Not all medical tests save lives.  Recently one of the free newspapers spread the news that over 80% of babies in Switzerland diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted.  (A bit of checking shows that’s correct and perhaps even an underestimate.)  They also reported parents of downies who didn’t abort them getting dirty looks or even comments saying, “Why did you bring that one into the world?”

The papers followed that up with write-in reactions of its readers.  I don’t think a single one of them was in favor of aborting downies.  Now, I’m sure it wasn’t a representative sampling, because 20% of Swiss mothers don’t have Down syndrome kids, but what happens between the writing of the rather harsh condemnation of those who abort downies and the 80% abortion rate?  Or is the write-in reaction so self-selective that those who don’t mind aborting a baby that might be handicapped also don’t really care about the topic?

I find the report particularly poignant in light of a recently released movie.  It’s about the life of a Spanish Down syndrome patient who graduated university and works as a school teacher.

And finally, it confirms me in our decision to limit prenatal diagnostics as much as possible.

As Sursumcorda already mentioned, Steph Shaw is raising funds to record a music album.  She’s doing that via Kickstarter, in order to keep her artistic freedom.  You can support Steph Shaw here.

You may argue that of course I’d support her, because she’s my cousin.  You’d have a point.  You’re probably not her cousin, so I suggest you see if you want to support her on the strength of her previous work on Steph Shaw’s homepage.

So, apparently BP is almost done plugging that hole, and the oil’s done spurting into the gulf.  According to government estimates, nearly 207 million gallons leaked from the well in total.

Although it’s not as bad as trying to understand the big numbers in astronomy or the US federal deficit, 207 million gallons is an awfully large number and beyond our imagination.  Converting it into cubic meters doesn’t really help: the number is still 783’580.  Converting it into olympic size swimming pools is a bit better – the spill would fill over 300 – but still not really conducive to our imagination.  It’s equivalent to a tanker train of 150 to 200 kilometers in length – from Basel to Zurich and back.  It’s equivalent to filling the White House about 50 times.  It’s equivalent to filling nearly a third of the Great Pyramid of Giza, filling the pyramid to the height of five stories.

So, it’s a lot.  But on the flip side, guess how long that amount would last in Switzerland?

17 days.

I’ve posted an oversized album with nearly 250 pictures of baby expressions and bundled-up cuteness at salemsattic.  Watch Joseph chubbify over the weeks – days, even – and become a bit more alert.  There are also more pictures of Janet holding him this time, the two pictures we submitted for his passport, and a baby picture each of Janet and me.  You’ll need a login: it’s a popular TV series about six adults in an apartment and the instrument Janet got her degree in. Capitalize the first letters. Write me if you can’t figure it out.

These are from “The Eighth Day,” which I am still reading, and which I note here so I don’t simply forget them.  I don’t know if I agree; I do know they merit a little more thought.

About John Ashley:

Men [and women] of faith […] are not afraid; they are not self-regarding; they are constantly nourished by astonishment and wonder at life itself.  They are not interesting.  They lack those traits – our bosom companions – that so strongly engage our interest: aggression, the dominating will, envy, destructiveness and self-destructiveness.  […]  They have little sense of humor, which draws so heavily on a consciousness of superiority and on an aloofness from the predicaments of others.  In general they are inarticulate, especially in matters of faith.  […]  They are slow to give words to the object of their faith.  To them it is self-evident and the self-evident is not easily described.  But men and women without faith, they are articulate.  They are constantly and loudly expatiating on it: it is ‘faith in life’, in the ‘meaning of life’, in God, in progress, in humanity – all those whipped words, those twisted signposts, that borrowed finery, all that traitor’s eloquence.

I can’t entirely agree with him – after all, if all men of faith are not interesting, and John Ashley is such a man, I should not be fascinated by John Ashley’s story.

A bit more on faith:

There is no creation without faith and hope.  There is no faith and hope that does not express itself in creation.  These men and women work.  The spectacle that most discourages them is not error or ignorance or cruelty, but sloth.  This work that they do may often seem to be all but imperceptible.  That is characteristic of activity that never for a moment envisages an audience.

John Ashley speaking to his horse:

“Evangeline, I’m a family man.  That’s all.  I have no talents.  I’m not even an engineer [which he was by profession].  All I have to show, living and dying, is that I’m a family man.”

Well, that’s enough for now.  The quotes are on pages 98-100 and 106-107 in the UK Penguin paperback dated 1969, at the outset of chapter 2.

I was using Firefox 3.5.x – don’t remember the version – and at one point noticed Google Street View didn’t work correctly.  I was able to drag the orange figure onto the map, and then there it would stand, like a human traffic cone, and nothing happened.  No photos.

So I first installed 3.6.6, figuring there was a problem with Firefox that had been fixed in a more recent version.  No success.

Then I googled “street view doesn’t work in firefox” and found this site.  They suggested upgrading my flash player, which I did.  The installation completed 100%, but no success with Street View.Out of ideas, I switched to IE and tried Street View.  It told me that the flash player was outdated and needed an update, so I upgraded here, too.  And ta-dah, it worked!

So, back to Firefox: I went to the Flash download page again and found instructions for downloading and installing with Firefox.  I added www.adobe.com to the list of sites that are allowed to install add-ons (Tools/Options/Security) and for good measure to the list of sites that are allowed to generate Popups (Tools/Options/Applications).  The installation looked a bit different, but it displayed the same message of a successful installation and again did nothing to fix Street View.

Aha, I thought, I bet it’s my Flashblock.  I disabled it, restarted Firefox, and ta-dah, Street View works!  I don’t know who (Google, Adobe, Mozilla, or the Flashblock programmers) is to blame, but Flashblock 1.5.13 seems not to work right with the current Street View and Firefox and Flash 10.1.

So, although I liked it (especially for youtube playback control), I’m turning Flashblock off for now, but if I find I don’t use Street View enough, and the instant playback on youtube bugs me enough, I’ll turn it back on.  I wish they’d fix this situation, though, so that for Street View I’d get the same “play” symbol Flashblock usually displays.

I’ve changed Aubrey’s blog since with her new adventure in Lima she has started to blog at a new address, and I’ve added Pascal Campion’s blog because I’ve found his artwork consistently delightful and got tired of having to click through to several blogs before getting to his.  I don’t know him, I just find his pictures profoundly pleasurable.

It was 2003, the brief thunderstorm had shooed nearly everyone away with a rain check in their hand, and we had the rides to ourselves, our idle minds, and our peanuts.  Here are the final products of our many attempts at cool photos.

Ooh, this is a scary ride!

Ho hum.

The world doesn’t need to see these photos, but Dom, Raph, and I do.

An off-blog discussion made me look a little more closely at the three (or, depending on where you come from, five) solas of reformed theology: sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura.  I found an interesting summary of the original reformatory movements and their different stances on several topics at the University of Münster and am taking the liberty to translate and summarize their tables here.  If you want to see where you fall, note your stances, and then check which Reformer you side with!

I’ll always first post the title in bold and then a couple stances denoted with letters.
1. Understanding of Revelation: How does God reveal himself to us and how, therefore, can we make founded theological arguments?
(A) Revelation comes through the letter of Holy Scripture and the tradited interpretation of the Church.
(B) Revelation comes through the letter of Holy Scripture.
(C) Revelation comes, unmediated, from the Holy Spirit to the individual.

2. Understanding of Communion / Eucharist
(A) In and through the Eucharist the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ (transsubstantiation).
(B) The body and blood of Christ is present in the Eucharist in a real, genuine sense (consubstantiation).
(C) There is no transformation of bread and wine in the Eucharist, but the elements have the strengthening effect of the body and blood of Christ for the believer.
(D) Communion is a mere remembrance.
(E) Communion is a re-enactment of Christ’s passion, and the elements mediators of his Spirit.

3. Understanding of the Church: what is she and how can she be recognized?
(A) The true and visible church is the fellowship of the believers of the church of Rome, guaranteed through the mediation of the priesthood.
(B) There exists the visible church of the baptized and the true but invisible church as the community of all believers.
(C) The church is a corporate fellowship around the Eucharist, as identical to the political community as possible.
(D) The church is a spiritual church of the volunteers and the chosen.

4. Understanding of political powers: How does church government relate to worldly government?
(A) Two Swords: the worldly authority holds a divinely appointed office, but the church authority in the person of the Pope stands above it.
(B) Two Domains (inner conscience and outer force): the worldly authority holds a divinely appointed office, restraining the godless by the sword; this force ends at the individual conscience, which is not under the sway of worldly authority; the believer must passively endure all external misuse of authority.
(C) The spiritual authority lies with the political rulers; the world order must correspond to the gospel; if not, the believers have a right to resist it.
(D) Rejection of all church authority casting off of all worldly ties, rejecting military service, oaths, and taxation; usually together with a readiness to passive suffering but sometimes reverting to active, violent struggle for Christ’s Kingdom to come.

So, where is your reformatory home?

Continue reading →

Digitaldutch already has a pretty good unit converter for mass, but for baby weights it doesn’t satisfy American mother-in-laws who want more than pounds with decimals.  My mother-in-law already has a tourist’s conversion for Celsius and Fahrenheit, which is her most popular page, so I figured a conversion from grams to pounds and ounces for baby weights (and vice versa) might be a useful little thing to publish.

Here’s my google docs spreadsheet to convert grams to pounds and ounces or pounds and ounces to grams – see the preview below.  Click on the link to edit it and make conversions, and please be nice to it.  Thanks!