Sturtian news, II

I hadn't looked in on the Cryogene in the last couple years; let's try again.

Last October they were looking at "ooids", laminated pearls but without the oyster. Each layer has data, like tree-rings (or indeed like pearls I guess). Back then, they were looking at "organic" carbon, the carbon in living tissue; even if it's plankton or paramecial tissue, as one might expect before the Ediacaran from 635 Mya on. They didn't find much. So it wasn't plants locking up the carbon.

Recently other scientists were looking at the climate patterns - at least during the Sturtian patch 720–660 Mya, from Garvellach. Now they know: climate was happening. A lot of that ice melted 660 Mya, so... yeah. Before the next cold snap, which they call Marinoan (650–635 Mya).

The article hints that Garvellach snapshots a mere 3 ky span, in this 60000 ky Sturtian; but... it's something. Maybe they can finetune more exactly when the sample was laid down, like with ooids.

They can say definitively, during the Sturtian at some point anyway, that some water did peep out from time to time, like 15%... of the ocean. The land at the time is assumed also covered in the white stuff (and quite dead), although Antarctican summer vacationers may ponder Dry Valleys.

You can't be pope all the time

Theodor Herzl accused Pius X of this utterance:

Noi non possiamo favorire questo movimento. Non potremo impedire agli ebrei di andare a Gerusalemme, ma non possiamo mai favorirlo. La terra di Gerusalemme se non era sempre santa, è stata santificata per la vita di Jesu Cristo (sic). Io come capo della chiesa non posso dirle altra cosa. Gli Ebrei non hanno riconosciuto nostro Signore, perciò non possiamo riconoscere il popolo ebreo.

An excerpt can also be had here. The Vicar of Christ goes on to promise that if Herzl's crew do show up in Palestine, he'll have priests ready to baptise them. But I don't care about that. If a crew of Tamils propose to show up, the pope should have priests ready to baptise them as well - or he's no pope.

Of more concern is that Giuseppe Sarto here assumes that popoli exist for anyone else but, it seems - for Jews. Joseph was born a Venetian / Dalmatian. He might or might not have accepted Venice's ontological separation from Italia. But I am sure that once crowned Bishop in Roma that this man could understand the difference between an Italian and a Frenchman, or either from a Pole. A successor to Pope Saint Martin should understand that nations exist in the flesh but come together under Christ Jesus. Has Jerusalem no bishop in communion with Martin? Pius' defenders might want to look this up.

Denying that a Jewish people exist, and dismissing them as ebreo... seems Pharaonic.

It may be that Herzl misremembered or misrepresented. If not, it may be that Fr. Sarto had slipped off the cathedra and blurted Venetian words as a mortal Venetian might. I suspect, the latter. But that is a debate for Pius' defenders; or for his Church.

Noam Chumpsky

New Yorkers have called their boy "Donald Chump" since at least the MAD parody of Gremlins 2. He's now getting grumblings of "pdf protector" due to his Jeffrey Epstein / Ghislaine Maxwell canoodling up to 2003, when - they say - Trump kicked him and (I assume) her out of his Florida properties. Now we hear that in 2006, Trump ratted Epstein out.

Well, maybe [h/t Carrier, who unfortunately is also laundering Raskin]. We might fault Trump as "Chump" at least for not noticing until 2003. MAD was generally good in the 1980s-90s; I bought it whenever I saw it on the rack. But. We are here for the Chomsky chumps.

Apparently the 2008 court was so lenient that nobody knew about it until Cernovich got the files unsealed. So claims Valeria Chomsky, on Noam's behalf. The Chomskys were canoodling with the Epstein/Maxwell crew in and after 2015. Chris Hedges gives a f-u to that.

I should point out here that I believe Valeria - inasmuch as that she speaks for Noam. She is the Ghislaine to Noam-as-Jeffery. You don't hang out with a creep for this long unless you are a creep yourself; so I learnt from all the "muh pdf" commenters plaguing X and 4chan.

And boy-oh-boy did Noam ever put out some disgusting content over his too-many years roaming this Earth. Let's float up here, those Khmer Rouge apologetics. Noam always was a weasel too, as when he subsequently denied ever running cover for those maniacs (I got yo' pdf right here).

So maybe let's not pay attention to the Chumpskys at all.

Archaic poetry in a classical time

In Qumran, the Yahad deemed Habakkuk 1-2 only as worthy of tafsirpesher, famously; despite that all traditions, including the Greek, relate three chapters. In 2021, one Joshua Bryan Henson submitted a PhD thesis on all three chapters. He concluded that the same author composed all of it. Excepting the poems in Habakkuk 3 which are ... older, not younger. So those are cited by the author, which is how they survive.

The language of Habbakuk is, overall, classical "CBH": think, the prosaic frame of MT Deuteronomy and Judges-through-Reigns - once corrected. Theodore Hiebert argued Habakkuk's poetic inclusiones are by contrast archaic "ABH". Henson agrees, on assumption for ABH of this corpus: Gen 49, Exod 15:1–18, Num 23:7–10, 23:18–24, 24:3–9, 24:16–19, Deut 32:1–43 and 33:1–29, Judg 5:1–30, 1 Sam 2:1–10, 2 Sam 22:2–51=Ps 18 and Ps 68. Not any of the Prophets, even Amos or Hosea.

...and not Ps[alm] 78. For Henson, this is a CBH composition affecting ABH style. One imagines such might hold of certain other preëxilic Psalms beside 18 and 68. This blog has endorsed Esther as a late production aping CBH; Henson rolls this into "LBH". So as you see Henson does not distinguish between the Temple cant of core "LBH" from other stuff which just happens to fall at the same time. Since Henson nails Habakkuk as CBH, I assume he takes its "Babylon" as Babylon.

By the way this shows that Psalm 78's composer in the CBH era, presumably ~700 BC, owned a library of ABH work. That library, says Henson, would have included the two poems now in Habbakuk 3. Habbakuk himself of course would have done his work after all that, the Hebrew scriptoria now being under Babylonian control.

Freebird!

A Cath/Orth history buff "Blasphemer1054" wants to know why Jews like Eric Weinstein like to pose giving The Finger to the Arch. Glad you asked! here is some torah for you, no shekels required.

Titus princeps and his dad Vespasian in that office - and before - both did some fine things for Rome and for her subjects. Both are role models for leaders. Titus in his Imperial capacity can especially be praised for his response to Vesuvius. Even Jews appreciate the good they did; Josephus got himself into the Flavius gens, partly because he'd disavowed the nuts who dragged the Revolt longer than it needed to run. Some call Josephus a traitor; most - I think - are (now) willing to hear him out. We can let bygones-be-bygones even for the looting, as I am sure Stacy McGaugh will agree.

Where we part ways with Flavius Titus Caesar is how he raised ... That Arch. Yeah: we screwed up, we lost. The man didn't have to teabag us a decade later. That's how revolts get fomented for the future; as our historians should know by now. So, to Eric: if you need another finger, I have two to spare.

Also I do not denounce the Talmud. Whilst we're at it.

The Buddha comes to Berenice

Romans at Berenice did more than just play with the monkey; they had Indian people there too.

I can fault the editors for letting slip about this "Roman" port named after the Macedonian queens and founded in the 200s BC. It's Greek, morons. Although, yes; imports from the Satavahana would indeed correlate with this port's Roman era.

With that date in mind, also posted to the Roman era is the Vrishni religion now (and certainly then) filed under Hinduism. This is northern India specifically, not Dravidian. Which interests me because usually it's south India that traded this sea, at least on the receiving-end. Of interest to the authors this stele ... isn't an import. It was carved in local plaster.

Also certainly northern are the Buddhas here; at least one is of Gandhara. This is late-antique, probably in the time of the Constantii Eunomian emperors but possibly Julian. That workshop mostly did Isis eidola. I see no ::eff::ing way this is fifth-century with Theodosius' men breathing down everyone's necks.

The article marks as most important - and I agree - the bilingual Sanskrit / Greek stele 9 September 248. (Year six of Philip.)

Phrenology doesn't work

The black hole of the Yucatan yielded up a "Naia" skeleton; Discovery Future discusses it.

Naia was a woman, and had the pelvic birth-pitting to prove it; with, unluckily, the pelvic fragility which helped kill her, when she spelunked into a lower cavern. Her head looked like the Kennewick Man's: more Ainu, or European. Luckily for our sciences, modern scientody has recourse to DNA. Since, well, woman there's no Y-DNA so we can't say much of her paternal ancestry.

We can say instead for her mitochondrial D lineage. This is all over South America mostly today. So nobody is calling her a "Solutrean".

At least, I hope nobody is. Beachy Head woman, for those keeping track, was deemed African by phrenology. She was not. On the other hand they did have some Yoruba or Mende DNA in Updown; this girl (whose own mtDNA was European) was probably brought to protoEngland by the Meroving Franks (which is why you don't see me buttmad over mulatta puppettrice too-tall in mediaeval-static Knight of the Seven Kingdoms).

The overall message has to be: don't use skull shapes as a proxy for race or ancestry.