Personal Pronouns and Revelation

We do not believe God has accommodated himself and his word to (as evangelical feminists see it) sinful patriarchalism, so that the “truth” of God’s word must be separated from the “sin” of patriarchy. According to this view, the biblical message is no longer sufficient but has been corrupted by a fallen aspect of the ancient biblical language and culture…

Because the Bible is God’s own chosen self-revelation, we must take seriously the language God chose to use to communicate to us what he is like. This revelation, by God’s choice, includes all the masculine God-language of the Bible, and therefore it cannot be dismissed as merely the by-product of a patriarchal cultural. To dismiss the masculine language for God in the Bible is to dismiss how God has spoken of himself, and this is a serious matter…

More… (source)

 

Four Months…

Well, it’s been four months since I’ve had time to write anything much. I have a little bit of time today, since I have the day off, but I’ll still be busy. I wish that I had some more time to write, but most of the time that I would have had available is now being taken up with writing minutes and such, since I took on the task of being the clerk to council at our church. It’s not too difficult of a position, but it does take away from some of your time – especially if you are the type of person who is picky on details as I tend to be, and not so much a natural writer.

On other fronts, my daughter Niamh is in Jr. Kindergarten now. She goes twice a week and is enjoying it. William is in Grade 1 now, and he seems to like it as well. He doesn’t seem to mind going every day of the week, and he seems to be flourishing this year. We bought him a bunch of “Bob Books” and he really enjoys reading them, so his reading skills are rapidly improving. He also pays much better attention when we do devotions at supper time and can usually repeat most of the details of the Bible stories that we read.

Alana just had her birthday yesterday, so I bought her “Corner Gas: Season 004″, and went out to get her ice cream from the Marble Slab Creamery. On Sunday we will celebrate her birthday with my parents, brothers and sisters in law after church.

Anyway, I should probably get to writing the minutes of last Tuesday’s meeting, as well as notes on the home visit on Monday…

 

Some Air Conditioning Calculations

Since we’ve been looking at air conditioning lately…

Watts = BTU / EER
Amps = Watts / Volts
Volts = Watts / Amps

The Voltage will normally be 230 if the Watts are higher than 1000 (generally units higher than 10000 BTU), otherwise 110. For amperage calculations, the rated value seems to use either 100 or 110 Volts for 110 Volt units and 225 Volts for 230 Volt units.

To calculate the cost of running, calculate the total kW h and multiply by the rate.
For example:

6 hours/day * 30 days * 950 Watts = 171,000 W h = 171 kW h
171 kW h * 0.10 $/kW h = $17.10

(BTU = British Thermal Units)
(EER = Energy Efficiency Ratio)

 

Why Are Parents So Unhappy? – Albert Mohler

… Trust me on this — you really do not need to read through those academic research papers. Here is a summary: The ‘scholarly consensus’ is that children and parental happiness just do not go together. According to the data, parents are less happy than non-parents, parents of infants and toddlers are especially not happy, single parents are less happy than married parents, and mothers are less happy than fathers. Except, that is, when it comes to single fathers, who are the most unhappy of all…

Christians must see children as gifts from God, not as projects. We should see marriage and parenthood as a stewardship and privilege, not as a mere lifestyle choice. We must resist the cultural seductions and raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and understand family life as a crucible for holiness, not an experiment in happiness…

And when it comes to happiness, we must aim for something higher. Christians are called to joy and satisfaction in Christ, and to find joy in the duties and privileges of this earthly life. Every parent will know moments of honest unhappiness, but the Christian parent settles for nothing less than joy…

More… (source)

 

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I know it’s been a month now, but it seems I hadn’t posted the preview trailer yet:

Also note that the official website has been up for a while as well. It includes a flash map game that they are adding to as time goes on.

 

The language of RNA decoded – PhysOrg

The central dogma of molecular biology, as proposed in 1970 by Francis Crick and James Watson, holds that genetic information is transferred from DNA to functional proteins by way of messenger RNA (mRNA). This suggests that mRNA has but a single role, that being to encode for proteins.

Now, a cancer genetics team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) suggests there is much more to RNA than meets the eye.

In a study appearing in the June 24, 2010 issue of Nature, the authors describe a new regulatory role for RNA — independent of their protein-coding function – that relies on their ability to communicate with one another. Of potentially even greater significance, because this new function also holds true for thousands of noncoding RNAs, the discovery dramatically increases the known pool of functional genetic information…

“Because this new function does not depend on the blueprint that RNAs harbor in their protein-encoding nucleotide sequence, the discovery additionally holds true for the thousands of noncoding RNA molecules in the cell,” explains senior author Pier Paolo Pandolfi, MD, PhD, Director of Research at the BIDMC Cancer Center and George C. Reisman Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.”This means that not only have we discovered a new language for mRNA, but we have also translated the previously unknown language of up to 17,000 pseudogenes and at least 10,000 long non-coding (lnc) RNAs. Consequently, we now know the function of an estimated 30,000 new entities, offering a novel dimension by which cellular and tumor biology can be regulated, and effectively doubling the size of the functional genome.”…

More… (source)

 

Hup Holland Hup!

I’ve been enjoying the World Cup so far. The next game for the Netherlands is Friday against Brazil. It should be fun to watch – even though Brazil are the favorites.

“Hup Holland hup
Laat de leeuw niet in z’n hempie staan
Hup Holland hup
Trek het beessie geen pantoffels aan
Hup Holland hup
Laat je uit ‘t veld niet slaan
Want de leeuw op voetbalschoenen
Durft de hele wereld aan”

 

Swimming, Bikes, Baseball, and School

A fairly quick update of the last couple of weeks.

On Saturday, William and Niamh finished off their swimming lessons for the season. On her third try Niamh finally passed her course, and William passed his as well. Niamh will start her next lessons in the summer, but William will be playing baseball instead.

Also on Saturday, Alana went to a community garage sale and picked up a bike for Niamh. We have a few kids bikes, but Niamh is still too small for them, so Alana found a 12-inch rimmed bike for her to learn on. So after brining the kids back from swimming lessons, I installed the training wheels on Niamh’s new bike and helped her learn how to ride.

 

A New Season and Colds/Flu

Well, the new baseball season has arrived, so I’ll do a quick summary of the first few games. I’m on my brother Doug’s team this year, and it looks to be a fun year, despite the start. We lost our first two games, first against Matt’s team by two runs, then by another team by about 8 runs, or so. Last night we played our third game and earned our first victory by a score of 31-10. Hitting-wise, I’ve started out okay, with nine singles, two doubles, and one triple in 17 at bats, so it’s a .706 average and .941 slugging pct. Fielding has been okay, but could be better. In the first game I played second base for one inning and all I can say is that I’m back in the outfield now. William will be playing T-ball this year again, but that won’t start for a few weeks. It will be fun to watch him again.

Alana and I have both been under the weather a bit for the past couple of weeks or so. Headaches, and sinus infections seem to be generally what is bothering us. I have been feeling a bit better the past two days, though, so I’m thankful for that. William missed two days of school last week due to a flu. He was throwing up quite a bit, so Alana had him on Thursday and I worked from home on Friday so I could take my turn. Niamh started complaining of a headache in the middle of the service on Sunday morning, and she had a high fever, so Alana took her home and she stayed in bed all day. She decided to throw up as well, once on me (which is fairly easy to clean up at least). Yesterday she wasn’t feeling to well when she woke up, but seemed to get better quickly after that. She seems to be doing pretty well right now.

So there’s a little update on some stuff. I haven’t had much time to write much else, but other than that, the kids are finishing their swimming lessons up this week, and we finally got off dialup (we cancelled our satellite TV service as well, since we don’t watch much anyway, and would prefer watching what we can better screen on DVD anyway).

 

Is Creationism an “absolutely horrible hypothesis”?

National Geographic recently published an article on a statistical study by biochemist Douglas Theobald, which attempts to give proof of universal common descent by looking at the odds of producing certain identical genes in all species given the starting positions of universal common descent, multiple ancestry, and creationism. National geographic titles it’s article, “All Species Evolved From Single Cell, Study Finds: Creationism called ‘absolutely horrible hypothesis’—statistically speaking.” The study quotes the odds of Creationism being correct as 1 in 10 to the 6,000th power.

Answers in Genesis has a rather succinct response:

The argument against multiple, unique origins of different life-forms, as stated by National Geographic News, is that “[i]f life arose from multiple species—each with a different set of proteins—many more mutations would have been required” and that “it’s highly unlikely that the protein groups would have independently evolved into such similar DNA sequences.” However, those claims obviously presuppose an evolutionary perspective—i.e., that similarity but separate origin could have only occurred via chance processes…

The obvious flaw with Theobald’s conclusions, as we pointed out, is that he assumes protein similarity must have come about either by common ancestry or by the process of evolutionary convergence. Creationists adopt neither view, however, because there is a better view available: common design. Even amid the chasm of differences between various organisms, fundamental similarities make sense in light of a single Designer who re-used many of the basic biological mechanisms throughout life.

How difficult it is for natural selection to converge the genomes of multiple species has little to do with whether Creationism is correct or incorrect. Creationists aren’t the ones who are arguing for genomic convergences, Darwinists are. As a software designer, I find it difficult to understand how or why anyone would argue that similar code sequences in different species in any way eliminates the design argument. Most coders use the same classes in multiple projects – it is the intelligent thing to do. To assume that the Creator of all life must have done otherwise and that any design similarities would need to be due to evolutionary convergence is itself an “absolutely horrible hypothesis”.