Morning Musings

I read this in today's The Daily Humorscope: "You will make the startling discovery that most of the lawyers and judges in your county have been possessed by demons. In fact, they weren't kidding when they said that possession was nine tenths of the law...."

And in this morning's e-mail I got the following: "Hey - some polygamist mentioned that the world will come to an end today [April 6th]. Just in case, it was good knowing you. So long and thanks for all the fish."

As mentioned in the article above, yesterday marked the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which is not the same church as the group with the compound in Texas, let's just make that abundantly clear). Given that the Church started out with six members in 1830 and had a total of 12,275,822 members at the end of 2004, and using the standard exponential growth equation P = P₀×e^rt, the Church has experienced an average growth in membership of approximately 8.3% per year over the past 175 years. For the curious, you can find an explanation of this process at EcoFuture.org.

I also read today that the FDA has asked Pfizer to take its painkiller Bextra off the market due to concerns that it could increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. For the curious, here's something to consider: all drugs have side effects. All of them. The fact is, we just don't know enough about the chemistry of the body to produce drugs that will alleviate symptoms without having other effects. Remember that the next time you need to take an Advil.

And now, we return you to the rest of your day.