1 Thess 2:14-16 as an abrogate text

Among the contested, un-PC verses in the Pauline corpus is 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16. We've handled that a couple years ago; basically accepting Richard Carrier that it doesn't belong. John Nichols at the so-called "Liberty" University (it's accreditted as a university; leaving aside its boomerslop name) has a critique (pdf).

The boomers will likely NOT approve Nichols.

The proCarrier side might flag that we don't see later antiJewish writers citing this part of 1 Thessalonians. Some writers, like the Johannines and Barnabas, simply don't engage much with Paul; but Mark does, with the Synoptics following, and I don't think Mark touches 2:14-16. Maybe Matthew and Luke touch it but they are known to be late. "Peter" and then Ignatius, Melito, and Justin assume parallel sermons, at least; but by then we are VERY late (and they don't say "according to Paul..." here).

Nichols knows that the whole Thessalonians corpus is rife with textual issues, especially the whole second book. Some have pondered if even the first book is Pauline; if not, then our passage can be dismissed with it.

Nichols points out that the passage is of a piece with the letter's overall style, as a thorough echo of its own 1:2-10. Also Paul is going to repeat this letter's themes, such as God's wrath, in other letters. Only the antiJewish polemic goes missing therein those letters.

Nichols instead holds that this letter to the Thessalonians sketches out Paul's ideas earlier in his ministry. One may compare with how Paul floats early ideas to the Galatians, before our man is to take more care to the Romans.

It would, then, mean Paul has offhandedly blasted "the Judaei" from a parallel perch, like John's Gospel does from - perhaps - a Samaritan perch.

Paul's disciples themselves seem to have agreed upon a single-volume core with Galatians, 1-2 Corinthians, and Romans; with the rest left to the real fanboys to copy. Also-early Philippians didn't make that cut. Nor did the lachrymophoric letter - and there, we might have a reason, because 1 Clement was doing its work.

So, if I were to play the philosemite (which, as a partial Semite... why not): I could argue that Paul said a lot of things, and let's allow he said this one thing in this one letter to Thessalonica; but it doesn't represent Paul's finished thought. 1 Thess 2:14-16, for Paul, became an abrogatum.

K2-18 at home

As study continues for K2-18's planet, and for TOI-270's planet d (the third): models improve for the Neptune-mass planets we got at Sol h and Sol i. I'm halfway afraid to name Sol h.

The story here, which Edward D. Young, Sarah P. Marcum, Aaron Werlen, and Paula N. Wulff tell, is that the Solar System formed with a carbon-monoxide snow line somewhere further out in the Kuiper Belt than we now find Pluto, which is a nitrogen / water iceworld mostly devoid of CO. Also our seventh and eighth planets lack ammonia... like the extrasolars just noted. Compare 59 Virginis b (or B).

This points to a magma ocean making up most of both our "ice" giants. The magma has dissolved high-pressure volatiles. This magma is about half the radius: more for Neptune, less for Uranus. Over that, the atmosphere - mostly hydrogen and helium - extends for the rest. This convects (hydrogen is a decent conductor), to the surface which then radiates infrared which the JWST can spot.

The model may be tentative, because as you know we've only sent flybys to either, but ... so were the "ice giant" models.

Kilotower

In 2021 my cuz Amia Ross and three others proposed "Tall Towers on the Moon". On Earth the standard is the Gulf's Caliphburg. This has to deal with wind, and 9.8 ms^-2 gravity. On the Moon there is no permanent wind although landers kick up some dust; gravity is 1.625.

Ross' crew wanted this for the south polar basin so they could get gigawatts of solar power all month long. I want it at the Lunar base of the spaceline, where I've banned landers. For here, let's talk how one might end up having to work inside a kilotower, if not live in there.

We both must endure radiation, at least up top - including the Bremsstrahlung effect upon metals. Ross isn't living in the high tower so doesn't care, except that she's not using rebar (nor any reïnforcement) and has wired the innards for electric conduction. For my part I want to reïnforce my tower. For that, instead of steel, I'd use Jensen's anhydrous glass. Both are common on the Moon; in fact, any slag used to reduce metals could serve to feed the glasswork. I believe a little copper and silver will deliver much less pain to organics than a titanium shell or even a lot of iron rebar would. And shouldn't mutually spark off one another if an errant ray strikes.

MS Copilot (beyond the flattery) is telling me that I can raise this monster into the low kilometers; Ross reckons higher. But I'd hardly start that way. I'd start with a Burj+ height of 1000 meters. Then build the kilometers-high shell around that, which would involve internal support atop that centre. It would keep growing around that core. Ross estimates that for the concrete - sans rebar - the structure must use 760 mt for 1 km height; 4100 for 2km.

Copilot is warning about supporting the Burj upon that regolith, but I'm scooping regolith away to concoct the anhydrous rebar, maybe some concrete if we get spare water. One hopes eventually to hit the basement rock of the nearside or deep polar basin, either-which should expose lunar-mantle basalt. I don't think this is to buckle much.

Concrete can be manufactured in the south pole at 2 mt per Earth day. It might at first need making down there, because it requires water (and megawatts). So I guess the pole has to shoot it to other Lunar outposts by mass driver. Luckily if it comes in goop form, that's water we hope to preserve, maybe even to start our own 2 mt/day factory. My structure around the spaceline should be easier to extend upward because the ?Kevlar chain can double as a central crane.

What Rosses get inside the structure is a vast, shielded interior which we can water and oxygenate at a nice ~290s K (20ish C) without rusting the rebar. The exterior suffers temp swings over quite the timescale, so we'll need an insulating outer wall. Unless like Amia you're building it in permadaylight.

For whatever plantlife we're growing in the interior, the famous Biosphere had a problem: carbon-exuding life on the inside may carbonate the concrete instead of the ficus. So where we are sharing our space with plants, like hydroponics; we'll have to tile the interior as not to expose the concrete.

Ezekiel in Babylonia

In 2020, a handbook for Ezekiel came out. I haven't, and maybe can't, read all of it. I may not need to - Dalit Rom-Shiloni produced what is certainly one of the best chapters in it, "Ezekiel among the Exiles".

This sets the prophet in the community of Jehoiachin. The prophet may or may not love that king, but he - famously - is clear about what he hates. That would be Jerusalem: whether this be the kingdom of the Babylonians' stooges, or the province now inhabited by subjects ("servitors", Carl Sargent might say).

We also get several Akkadian loans and calques. Like the Babylonian barber the gallâb[u]. At least Dan knew of people who performed this task (Judges 16:19) and one has to assume so did Israel recording Samson's legend at Tel Dan, and then Judah accepting their exiles. Well... Ezekiel didn't want Israel's barber.

I don't see where Ezekiel and other Persian-era prophets like 2 Isaiah react to one another, and Rom-Shiloni doesn't mention any. Of Persian tropes, the critic must note that KBR canal. We concede the rarity of this or any other such trope, compare Daniel. Rom-Shiloni would likely dismiss such as gloss.

Britain's Meiji

Last year on Galveston Liberation Day, Rod Martin explained its merits.

Well: not the merits of this particular day. The ratification of Amendment XIII (always a lucky number for the Union) would have been a better day worth the annual memorial. But we happen to have this day off soooo...

It may be moot for me anyway inasmuch as I am pretty-much not American. My ancestors didn't keep slaves and didn't want 'em. They say my Jewish side might have been 'em, but they were slow to extend that as a principle for the Banu Noah. I might, however, speak to the Institution's retarded sibling Serfdom.

Throughout the Middle Ages, daimyos ruled England. The Magna Carta, whatever John promised us in AD 1215, had been rewritten. Serfdom was officially not the law of the land over the seventeenth century... but then, the Austrians claimed not to have serfs in the early nineteenth, also; and look how that went.

In AD 1688, the English lords called in the Dutch. Kara Dimitruk and Ben Southwood tell how landed lords became landowners, who could better use the land they'd held only in paper before.

Also as with the Dutch, owners of buggy swamp around the Wash reclaimed it for production - because they now legally could. Elsewhere canals were drilled. The England of the 1700s became much, much more powerful than that of the 1600s. (1690s Scotland might have benefitted too until they tried colonising the Darien Gap, like idjits.)

One narrative for the stagnation across Europe is to blame the Church. I'd credit that argument for the chilling days of Inquisition. To me also, however; that doesn't ring as true in the age of Newton, whose England didn't follow the Church. The only case of direct Church influence I see in the whole article is where they slapped down Fernando VI's income tax. Based on the other people who squealed: this tax would have befallen equally land-rentiers, capitalists, and high-wage-earners. Which means the tax by nature would have hurt innovation more than the code's simplification would have helped.

It may be that the English Civil War - which the English won - had reïntroduced the Magna Carta into the commonweal. As Yarvin points out, nobody cited "the rights of Englishmen" before Henry VIII. The Tudors (who were Welsh) had cast about for national myths before all that, touting the Arthur cult. Only after the break from Rome (per Opus 4.8) Henry VIII and Elizabeth touted the Saxons. We still don't really have a national epic, or didn't before Tolkien anyway.

Our first fun mistake

The fossil bed at Mistaken Point, delightful name by the way, is yielding up "Ediacaran" eukaryotic fossils. The region may have been closer to Ediacara at the time, if the "VanDieLand" theory pans out; so, call it Greater Ediacara. Specifically this seabed dates 574Mya, at the start of the "Avalonian" epoch lasting until 560 Mya.

The fossils as fossils have retained zero DNA. What they do retain is where the DNA would have spread: close to the parent(?s), or far. Close "stolons" implies cloning or budding, like fungi or aspen (they say strawberry). Far spreading was done through the water in those days.

Budding eukaryotes don't compete with each other. As long as eukaryotes were stolons, their billion-years remained Boring.

More: interfluid spreading is a prerequisite for mixing before seeding. In short, sex (although here the fluid is just water).

They report that predation did happen but only later in the Ediacaran (or Vendian), running up to the 539 Mya Cambrian onset.

Maxwellport is back

So when I was awaiting a World Cup match, I went through a number of past articles I'd posted here. I wanted to consider Jensen's many comments in support of anhydrous glass, especially in vacuum. One such elderpoast was this thing about a tether from the Maxwell Mountains to the clouds of Venus.

And then Google (via blogspot) took the thing back into draft with an ugly red eyeball showing the flagdown. Whaaa?

I'll pipe here the good news: Google allowed it back after a modicum of further change. Maybe a matter of half an hour for them to do it. Which is an annoyance but not a disaster.

As to why the flag, er. All the links were internal except one - to ToughSF, and that one is blogspot too. The internal links went to other science pieces here obviously, none of them subject to review. We did have a link to a post with a title referring to what you do in hot water when you want to modulate the level of tea in it. Some use that term for a rather less wholesome activity. A little "edgy" mayhap. Except that the tea post wasn't flagged, itself.

The one change I made (besides whining about the takedown) was "muh Kevlar" which I just made "Kevlar". So I dunno. Seems arbitrary.

It may be the post got to their attention because it was overly link-heavy. This attracts spiders and robots. I am aware that this 'ere blog attracts those, rather than human readers. Which is kind of sad.