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…

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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…

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)

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…

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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.

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.”…

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“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”

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.

Since I had to set up sound for church that day, we decided to have her and William come with me on their bikes while I taught Niamh. It’s about 1 km from our house to the church, so it gave her plenty of time to learn. On the way there, I held both of her handle bars and basically pushed her to the church while she learned how to maneuver the pedals properly to move forward. Since turning the pedals backwards stops the bike, it was a bit of a jolted experience, but she started getting better towards the end.

On the way back, I started out the same way as on the way to church, but then I took one hand off the left handle bar and pushed her with my hand on her back. She didn’t like that at first, but she was peddling quite a bit better and she didn’t mind after a bit. Then I took my hand off the right handle bar and told her to steer. She definitely didn’t like that at first, but when she got the hang of steering, she didn’t mind anymore. A little while later, I took my hand off her back. Again, resistance at first, but not long after when I put my hand on her back again, she got angry at me because she wanted to do it herself.

Needless to say, the ride back was a lot easier than the ride on the way to church was. Every once in a while I had to push her a little bit to get her started again when she got stuck, but for the most part she was able to peddle by herself. In the past few days she’s been able to go pretty well by herself. Now she just needs to learn to keep her toes pointed forward so that she can get a bit more power, but she’s progressing very well.

As for baseball, we had two more games since the last update – and we’ve had two more wins. One of our players is out for the season (or for a while, at least) after breaking his knee in two places and tearing some ligaments in his leg a couple of games ago. He was going for a pop-up and twisted and fell on his leg fairly awkwardly early on in the game (exactly how it happened, I’m not sure). My brother says he heard a pop, and the player had to be carried to the bench. He’s hoping to be able to come out to at least watch some of the games in a couple of weeks, and he sounds like he’s been able to take it well, so that much is good, at least.

Other than that, Niamh is very excited to be going to school for her first time today. She’s doing a test day before she starts Jr. Kindergarten in the Fall. Right now she’s probably just about ready to come back home. Hopefully she had a lot of fun.

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).

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”.

The new code is called the Splicing Code.  It lives embedded within the DNA.  It directs the primary genetic code, in very complex but now predictable ways, how and when to assemble genes and regulatory elements.  Cracking this code-within-a-code is helping elucidate several long-standing mysteries about genetics that emerged from the Human Genome Project: Why are there only 20,000 genes for an organism as complex as a human being? (Scientists had expected far more.)  Why are genes broken up into segments (called exons), separated by non-coding elements (called introns), and then spliced together after transcription?  And why are genes turned on in some cells and tissues, but not in others?  For two decades molecular biologists have been trying to figure out the mechanisms of genetic regulation.  This important paper represents a milestone in understanding what goes on.  It doesn’t answer all the questions, but it shows that an inner code exists – a communication system that can be deciphered so clearly, that the scientists could predict what the genome would do in certain situations with uncanny accuracy.

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And these are delicate manuscripts, to be treated with care, without causing them damage of any kind. A great undertaking for the benefit of culture and in particular for the preservation and conservation of the patrimony entrusted to the Apostolic Library, in the tradition of a cultural service that the Holy See continues to express and develop through the centuries, adapting its commitment and energy to the possibilities offered by new technologies.

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A recent high-profile article in the journal Nature released the results of a study with implications that shocked the scientific community because they contradict long-held claims of human-chimp DNA similarity. A previous Acts & Facts article showed that much of the research surrounding the often touted claims of 98 percent (or higher) DNA similarity between chimps and humans has been based on flawed and biased research. The problem is that the similarity has been uncertain because no one has performed an unbiased and comprehensive DNA similarity study until now. And the results are not good news for the story of human evolution…

In the 2005 chimpanzee genome project and resulting Nature journal publication, the sequence contigs were not assembled and oriented based on a map of the chimpanzee genome, but rather on a map of the human genome. Given the fact that the chimpanzee genome is at least 10 percent larger overall than the human genome, this method of assembly was not only biased toward an evolutionary presupposition of human-chimp similarity, but was also inherently flawed…

Not only were the locations of DNA categories completely different between human and chimp, but so were their proportions. One sequence class, or category containing DNA with a characteristic sequence, within the chimpanzee Y chromosome had less than 10 percent similarity with the same class in the human Y chromosome, and vice versa. Another large class shared only half the similarities of the other species, and vice versa. One differed by as much as 3.3-fold (330 percent), and a class specific to human “has no counterpart in the chimpanzee MSY [male-specific Y chromosome].”

As far as looking at specific genes, the chimp and human Y chromosomes had a dramatic difference in gene content of 53 percent. In other words, the chimp was lacking approximately half of the genes found on a human Y chromosome. Because genes occur in families or similarity categories, the researchers also sought to determine if there was any difference in actual gene categories. They found a shocking 33 percent difference. The human Y chromosome contains a third more gene categories–entirely different classes of genes–compared to chimps…

Because virtually every structural aspect of the human and chimp Y chromosomes was different, it was hard to arrive at an overall similarity estimate between the two. The researchers did postulate an overall 70 percent similarity, which did not take into account size differences or structural arrangement differences. This was done by concluding that only 70 percent of the chimp sequence could be aligned with the human sequence–not taking into account differences within the alignments.

In other words, 70 percent was a conservative estimate, especially when considering that 50 percent of the human genes were missing from the chimp, and that the regions that did have some similarity were located in completely different patterns. When all aspects of non-similarity–sequence categories, genes, gene families, and gene position–are taken into account, it is safe to say that the overall similarity was lower than 70 percent. The Nature article expressed the discrepancy between this data and standard evolutionary interpretations in a rather intriguing way: ” Indeed, at 6 million years of separation, the difference in MSY gene content in chimpanzee and human is more comparable to the difference in autosomal gene content in chicken and human, at 310 million years of separation.”…

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I must admit that I probably spent too much time watching the Winter Olympics. They aren’t all that important, but they are fun to watch. Canada took in a record (for the Winter Olympics) 14 gold medals, including the Men’s and Women’s hockey gold. This was a nice change from earning no gold medals in the previous two Olympics held here. The United States also did well, earning a record (for the Winter Olympics) 37 medals total. The ski cross and snowboard cross events were pretty interesting to watch and the hockey matches (particularly in the Men’s tournament – the Women’s matches were mostly blowouts) were great to watch as well.

Near the end of the Olympics, Alana and I went 5-pin bowling with William and Niamh at an event for Alana’s work. The men’s curling final was on while we played. It was the first time bowling for both of the kids, so they had to get used to it a bit. Niamh is still pretty small, so her balls took quite a while to reach the pins. A couple of times we had to throw another ball to get it moving again. The rails were up, so there were no gutter-balls. William did a bit better, and ended up with a decent score. Alana and I didn’t have our best games – we haven’t played in quite a while – but I think Alana must have beat me in the end. The kids didn’t care what the score was, though, and they seemed to enjoy it. We ran out of time in the end, so we couldn’t finish our game (we had to finish a game of BINGO before we could move on to the full game and that took us a while), but we all had a good time anyway.

Two weekends ago, the snow was quite easy to pack, so William, Niamh and I built a snowman with the snowman kit that one of the members of our congregation gave to Niamh as a gift a little while ago. The snow packed into balls very well, but it was quite heavy. I must have forgotten how heavy snow got when we used to build snowmen and such before, or maybe it’s just that we used to work as a team to lift, but these things were heavy. The first ball was large, but it didn’t require any lifting. The second ball must have weighed around 100 lbs, so I couldn’t lift it very easily by myself. I had to go to the back, grab a log, roll the ball onto the log, and then get my legs right under to lift it onto the base snowball. I succeeded in the end, but it was a lot harder than I had thought it would be. The head was smaller, so it wasn’t quite as much of a challenge. Here are a couple of pictures:

William and Niamh Standing with the Snowman

William and Niamh Sitting with the Snowman

Last weekend we took William and Niamh swimming to teach Niamh how to jump into the pool. After two times failing her swimming course, I figured I’d help her learn the part she was having the most difficulty with. She was apprehensive the first few times jumping in, but she ended up enjoying it and would jump 3-4 feet to me at the end. We must have spent almost an hour just having her jump in (I would have been happy to stop after the first 15 minutes or so, but she wanted to go on. William jumped in himself and played with his cousins who were also there while Niamh was jumping, but I got to play with him as well for a while too.  He was more interesting in playing catch with some rings and swimming the length of the pool with a life-jacket on. We all had a lot of fun at the pool, so we’ll have to go again sometime.

The Ending:

Kathy Keller: “I’m glad the final interaction between Aslan and Lucy was there in its unadulterated entirety, because I consider that the pinnacle of the entire seven books.”

I have spoken with Tirian, and he confirmed that the line “there I have another name” is in the film! This is something NarniaWebbers have been concerned about for some time. Rejoice!

The Undragoning:

Keller says she learned that writers originally wanted Eustace, still in dragon form, to fight a sea monster and “earn” his return to human form. But she says Flaherty, a committed Christian, “put them straight that you don’t earn grace, you receive it once you are humbled and aware of your need.”

Tirian also confirmed that, in the film, we will see Aslan ripping the dragon skin off of Eustace!…

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