A recent study indicates that the popularity of Usama bin Laden and al-Qa`eda is down sharply in Muslim-majority societies.
How sharply?
GET THE STORY.
SDG IN DC #1: The Great Elevator Escape
SDG here (not Jimmy) with a follow-up to the SDG Mystery Photo post.
As many readers correctly guessed/stated, the picture shows the Greydanus family standing in the White House Rose Garden, on the West Wing side.
Some readers may remember my mentioning in a combox awhile back that Suz and I are sort of related to someone who works on the President’s staff. A few months back we took off for a week for a four-day trip to DC, and we got a super-cool White House tour that included the West Wing.
I hope to post something on the White House visit next week — though it wasn’t the best story to come out of our DC trip, and that’s what this post is about.
I think I can safely say that what our four older kids will probably most remember of our DC trip is our dramatic escape from a stalled elevator at the Smithsonian Institution Air & Space Museum, which involved an access panel in the roof of the elevator, two ladders, and a climb through the elevator shaft.
Here’s how it happened. (Note: Photos below the fold! Click to see larger version!)
All The Action Is In The Back
If you listen to certain airline officials, they’ll tell you that that there is no particular seat on a modern air liner that is safer than another.
They’re making that up.
In reality, the seats toward the back of an air liner are safer than those at the front.
Keep that in mind the next time you travel by air . . . or just the next time you watch Lost.
I’ve got a number of airline journeys lined up the next few months.
I’ll be sitting in the back.
As every good Catholic knows, it’s where the action is.
GET THE STORY.
Remembering 9/11
The following is an e-mail I got today from Suzanne Greydanus (who gave me permission to post it and said it was okay to use her name, though I offered to omit it). Her brother, David, died earlier this year of sudden-onset leukemia and at a very young age. In the wake of 9/11 there was a lot of concern about rescue workers breathing in toxic dust from the collapse of the towers, but less attention devoted to the health effects it might have had on others who were there . . . like Suzanne’s brother.
Here’s what she wrote:
My brother was one of the first to get pictures up of the 9/11
attacks — he did it that day. He got about a zillion hits on this
little slide show in the weeks following. I believe that the
leukemia that killed him back in May was a result of him breathing in
the toxic dust that day. So I think about 9/11 in a new way this year.(Also, I look at all these other folks pictured here and I wonder
about their health too.)Suz
Yes, Virginia, You Can Be Denied Communion
Especially if you’re a pro-abort politician or similarly manifestly grave malefactor.
SDG Mystery Photo
SDG here (not Jimmy!), making an almost unheard-of foray from guest-blogging retirement limbo with a quasi-mystery photo.
Where am I and the rest of the Greydanus clan in this picture? (See bigger picture.)
I say it’s a quasi-mystery photo because some of Jimmy’s faithful readers (Esau, I’m talking to you!) may remember my mentioning the occasion of this photo awhile back.
If you know where we are because you remember my mentioning the occasion, don’t spoil it for other guessers right away.
If you know where we are because you recognize the location, post away.
This week I really mean to post on this occasion, and a related episode that’s actually a better story. Stay tuned.
NEWS FLASH: Catholic Church expects faithful to follow her rules!
Actually, with the lead-in that Ed uses for his post, I thought at first he was talking about this story.
In the latter story, the priest who got arrested said he did what he did because he sweats too much otherwise.
Uhh . . . that’s why God created running shorts.
I think there are other issues going on.
Remind Me Never To Fly Nepal Airlines
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)
UK Embryo Horror
You may have seen press stories recently about UK scientists pleading for the use of hybrid human-animal embryos in stem cell research.
Now the British press is reporting that it looks like the plan will be given the go-ahead.
If this were a matter of just splicing a few human genes into a clearly non-human organism, matters would be different, but it appears that the plan involves the creation of an organism that is 99.9% human (see diagram, left).
Basically, they’re talking about eliminating the nuclear genetic information in an animal (most likely cow) cell and shoving in the nucleus of a human cell, then stimulating the result to develop into an embryo.
It’s true that there is non-nuclear genetic material that is found in cells–in organelles besides the nucleus. For example, you may have heard of mitochondrial DNA (DNA found in the mitochondria, which are not part of the nucleus). The process as described would appear to leave that genetic material intact from the animal providing the ovum.
But I’m sorry, this really looks like creating a human being that has a slight admixture of cow genes, not creating a cow that has a slight admixture of human genes.
As a result, one must err on the side of caution and conclude that such embryos are human beings with the right to life and the British government is planning on murdering them or funding their murder.
The stories in the British press cite polling done of people suggesting that the British public favors the use of embryos in trying to find cures for Parkinson’s and Altzheimer’s.
I bet the pollsters didn’t ask, "Are you in favor of research that involves killing something that might be a human being and that in fact has 99.9% human genetic material."
iPhone Adventures #Somethingorother
So how cool is this?
Saturday night I’m on my way to square dancing, but I’m going to a place I don’t normally go, and I’m having trouble finding it.
Turns out I want to be at the United Methodist church hall in La Mesa, but I’m headed toward the United Methodist church in Lemon Grove. (Easy to get confused. You just turn left on Spring Street instead of right.)
But I don’t know that at the time!
So I get there and I realize I’m at the wrong place. It’s all dark. So I pull over and pull out my iPhone and start Googling where I’m supposed to be.
I find a web page for the (round dance) club that normally dances at the Lemon Grove church, and it has a contact name and phone number for a member of the club.
NOW HERE COMES THE COOL PART!
I notice that the contact person’s phone number is hyperlinked in the browser window, so I tap the hyperlink to see what happens (tapping is the equivalent of clicking a hyperlink on the iPhone’s touchscreen).
A dialog box pops up and asks me if I want to call the number I just tapped.
I tap "Yes" (or whatever), and a couple of seconds later I’m talking to a member of the Lemon Grove club, who explains where I really want to be, and I’m on my way. (Back to Spring Street; turn right this time.)
So how cool is that?
The phone number was not specially coded with html. It was the phone that recognized it as a phone number on a web page and gave me corresponding tap-to-call functionality.
WOO-HOO!