deliver justice is how I would describe our system, and on both the civil and criminal sides of the house. This is just one more example.

Full Disclosure: While I haven’t met them, both authors are on staff at St. Louis Children’s Hospital where my daughter has had two visits and of which I have the highest opinion.

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Stupid Headline

Jan 8

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

Here’s a stupid headline:

Mental Health Risks Vary Within the U.S. Black Population

Is that a surprise? Would we ever read “Mental Health Risks Vary Within the U.S. White Population”?, or “Mental Health Risks Vary Within the U.S. Population”? Are black people some sort of homogeneous entity where no variation is expected?

This was another shocking line from the report: “He believes clinicians need to look beyond crude categories of race in order to learn more about the backgrounds of their clients in order to better treat them.” That’s your tax dollars at work, funding Captain Obvious.

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Obesity Has Replaced Starvation

Jan 8

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

I admit it’s an odd sort of good news: Obeseity has replaced starvation as the main problem with world food supply. As a onetime Guidance and Controls guy (GPS isn’t guidance, its Nav!) I hope it’s just overshoot until we settle into a proper caloric balance:

One of the most surprising news items of 2006, at least to me, was the announcement that there are now more overweight people in the world than hungry ones.Say what? It was not that long ago that all the experts were predicting that our skyrocketing human population would soon outstrip its food supply, leading directly to mass famine. By now millions were supposed to be perishing from hunger every year. It was the old doom-and-gloom Malthusian mathematics at work: population shoots up geometrically while food production lags. It makes eminent sense. I grew up with Malthus’s ideas brought up-to-date in apocalyptic books like The Population Bomb.

Who defused the bomb? Instead of mass starvation, we seem to be awash in food. And it’s not just the United States. Obesity is on the increase in Mexico. Fat-related diabetes is becoming epidemic in India. My parents used to tell me when I didn’t eat my dinner to think about the hungry children in China. Today one in five people in China is overweight, 60 million are obese, and the rate of overweight children has increased 28-fold since 1985. Everywhere you look, from Buffalo to Beijing, it’s ballooning bellies.

Needless to say, reality hasn’t caught up to everyone just yet, but with world population set to peak around 2050, the looming problem is aging/shriking populations (yes Virginia, evenChina) and how will countries deal with that?

Hat tip to TinkertyTonk

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A Night At The Museum

Jan 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Movies | No Comments

Some of the Murphy Family saw Night At The Museum and were very pleasantly surprised. At least I was, as I didn’t expect, but it was funny and enjoyable and a good popcorn movie. Yes, it is stupid, but entertainingly so, not annoyingly so. I guess I don’t mind preposterous history in an unserious film (or at least a film that doesn’t take itself seriously). And it’s a treat to see Dick Van Dyke (I thought he was dead!) again, and to see him dance at his age in the final credits was worth whatever my wife paid. This is only the second movie Owen Wilson didn’t set my teeth on edge — so they must have done something right (like given him a supporting role).

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Kerry Snubs Troops

Jan 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in National Politics | No Comments

In the lastest example of a Seinfeld scandal (the length of a Seinfeld scandal is directly proportional to the strength of its vacuum, which is why 3 years later the saga of the plastic turkey continues) it’s official – John Kerry wasn’t snubbed by soldiers in Iraq, he snubbed them. For a pair of reporters.

Let’s give three cheers (or if Brother Byrd is reading, two Hallelujahs and an Amen) for the political acumen ofJohn ‘Malpractice’ Kerry. Maybe somebody should give his staff T-shirts that read “Kerry went all the way to Iraq for a photo op with the troops and all he did was talk to a lousy pair of reporters”.

You’ve got to know you’re base. If you’re John Kerry, who’s more important, a whole bunch of ignoramuses who blew their schooling and wound up in Iraq, or a couple of reporters for the New York Times? Kind of a no-brainer, isn’t it?

Bryan Preston actually apologizes for calling Kerry “lonely” – which rates two Hallelujahs! and and an Amen! for Brother Preston from this corner at any rate. Although I will note that since loneliness is an emotional state it can’t be determined from a photograph – you can be lonely sitting at a table full of people (remember the start of Freshman year anyone?) and whatever the opposite of lonely is sitting all by yourself.

Flap apologizes an a more Kerryesque style.

Just to get out ahead on big John, here’s the next Kerry scandal of Sienfelding proportions.

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585 Billion Dollars

Jan 4

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Economics | No Comments

Yikes! Does our state and federal governments spend 585 Billion dollars a year on means tested anti-poverty programs?

Moby seems to think that’s how much we spent on Iraq up until 2006.

Robert Waste thinks thats how much we spend on our permanent urban crises of high levels of poverty, hunger, homelessness, crime, and low levels of funding for mass transit, infrastructure needs, and education.

Or is that how much money social security taxes will bring in in 2014 in 1997 dollars (doesn’t that accounting just make your head swim).

How about the total value of service exports world-wide in 1981 (I assume in 1981 dollars).

Or even the total value of Chinese exports in 2004.

OK, this was sparked by a Bizzy Blog post that used the 585 billion dollar number while noting that it was unconfirmed to determine:

If there are 40 million people living in poverty in the US (that would be 13.3% of the population, slightly higher than the current official rate), that would mean we are spending $14,625 on EVERY man, woman, and child living in poverty. A married family of four in poverty could live very nicely on over $58,500 tax-free dollars a year, as could a single parent with two kids on almost $44,000; but of course, the money and the value of the services isn’t getting to them.

Well, I didn’t a little searching (as you can hopefully tell) and back in 2001 Mr. Rector of the Heritage Foundationtestified before congress that offical figures showed that in 2000 the feds and the states spent 438 billion dollars in welfare and projected the sum to rise to 626 billion dollars — or you can check out the Heritage Report. I couldn’t confirm the 585 figure for 2006, but it sure looks to be in the ballpark.

If we aren’t talking about dollars, LG Electronics made a net profit o 585 billion KRW in 2004

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