Thursday, December 31, 2020

Reddit's map

They're letting us out early again, although again personally I'll have a bit to do later. But 'til then: a free moment. CuriousMetaphor's subway-map of the Solar System, per Delta-V.

This assumes transfer-orbits, i.e. Hohmann. This also assumes that we are not using assists, which may or may not be available in your century. Savings from manifold-surfing in Libration halo: not here. In that spirit CuriousMetaphor is not considering the (lesser) delta-V to go from Earth right to Uranus/Neptune on biëlliptic. On the other side of delta-V also not considered are cyclers which might get you there faster and, to boot, recycle the container. Lastly it's all quite rule-of-thumb given the Martian ellipse, the (lesser) Earth ellipse, and the Earth/Venus shifting angles. Mercury's in there too, basically to show us how we can't get there from here.

Also-also not considered is that we might be taking delta-V from Venus orbit to these other planets, instead of from Earth: but maybe that's reasonable, because from Venus all these delta-Vs will be greater. By less than 280 m/s but, greater. So it is on me to note that from Venus you do get the biëlliptic option Saturnward. Also Venus lines you up for transfer windows more frequently than Earth does. There's that 27 km/s to get off of Venus' surface but if you're on the surface, you're dead already.

As rule-of-thumb CuriousMetaphor has done us all a real favour in producing this map.

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

The seventh-century Melkite Palestine

Sean Anthony did well in Part I with the Doctrina; very well with 'Urwa's letters in Part II's chapters. Chapter 6 in Part III is an absolute tour de force.

Anthony here is looking into Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri's transmission (and perhaps adaptation), on the late Marwânid court's behalf, of Islam's equivalent to the "coming of the magi". Anthony brings the Naskha of Abu'l-Yaman alongside the Maghazi corpores of Ma'mar and of Ibn Ishaq. This is where Emperor Heraclius learns by astrology of Ishmael's coming.

There's a parallel letter without vision. Bukhari has this too, from Ibrahim b. Sa'd < Salih [Ibn Kaysan] < Ibn Shihab. To this I bring Nasai's Kubra ed. Abd al-Ghaffar Sulayman al-Bandari (Beirut: Dar al-Kutubi'l-'Ilmiyati, 1994) 6.309 #11064 : Abu Dawud Sulayman b. Sayf < Ya'qub < his father Ibrahim b. Sa'd < so on. This backs up that part of what went into Bukhari. As noted, Anthony doesn't need it. Anthony may have figured that he'd provided enough asanid in the Figure 13 bundle to make his point. I cannot blame him; I can only falsify him, to which end I find him thiqa and sahih.

For the vision, note: this was not of Muhammad's coming. So this is all earlier than Zuhri himself. As the Gospels had reached into Jewish messianism, so Zuhri reached into Christian tropes. And they weren't just "tropes" - at least, not Marwânid tropes. The vocabulary is Aramaic, when in Zuhri's day the court was insisting on Arabic. And not just any Aramaic: it's the main Christian rival to Syriac, that of Palaestina. Zuhri further credited this to a "Nâtûrâ". Who dat? - Anthony asks.

After Sophronius, Jerusalem lost its patriarch. This was because the Greek kingdom was still pushing the Monotheletism, so didn't care to give to the Palestinians a new patriarch as long as they remained Melkite. The core Melkite dissident movement shifted to the Latins, where bishop Martin had Rome. More than a few Melkite Greeks and Syrians remained in the Levant meanwhile. Of these Maximus the Confessor was the most famed, to posterity anyway. Also the locals in Palestine maintained their own Aramaic against the "haeretics", who were doing their thing in Syriac.

This may explain how come I don't find much Maximus in Syriac. The man himself seems not to have minded the also-Syriac Nestorians out East, but they were never his direct concern. Where he didn't communicate in Greek, he did so in Latin... and perhaps in Palestinian. I don't know that Maximus floated the astrology meme, either; but his friends sure did, and one of them reported this meme to PseudoFredegar of Gaul in Latin. This meme is going East with Dyotheletes into Syriac Si'rt and Kartuli Iberia. The Miaphysites will get wind of it, too; because it's in the Book of Patriarchs from Abba George at Wadi Habib (fl. mid 90s / 710s) - tho' this survives only in Severus Ibn Muqaffa's Arabic translation and extension. (Characteristically, Egyptians go more for oneiromancy than for astrology.) With Heraclius' defeat and the discredit of his Monotheletist compromise, Melkites and Miaphysites could agree on something!

But, back to the seventh century Palestinian Melkites. Who was leading them? For one, Maximus assuredly carried a lot of weight with them. And in bishop Martin they had a champion in the West - but as I keep reminding y'all, he wasn't a pope (yet). For Jerusalem, Anthony notes a sort of patriarchal steward, the Nâtûré of the Throne. He dismisses that this might be a calque of "notary"; and I'll add here that Zuhri doesn't use the O, he uses the A. An O-to-A shift is possible out East but Zuhri was consistently working with Palestinian sources here. So this man is probably Zuhri's Nâtûrâ.

Wisely Anthony does not count the Roman interviews about the Prophet and his dogma. But let us be less wise for a moment. To add to other parallel, in the Naskha / Ibn Kaysan synopsis is what the people are commanded to do: وَيَأْمُرُنَا بِالصَّلاَةِ وَالصِّدْقِ وَالْعَفَافِ. In Armenian, Pseudo-Sebeos says about the same: Mahmet legislated that they were not to // eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsehoods, and not to commit adultery. Howard-Johnston thought this latter came from Palestine. For another such summary-list, this one provided to the Negus of the Habasha up in Abyssinia, we may read the first essay in John Wansbrough's Quranic Studies. (I think George at the wadi will depend on a Marwani Madinese source, whence the Ka'ba is south.) So this credal dialogue was authentic Zuhri and may well have been included in Zuhri's collection of Christian sources.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Maybe I'm being silly

Instapundit found some reportage on the fission rocket. They want to use liquid hydrogen for propellant. Fission here is "enriched" uranium, so mostly U-238 with enough U-235 to power the engine. Hydrogen is reactive so the uranium is enriched not quite to 20%.

For power, why not "thorium" meaning U-233. Fewer neutrons and it's lighter. Every Gram Counts.

For propellant, why hydrogen. I get it for fusion. I get it for BELTALOWDA out beyond the snow line. But why for fission from Earth? Sorry to do the Hilder thing from The Martian Way but... he was / will be right, inasmuch as hydrogen is not busting out of nowhere, down here. Venus has an absolute hydrogen shortage. If chemical reactions are a worry why not use some elemental kin to hydrogen with under 2700 K boiling-point, that we don't need here. UPDATE 8/27/21: Yes, chemical reactions were a worry - such a worry, we don't even care about cost. As to cost: Ammonia.

Say: sodium. Almost 23 times the atomic mass. We store it solid and heat it to liquid state. Don't even need to pressurise this. If cost is a worry then how about sulfur, at 16 masses? Venus got that to spare. It's cheaper by mass than hydrogen even here.

Io also has sulfur. As with our Moon, chemical reagents will push cargo into escape velocity; the trick here is escaping Jupiter. Viewed from the inner planets, our transfer Hohmann will be from Io's orbit right to Callisto's. I haven't the maths for that delta-V but I'm expecting well over 10 km/s total. I'm thinking that this rocket hasn't the thrust to move around the Jovian system in a timely fashion - and given Jupiter's radiation, you do want out of here a.s.a.p.

Suppose we lower Venus' atmospheric temperature

When I was looking at floaty farms I worried about how hot they would be where the air-pressure was right. On topic, here is Bill and Melinda on lowering Earth's temperature. This is PJMedia, so it's full of the usual insanity; take into consideration, in this instance, that Bill and Melinda are even more insane.

All this said, I can see this notion's merit when the Sun itself is working against us. That's not Earth now, but it will be in 500 million years. And frankly it's Venus now.

This is not a Terraform Venus! post, precisely. I like to start modestly. I do think Venus could be made less infernal, especially up in the atmo where we're going to be spending our free time.

Where that would affect this project, firstly, would be in lowering the solar power our machines could use. Also the polar vortex would suck dust-particles out of the mix, so we'd have to keep adding to them - perhaps by pumping sulfur out of the clouds up to the stratosphere. I think polar balloons might rise above it all, so its solar power would stay about the same. I'd worry a bit about how to fly aeroplanes through the now-sulfur-laden high altitudes. The farms below might be okay if we're shielding mostly the infrared.

One short-term idea might be to run a massive screen at SVL1 Lissajous halo. Unsure how that would compare to pumping sulfur. It would reduce the ionic wind, any equatorial cloud farming, and the umbral harvest. Do that first and see how Venus works, then try adjusting that planet's chemistry. UPDATE 12/13/21: Better idea, because we actually get useful volatiles: the Ring.

Quite literally, please, do not try this at home.

Off the rose

Obama is an Elder Statesman. Trump is a lame-duck sore loser. Trump is more admired. Why? Hhoowhyy?

One factor, I think, might be Obama's latest book. (Another factor is Mrs Obama's book, a sort of Qur'...aaan which we're all supposed to display prominently or else be called names. Some of us resent, as with the Quran, not so much its unedifying text, as the Quran-like public piety thereupon.) Mr Obama has always looked good on camera and he usually sounds good when he's reading someone else's words. But when Obama speaks for himself, he reveals a petty and nasty soul.

I'll hasten to concede that I don't mind the nasty. Some of Obama's targets deserve it. Sarah Palin late-2008-edition deserved it. Her base of hypocrites, also, deserve that Obama called them out for practicing white affirmative-action.

Still: Obama holds a deep contempt for whites, deserved or not, and whites aren't convinced they deserve this contempt, from him in particular. Where whites make a large part of American demographics, losing them means losing points in popularity contests. Even against such a man as Trump. To the extent Trump is the huwite candidate... especially against such.

Another rumour: Linear Elamite

François Desset has moved beyond his work on gunagi and lays down his cards: Linear Elamite is an ancient form of that Elamite language which was Cyrus the Great's language of empire. (Later the Achaemenids would identify themselves as more Iranian, and move to Aramaic for their Imperial voice.) See here, here, ici. We are all warned this is just hadith so far and that the research is getting published 2021.

For Linear Elamite's language, something in the Elamite family is where I'd start. It was always Plan A that hieroglyphic was used where Coptic would grow up, and Linear B where Arcado-Cypriot... wouldn't grow up. But the latter was close enough! Elsewhere we have Urartian where were the Hurrians, even less close, but close enough to read. Likewise that 2400 BC Linear Elamite should look like that of 400 BC, given thousands of years and perhaps some dialect.

M. Desset is no longer de Sacy; he now claims the crown of Champollion. Albeit Linear Elamite does not open up a whole civilisation as hieroglyphic did. So he's more Ventris, in his effect.

Monday, December 28, 2020

The merchant

One service Sean Anthony is providing is to question the motif of Muhammad The Merchant as motif. I must admit overall, I am finding this chapter - the last in the first Part - hard to understand.

That Qutham al-Qurâshî married a merchantess, Khadija, and that he did trade on behalf of the now-family business is well attested in all the traditions, Muslim and Christian. That his tribe Quraysh dealt in trade is, also, a commonplace. And then there's sura 25 which posits prophets in the marketplace (buying groceries).

Anthony notes all this, to contrast with Islamic piety: which insisted that our man was, rather, a shepherd. As Sulayman Bashear noted in Arabs and Others (not the Bashear text in the bibliography), the Arab elite under the Umayyads came to shun trade as something for Jews to do - not for Muslims and, ultimately, not for proper Arabs. The trade motif is ineptus for Islam. Shall we believe this lectio difficilior?

Hol' up, as they say. There's a parallel anti-piety on the kâfir side - and a parallel snobbery against Trade. A backstory to Star Control was that the Androsynth turned against humanity after a prophet rose up among the humans attacking the Androsynth. The humans' prophet was a used-car salesman. Here in reality(?) the Midianites and Ishmaelites shared a reputation as traders, in between oppressing Israel. So maybe Muhammad The Merchant was a gentile (Christian) trope, a racial canard. Where the Hadith denies that its prophet was a trader, it is this to which they are reacting.

Then there's Fück's mab'ath genre, which painted Muhammad as ascendescent prophet. Despite its pious pretensions mab'ath aims for entertainment, the precise analogue to the Christian "infancy gospel" genre which, of course, we never read at Mass. Shahab Ahmed is in the bibliography. "S. Ahmed" is not in the footnotes, not until p. 114. For the trade motif, Anthony is looking at maghâzî / sîra, the Expeditions literature, I guess because that's what Anthony knows best. (Anthony will later propose a schema to subsume mab'ath into sîra but, I don't buy it.) We do find in Islamic tradition some admissions that Muhammad engaged in trade. The mab'ath doesn't care (as much) to make the Prophet holy - because holiness is, let's face it: boring. I get the nagging feeling that Anthony hasn't read Ahmed closely enough.

Anthony weighs up what he got and concludes that, yeah: merchant. This, despite his chaotic argumentation. And he's made his readers wonder, anew, if any truth could ever be had from our sources. He also admits the whole discussion is banal. If not a full turnover 'tis at least a lengthy fumble, that didn't advance the ball.

I wasn't writing this chapter. I probably wouldn't have bothered writing a chapter like it. If somebody had forced me to write such a chapter I would, instead, interrogate such sources as claimed that Qutham was anything else but a man of his tribe doing his tribe's work. Those contrary, pious sources consistently liken the Prophet to prophets like Moses (and Samuel). These are the sources which have Muhammad (pbuh) chasing sheep.

Those sources align with sura 28. I do not think that they are early sources.

I think Qutham was a merchant - or at least took on that role when his merchant people demanded it of him. He also acted as an archer when his people were mustering for the Fajr battle. And of course he would have had to wrangle a camel or a horse from time to time; maybe even, yes, a sheep. But if you had been a Roman conducting a reconnaissance of the Palaestina Salutaris in AH -1 / AG 932, you would have jotted this man's occupation as "trader". Because that is what his tribe did. What else ya gonna do in the desert?

As for Anthony, I'd say that he blew a lot of time chasing less a sheep than a rabbit - and yeah, I do know what that is like. Meanwhile he also had a book short a few pages, another frustration I know well. Footnote 8 promises an "Anthony forthcoming". It may be a rewrite of this chapter. Our author may be better advised to give the topic a rest.

The Bruno crater is young geologically

I got onto Weird Astronomy for the "Giordano Bruno" lunar crater. I don't like that the antiscientific haeretic Bruno got a crater named for him, unless it were applied to the bomb I'd like to see dropped on his grave - but hey. Leyenda negra gotta neg.

Winchell Chung notes that the crater is young by Lunar crater reckoning. He then notes earlier writers that the crater might accord with some weirdness which some Catholics witnessed around the Moon 19 June, AD 1178. Feast of Saint John / Mar Yuhanna, as they report - how voodoo.

Chung then notes that Paul Withers scotched these fantasy-flights in 2001. Adding to this, I have a parallel argument.

Bruno's asteroid was 1-3 km. That is "huge", as Chung notes. So yuuge that I'm really not seeing many asteroids like it in the Earthcrossing Apollo range. We can throw in Amors too, on the off chance Mars shifts Ganymed or Eros; they're bigger, and further up the solar well. I draw the line at the Asteroid Belt.

These monsters were common biiilliiions of years ago during the Bombardment. Such are likely how Phobos and Deimos formed: some awful Amor hit Mars and dredged up the mass to launch those debris into orbit. Such are not common in Amor range now. At 1-3 km, this close to Terra-Luna, we can see not only Amors but Apollos as well.

If it happens now it happened then: 800 years ago I don't think around Apollo (or Amor) range were significantly more 1-3 km asteroids than we see there today. Add to this, that our Moon simply doesn't have the same sphere-of-influence that we got. 1-3 km would hit us in preference to our Moon. UPDATE 2/23/21: Comets are a wild card, I admit.

When comes the Day Of The Rock, it'll be some 50-meter thing we can't see too well, like what hit Flagstaff.

Sunday, December 27, 2020

The Nashville bomber was a Conservative

When the Nashville bomber went off without killing anybody, I knew it wasn't ISIS and probably not Qaeda or Hezb, either.

When I started seeing people in PJMedia / Instapundit comments mooting it was a "false flag", that's when I knew that somebody who frequents PJMedia and/or Instapundit did it. Cernovich is only proving my point, to the point I am willing to post this comment here on my blog.

When you get this many Righties (or libertarians) floating paranoid theories about how the Left will use a criminal event, that means someone on their side screwed up and committed said crime and got caught. Given that conspiracies are, well, hard; the public failure of a conspiracy is always more likely than the success of a counter-conspiracy.

LONER WHITEBOI 12/29: oh yeah, called it. This ain't no Biden voter. Ain't no Romney either.

Didascalia Antonii

The Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati also Didaskalia has been assumed to incorporate the first hadith about the Prophet's teaching, although - in part, because - it does not name that prophet. It purports to date to the late 10s / 630s. It absolutely predates the Islamic conquest of Carthage, after which the Muslims redirected African commerce to their own Kairowan and Tunis.

I've had something of an intertext with Sean Anthony about this. When I first posted House of War I started by pointing attention to this document. Over that (2012) summer I learnt more about it, summarising my findings in the impressionistic appendix "The Keys To The Garden Are Swords"; mostly to get that aside off my main text. That is about when my book started taking off on Amazon. A few years later Anthony posted "Muḥammad, the Keys to Paradise, and the Doctrina Iacobi: A Late Antique Puzzle". This overlapped (and improved) so far on what I'd done that I seriously considered taking my essay off the 2014/15 editions; eventually I refocused that essay - giving Anthony due credit for his work, which was a lot of work. He hadn't credited me because, why should he; he probably hadn't even read my book, and anyway there was little in it that his essay needed.

So here we are in 2020, with another philological aside. Here Anthony argues his case better. He would shift the Doctrina later than most would: to Mu'awiya's adventures in the Aegean [early] 50s / 670s. Before the Greek Fire and the Zubayrid interregnum, the Med looked to become an Arab lake. Certainly a lot of maqâlid talk about the Garden was being floated about under Mu'awiya, not so easily tracked before him.

House of War is about... the House, whether it was going to be Temple or Ka'ba, Syria or Hijaz. Its argument would work about the same whenever you post the Doctrina, as long as it precedes the Zubayrid Fitna. So Anthony's latest is not forcing me to update my book. I will, however, report to anyone else that his argument is cogent and needs taking seriously.

The AD second-century Johannine reaction to the Magdalene

Paul asserted a burial tradition - against, interestingly, Philippians 2. The burial is disputed in Islam, preferring Philippians' Ascension narrative. The earliest paraGospel, perhaps contemporary with the Synoptics, is that in the Egerton papyrus: it may flirt with Ascension, but either way the MSS do not extend to the burial. Since I am Catholic myself, in whose traditions Paul and his creeds know the burial, we are here to deal with those details therefore with the canon. I permit my Muslim readers to move on to another post.

The burial traditions agree to link the burial and even Resurrection with the presence of women, including one or more "Mary". In Mark, this is the Magdalene. Stephen Shoemaker observes that the Johannine tradition contests this. In the West, our MSS for John agree with Mark. In Syria the Mary at John's tomb went unnamed. Here an exegetical tradition glossed that as the Nazarene - that is, as the Virgin. Tatian's "fourfold (dia tesseron)" gospel harmony stuck John 20:1-17 alongside Mark 16:9a, which names the Magdalene, forcing that we read the former as the Virgin; which Ephrem duly read. John Chrysostom raised in Antioch imbibed this lore as well.

It was always a tendency among the Miaphysitical parts of the Near East to load the Mother Of God with as much piety as the Gospel text would allow. As Shoemaker points out, as our Gospels survive, wherever a "Mary" is mentioned who is not the Virgin, the text is careful to mark her out. Chrysostom was a Dyothelete himself to the extent that his enemies would smear him as an "Arian". That he goes with the (west) Syrian canon here is against his interest, therefore a true witness. Hence why the tradition was copied, here.

Tatian preceded these debates. That he wouldn't identify the Mary in his reading of John hints at something else. It may be that "Mariolatry" was so strong among those who copied his harmony that they all agreed to omit the now-canon "of Magdala", however Shoemaker doesn't take this seriously. Tatian's omission with juxtaposition looks too deliberate. And, given the gnostics' own coyness about which "Mary", too early.

The Johannine Mary may instead reflect an earlier debate. That this debate clustered in the Johannine tradition suggests an early second-century milieu, preceding Irenaeus, in which not all Christians read the same Gospels. Tatian's own teacher Justin did not know John firsthand; Justin had used mainly a harmonising commentary of the Synoptics. Tatian worried that his successors might stray from Irenaeus' canon, and that is why he used the canonical four for his harmony's base.

What was going on in John's community? One possibility is that John's community faced a piety toward marǝté Magdalene. (This piety may have been imported from the Synoptics.) The Syrian reaction against this forced at least the Nazarene reading of John 20:1-17 which, as a result, extended to the very text - expressed as the intentional deletion of "of Magdala". Their Miaphysitism and, later, Egypt's carried that un-reading through to Late Antiquity.

Saturday, December 26, 2020

3D printed cement

On topic of Artemis - and of Mars - 3D printing regolith.

I'll point out (with Zubrin) that a shelter built with this will do a bang-up job protecting electronics, on the surface, from radiation. It'll make skywatching a lot easier too half the month. It is, further, the ice-box for all this. It certainly beats out digging a big hole in sharp powdery regolith. If your colony is not in some polar crater then hoorah, you just brought the pole to you.

Once you pressurise this rego-'gloo with 100 MPa of gas, though: it will just go bang. Until the sound cuts out in this near-vacuum.

Lavatubes are where it's at. If any of us are to live there.

Status quaestionis

Alan Mikhail has done what Mark Cohen couldn't, which is to turn me back onto the study of early Islam. I've become more pro-Islamic than not over the past two years. Cohen's work, tho' imperfect, was a nuanced view of Islam's treatment of the resident alien that made its case. Not so Mikhail's. In me there's something Irish (or Glaswegian) that, when I ken ye lyin' to me face, I'm up to set about ye. Santa got me Tron Honto's Muhammad and the Empires of Faith yesterday. I am reading it now.

Sean Anthony (the book's actual byline; I've just always enjoyed his old Amazon-reviewer sock) here starts with a summary of the consensus. This consensus is the IQSA consensus: it is Nicolai Sinai and, behind Sinai, Angelika Neuwirth. This holds that the Quran is Muhammadan, and that it can be sequenced through internal evidence. That sequence claims not to be the Theodor Nöldeke sequence. I agree with the second half of this axiom; have done since 2002 before I'd even heard of Sinai and Neuwirth. (I was working from E E Elder, Mingana, and Margoliouth at that time.) A synoptic solution of the suwar is BADLY overdue. The first half of the Neuwirth-Sinai consensus begs the question.

Anthony won't beg this question so aims to prove it, in his first chapter. He first sketches out that many Arabs believed that Muhammad existed and that some "hijra" event happened as of the first decades in that calendar. I scent a subtle critique of Robert Spencer here - a researcher in bad odour in IQSA, and one set to release another edition. I agree with most of that, against Spencer; although I recall that questions remain over - for instance - the Zuhayr / 'Umar graffito. I also agree that the argument for Muhammadan historicity still needs to be made; precisely because Spencer is still out there, and has followers, and isn't necessarily a worse scholar than (say) Nigel Tilman on the other side.

I still don't know that Muhammad can be credited with the bulk of the Qurân. This credit is IQSA consensus but it hasn't been argued. So Anthony doesn't argue properly here. He just runs a lot of footnotes, classic argument-by-authority.

Allow my counter: post-Muhammadan graffiti paralleling the Qurân are not quoting Muhammad; they are citing God. That is: they're citing the qurrâ. These were the Arabic-speaking men charged with preserving and disseminating the Celestial oracles. Some were not above forging their own "revelations". In fact, some might have held themselves out as prophets in their own right or near-enough. Much like the caliphs would do.

I remain, therefore, in my position that we shouldn't read the Qurân outside the context of the first-century AH qurrâ. Further I hold that Anthony would have been better advised to hold off on arguing Muhammad's existence at all, or at least to save that for appendix. His book needs to concentrate on Umayyad / Zubayrid memory. Perhaps a postmodern approach but this first chapter is already hinting in that direction.

A cartoon history of Beyezit's empire

Up on the Lockdown List, God's Shadow. I don't think Alan Mikhail is being ironic in his title. And I don't know how long I can keep reading its content.

Snide asides about that atrocious Catholic Church dot these pages, which pages start with the Osmanlis and rush through to Mehmet II's death without much discussing what horrors attended the sacks of Constantinople then Trebizond "Trabzun". I will concede Pope Innocent VIII isn't high on anyone's list of decent or effective Popes but I think one could word his tenure better than that he was the exemplar of the [implicitly intrinsic] brutality of his Church. Mikhail later lets slip that when prince Cem died as a Muslim not aiding a crusade against Beyezit, that Cem perhaps saved his soul.

That is: that Catholicism is damnation. Mikhail hates the Latin Church; deeply, viscerally hates it. Mikhail despises Europeans, too: so called glories of the nineteenth century is not just in the Yale interview I quoted but the book as well. Wait 'til you see what he has to say about Trump re: The Virus That Began In Xi's Empire.

Mikhail does have a point that Catholic Europe was less tolerant of Muslims and, of course, Jews than was the Osmanli régime. But he glides over what happens to Christians (and to Jews) under Islamic rule. As noted they don't stay Christian or Jewish. Mamluk Cairo is an Islamic city in the late AD 1400s. Was it Islamic in the 400s? And the process wasn't always peaceful: the sultan or the pasha always had the whip-hand. When Mikhail says Muslims "never" forced conversion or death on their subjects Mikhail is lying.

Mikhail has a motive - a more inclusive present. He notes in the book all the terrible violence done to Muslims in the West after 9/11. Which events pale beside the reverse: Boston, Madrid, Orlando, London, Paris - but hey, I'm not keeping score, here. To the likes of Mikhail, "inclusion" means Christian and Western subjugation. It doesn't much matter to whom. As a point of ethics it means Mikhail's motive in writing the Ottoman gospel was never in providing us a biography.

Mikhail is exactly the sort of man Cohen describes in his own (so much better) book; the Jew who would die and maybe even slay his own daughters, rather than convert to Christianity; but who would eagerly defect to the Muslims if it gave his family advantage. Yes, to the point of apostacy.

A seasonal economy

A couple years ago Andy "The Martian" Weir wrote another book. It concerned a lunar base that did a byline in tourism, and then the tourists took over. Soon enough, we saw Greeks dropping FACTS and LOGIC about tourist economy. The upshot is: Weir probably shouldn't be hired to manage affairs on Thera much less on the Moon.

John Koccinides, if I may Latinise him, drops a few important points, more of use for me perhaps than for Weir. As with the Greeks, I am running an archipelago - SVL2, stations, and farms in the clouds. The Earth / Venus traffic is likewise seasonal - more obviously so. This, in fact, made for my first post on the whole subject. One point of departure is that Venus as a whole will not have casual tourists, because the Hohmann stay is just that long. You're off Earth for two years. That's like "tourism" in the Age Of Sail. No 16th-century Spaniard took off for Panama City for the weekend.

Which leaves internal tourism. Some Earthers based in one Venerean outpost might well tour others. I see that (thankfully) I'd thought up much of Koccinides' points over the last year-and-change, for this example on tourist attractions. Mind you, I've had that time to world-build which I did not spend on a narrative, as Weir had to do. So, let's continue building that world.

Koccinides notes that artificial flavour comes from fossils like coal and petroleum, which cannot be had on the Moon. The Moon, of course, is right overhead twelve out of twentyfour hours and if tourists are coming, so is their luggage. It happens that pepper historically has been currency as assuredly as gold-dust. Nobody on the Moon is bothering to grow jalapenos. It's longtermers who have to worry about growing their own cotton (so to speak). That's Venus (and Mars &c.). Over Venus, I suspect organic chemistry can be had from the atmo or at least from recycling plastics, like syngas. We haven't developed such lore on Earth because derrr just go to Tescos. Mind, as the farms get running, I think Venus might well have Tescos. Even, G-d save us, Sysco.

Another good point is the welfare system. Greece has one. Other Europeans get annoyed with Greeks for this. But Greek employment is heavily seasonal. So what do all those Greeks do when the tourists aren't about? For Venus each node in the chain will need to support its Earth-facing workforce when not in the work-season. Take all those "longshoremen" doing Hohmann-in, Hohmann-out. Well, then what? I guess they have a union . . .

Koccinides discusses law-enforcement in an island where a good portion of the observed people don't have to stay there. I do think that, per island, will emerge cultural differences and even different languages. But they share in the same economy. Earthers on Venus might feel they don't. Such might have the bright idea of making a mess on one island, floating off to another one, and on and on for the, what, 497 days. Venereans will demand some agreed-upon sunna to unite the archipelago at least on dealing with such scum. (Day Of The Rock when?)

Reform

In AD 540, Aba from Narsai's faction became Catholicos and reinstated celibacy. Aba's circle occasioned a round of historiography: first supporting Narsai against Shila/Elishe, and then backing off both rivals in favour of Aba as the "neutral" party. Also around here is the Syriac Heraqlidos.

We know hereby that Aba at least flirted with Nestorius, Theodoret, and Chalcedon.

The Talmud was getting another, near-final, round of redaction around the same time. At the Rhomania this was, of course, the Reign Of Justinian. In the Eranshahr: Khusro's reform.

The late AD 530s disasters, I think, forced this dynamism in all the Late Antique religions.

The Caribbean was murder

The Reich lab has sequenced more Caribs. 174 people who lived in the Caribbean and Venezuela between 400 and 3,100 years ago, adding to 89 they already had.

Based on what they got from the Caribbean, they're estimating a population that didn't rise above the tens of thousands. We'd estimated maybe a million. It's been awhile since I read Mann's 1491 but I recall it too went high on population estimates.

I'll say that 263 is a darn good sample number, certainly good enough for marking population bottlenecks, especially once you add modern Caribbean DNA admittedly mestizo. It might not tell us enough about how high the population reached at its height. Suppose there was a population explosion in the 1400s and then the rapid decline...?

I think, though, that we'd need extraordinary evidence. For islanders who overran their environment, we know of Rapa Nai in time for Easter. The Caribbean by contrast wasn't notably desolate when came Colón.

... at least, not artificially so. We have evidence that some islands couldn't even sustain a population. Nobody was using Barbados when the British settled it, but there's archaeology there showing that some used it before. Intermittently.

I am applying my favourite historical rule, "if it happens now it happened then". What's happened now is Hurricane Maria and the Montserrat volcano. Throw in the Port Royal quake and Mount Pelée. Along the Lesser Antilles and low-lying Bahamas, people might want to procreate but Nature won't let 'em. Once Arawaks got to Puerto Rico they were home safe...-er. But that founding-population might have been very small and not reinforced. And then came the Caribs who had a taste for the long pork (it's not cannibalism if you're only eating enemies!).

To sum up, although I didn't expect tens of thousands, I can account for it. I didn't even have to propose castaway Lishbunatis with smallpox.

Friday, December 25, 2020

Negative

Tim O'Neill, who is further Left than I am, noted earlier this month - in his "History for Atheists" comments - that there exists a strain of Jesus denialism in the reactionary Right. Thus Laurent Guyénot's latest textwall.

Guyénot faces the same problem people all over the world face: how is it that Europe conquered the planet, despite being Eurasian human like (outside Africa) the rest of us. More: although Russia subjugated Siberia, and the USSR had its day in the sun in my lifetime; the Germans and Latins had already taken the rest, and it's a bone of resentment in Russia that they'd piggybacked on German and Latin technology.

Were we just lucky (Jared Diamond)? Were we the most evil (modern university)? Did we have the best religion? Guyénot doesn't take the first two seriously and mostly attacks the third. Guyénot would say that we're just the best people. We're racial superiors. And our victories came despite our Christian heritage, not because of it.

Suppose we accept Guyénot's racial theory. One such as HBDChick must admit religion and genetics are Nonlinear Equations. A society that permits polygyny will suffer inbreeding and debilitating familial strife. A society that permits inbreeding, which a polygynist society must, will become retarded, starting with the actual people. A few generations of this and your Pharaonic Master Race will become an inferior race. I don't care how awesome Tuthmosis III was, back in the day; his descendant Tutankhamen died a loser.

I detect much internal dissonance at Unz lately. Guyénot thinks Christianity is bad because it restrains Europeans. Elsewhere the best Europeans are Christian Mayflower Protestants. Or maybe they're Catholics. Or maybe Orthodox? or even Shi'ite Moslem... but at least we're all agreed that the Jews are bad!

It would be easy to laugh at the goyims' mutual imprecations, perhaps to rub our hands together like the 4chan meme. I am not a Jew anymore, to the extent I ever was; so I won't join in. I am however a supporter of capital-C Civilisation, and I am (mostly) European. In that capacity I can ferret out whose argument at Unz is worst. That would be Guyénot's argument.

CLOWN 3/31/23: I hadn't thought to update this post but now I'm glad I didn't. He's an Emmet-Scott-tier crank.

23andme are Africanising me again

Back in 2015ish 23andMe were telling me I was some trace percentage of North African. They then changed their minds. Now they have me as 0.2% Coptic again.

Other changes were to delete - entirely - my ancestry from France and Germany, formerly 9.9%; and to rub out the lion's share of my 11.9% Northwest European. The Southern European trace is gone too. This is now subsumed into my British / Irish heritage, and somewhat into Scandinavia now 5.9%. Only 0.3% remains unclassified White Guy.

My father is still marked 5.4% Carolingian (and 2.7% Norse, and 4.7% misc). He's the 0.2% Copt apparently.

My Ashkenaz side went down to 27.6% having donated 0.2% to my Polish side... now 1.4%. Still urban: Krakow and Warsaw.

It is all a question of when you put the markers down. "Northwest European" and "Franco-German" incorporates the whole Bell Beaker / Single Grave cluster. Tough to know when these populations moved over. They are also closely interrelated: what is a "Norman", exactly?

As for the Britishness, again it's weighted to London which I don't want to count, followed by the Mersey region and then by what I've got records for which is father's side Staffordshire. Some Northumberland, also recorded, mother's side (this is where our Scandinavian side got mixed in). Interestingly Ireland is right out, now. But Glasgow City is strong.

I call shenanigans on Glasgow: I think this is a Gaelic signature and there's something wrong in the algorithm. And why're 23andMe less clear on an earlier generation's genome? Add all that up and I'm unsure these results are an improvement on what I already had, which although less clear were at least less suspicious.

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Neander hibernation

As with Thanksgiving, school's out but I had to work that bit later - just not to 4 PM this time. So here's some evidence [h/t Saraceni] that Neanders slept through the Ice Age.

Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum notes that even the fabled Sleepy Bear is not a Mammal-Like Reptile nor even armadillo. Such run warm even if not running hot... as Hamblin pointed out almost a year ago (noted on this blog right here). Stringer adds that humans have brains and he might've added that Neanders had larger brains. Although we might become suited for bearlike torpidity, with artificial sugar-injection; the Neanders didn't own such magic.

Patrick Randolph-Quinney of Northumbria University would like to know more.

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Surf's up

A wave hit Dor - not Tel Dor, we'll get into why not. The water went inland at least 1.5 km, possibly 3.5 km. If the former, 16 m high; more likely, latter, 40 m high. Either way: pulse-driven tsunami, not storm. Armageddon, one might say; probably Carmel Fault.

"9.91 to 9.29 ka" so 7960-7340 BC. <3Science! marks yearzero at AD 1950. This is Aceramic in technology, elsewhere late Mesolithic but here (per Kenyon) deemed "Neolithic B". The pottery was hollowed stone, but the people did have kilns for limestone cement.

Jericho by the Salt Sea was already an old city! - but the people along the Med were still mere villagers. It was all marsh at the time. Israeli archaeologists were wondering how come there's no record of coastal Neolithic A, even Natufian before that: a 4000 year gap. The wave could have washed away its record.

Genetically there is much E1b1b; culturally (Wiki tells me) connection with Iberomaurusian along north Africa. K mtDNA, like King Tut. By language, we are assuredly coming up to the first Semites but, who knows so close to this coast; it could be Egyptian Delta.

This wave was worse than any in the Near East's history. Much worse than Tel Kabri, worse than Thera after that.

After this, Neolithic B moved up the hills. They'd have had to do that anyway because the sea level was still rising worldwide.

UPDATE 2/23/22: Chile AD 1420, hitting Japan. This is just the latest in a series of bands . . .

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Uppercut

The latest chart of large Solar System objects lists one (1) Near Earth asteroid greater than Phobos: 1036 Ganymed. It's an Amor, which means it less "Nears Earth" than Nears Mars, as in it crosses that one's orbit. Next biggest is the famous Eros, also Amor, in size between Phobos and Deimos.

We could move these to some Libration halo of Earth or Venus. Eventually though, Earth is doomed, and I'd as soon dismantle it when it finally boils over. In the meantime Earthlings get sore when you move asteroids into their path. And the delta-V would be less for Amor-to-Mars.

Might even dig up some boulders from the far side of our own Moon, to fire out there. I don't think the necessary mass would reduce the Moon's total mass, or orbit, sufficiently for anyone to notice, here or there. Pay it back, if you must, by landing Phoebe on the Moon.

As mentioned I want a bigger Phobos over 15 E, something I can librate more stations around.

I wonder what delta-V would push either of these Amors for a capture by Mars. Better: a trajectory to loop around Mars to hit Phobos, both times from below. First to get it into a Hohmann with mamerostationary; then roll it into that higher orbit.

Stone Rama: for Venus and SEL4-5

Last January I found out about O'Neill cylinders. At 32 km by 8 km, comparable to Deimos and Phobos (more to the point: Ganymed and Eros), such has so much internal space that the design has long been mooted for permanent stations, which are equivalent to cyclers. They will, therefore, not be stinky cyclers - after initial construction anyway. If they're hollowed out from asteroids à la George O Smith (or Arthur C Clarke) they're also great for shielding against solar radiation within Mars' perihelion 1.38 AU.

What occasions this post is the prospect of Hop David's permanent Venus cyclers... and "The Day Of The Rock" being observed among The Expanse fandom. Sadly I don't think we'll be having the stone shielded Rama for the Earth / Venus routes, nor for any Earth-passing route (UPDATE 2021 - okay, 2L4 might work inasmuch as it skates L1). And Hop wants Deimos and Phobos for tethers, implicitly dumb rocks with human colonies as barnacles. UPDATE 6/26/22 Although maybe spinning Deimos can be magnetised such that the tether may detach from the actual stone.

We can't leave cycler trajectories alone; they must always be corrected, ultimately by human hand. Now we have other equivalences to consider. For those who used to use Flash, which you never should've, Perdue had a calculator for this. Spoiler alert: we're looking at Chicxulub if the calculations ever get wrong... that is, for the Bond Villain, right. I foresee Earth will fear even a "light" Rama for these trajectories. I'm seeing tight regs on how the mass here gets bundled.

Mars won't want the heavy Rama for a cycler either on account that planet's orbit is so lopsided (it follows, they keep Deimos). And from Jupiter's Hilda orbit on out, they may as well use the unshielded or badly-shielded Rama. The Belters would mainly use full hollow rock for transport elsewhere, for instance to Alpha Centauri, maybe from a Neptune trojan.

Where Belters would export asteroidal Rama, and should, would be to the Sun/Earth L4 and L5. Also anywhere in Venus' stable neighbourhood: George Smith's L4 / L5 of course. Venerean direct satellites. Hilda. Phobos elevation.

Monday, December 21, 2020

Apocrisary Viganò is outside grace

The former nuncio to the US, Cardinal Viganò, is considered almost a shadow Pope to nonJesuit Catholics. Viganò has opinions on CoVID, both on how it formed and on how bad it is. He got this information from supernatural entities, one must assume, because he sure isn't paying attention to the biological literature.

For background we know how a milder strain of CoVID can become more virulent. It doesn't happen in a lab; 2019 CRISPR isn't good enough. This one looks like it came out of virus evolution with a chronically-infected individual. That is: by someone under close observation treated with convalescent plasma. Probably some powerful rich dude getting treatments we proles don't (incidentally why Trump and Newsom don't take this seriously in their own human-interactions). The MRSA experience is probative: such mutations easily happen in a hospital.

More general mutation happens when case counts are allowed to rise. It is happening now.

In his latest screed - it is a screed - the Cardinal accuses China of manufacturing CoVID in a lab, which at the same time is merely "psycho pandemic". So at the same time, a maleficent Frankenstein monster and, also, not really a big deal.

In other words, Viganò is doing the same basic-bitch Unz / Ace / Vox Day / PJMedia tail-chasing we've seen too many times before. He's going antivax too based on the lie that "the vaccine" is made from human abortions. It is not. So Viganò is errant.

When this poor man bangs on about Freemasons and against the "Great Reset", take all this into consideration, that we're dealing with a madman or worse. (And didn't we used to have a word for "Reset"? Jubilee?)

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Adalatherium

Say hello to a family of Indian mammals: adalatheres. We had jawbones for these but nobody had made sense of them. Now here's a full skeleton. Which also makes little sense. Looks like a badger but not. Hence the name: it's !loco!-therium in the Madagascar main tongue.

This island was and remains a microcontinent, but - I've just learnt - not split from Africa. Malagasy split from India, 85 mya. India had been an island-continent since Cretaceous not long after 150 mya although, arguably, from Africa (some say Antarctica). It's in the general "Gondwana" side of the mammalian tree. Meanwhile in Africa, they had such Afrotheres as the elephant; thence occasional offshoots into [South] America.

The Deccan Trap, I expect, did for most India before even Chicxulub; so Madagascar was a refuge by 66 mya.

The adalathere skeleton looks like a badger in the front and a crocodile in the rear. Those back legs, all splayed out, look great for digging emergency holes in soft earth for laying eggs. This is a monotreme - at least. It's as if this monster hadn't finished the Triassic. We're told all the paramammals like Tritylodon had died out back in the Jurassic, before India-Malagasy sheared off. But as this study points out, we're not well informed on southern-hemisphere mammalian fauna. Australia might not have had mammals at all until it was seeded from America and those are marsupial.

Cretaceous India including Malagasy, I think, would be on the South America model, generally an offshoot of contemporary Africa, Antarctica being antarctic. Some marsupials, some low-temperature primitive placentals like the armadillo.

After Chicxulub, mammals from Africa skated over there so those are the mammals they got now. Including the lemur which was European in origin.

Sunshield

NASA still do good work, between porkies, and among the good work they just did was an unwrappable sun shield. 13 years late, as is noted.

The aim here is to shelter an infrared telescope. The shield means the telescope stays frigid - near background temperature for space.

UPDATE 12/15/21: Yeah, this was as good as this original blog got; we'll spare you the rest.

How Chalcedon went East

Every now and again the various "orthodox" Churches would preserve historians whose theologies later slipped out of grace. A fine example is Socrates Scholasticus, a Novatian somewhat sympathetic to the bishop Nestorius. Another example is Philostorgios the Eunomian "Arian", whose work didn't get copied... largely because Photius would quote all you'd want to read of it, as "epitome". So: on to what "Mari bin Sulayman" has on the Chalcedonian controversies in the fifth century. UPDATE 3/9/22: this is the 1899 edition so: ʿAmr. Pages 32-5 in Latin; 36-40 Arabic.

As noted, the Church of the East had slim-pickin's on this century. ʿAmr did not own Elias bar Shenayé, nor Bar Sahdé. As of 2022 I now suspect he did know Nineveh-Siʿrt (also Arabic today); but Siʿrt's not very good here either. ʿAmr figured these decades AD 424-84 as good a span as any to look over West to see what they were up to.

Philip Wood thinks ʿAmr had more-or-less what Evagrius of "Epiphania" Hamath had: a Chalcedonian church-history reaching out East to see if there be some way of reconciling their traditions. I'll suggest: skipping Syriac, and going right to Arabic - for those Melkites whose mother Aramaic was Palaestinian. Or maybe it was Palaestinian all along and got translated to Greek, for Evagrius whose own Aramaic (like PsZacharias') was more-likely Edessene.

This Chalcedonian history reached for heroes and villains. Cyril, whose "Mother of God" sloganeering started this mess, was the villain. Nestorius was a victim, as in Socrates; his eventual successor Flavian a full-on martyr ("confessor", we'd say now). The history supports Theodoret - who had also penned a history, although an inferior one. Needless to say Leo of Rome is megamagnus and his Tome a near Third Testament. And lookie here John Chrysostom, that nasty old Jew-hater, was a hero, whom Cyril - student of Athanasius - would malign at his death. Well, if we're comparing to Cyril . . .

Wood says that it was under Justinian and Theodora, that Chalcedonians quit bothering to salvage Nestorius. (They'd go on to abandon Theodoret as well.) Consider context. Justinian worked through his life to unify with the Monophysites. The Orient still cared about Nicaea, but they were all under Iranian rule. And out west lurked the Latins and the Vandals, Dyothelete and Eunomian respectively; but Constantinople could just conquer them (and did). So Wood's terminus makes sense to me.

Wood concludes that the Chalcedonian history belongs to the earliest sixth century, likely Antioch. Given Leo's prominence I'd say the Latins had a hand in it, although the Greek version seems not to have been notably barbarous in any direction. Anyway certain Syrians appreciated it, and translated it from the Greek. It would not surprise me in the least if Mar Aba catholicos disseminated this one over the beplagued AD 540s: partly as an attack on Theodora, partly to fill that annoying gap in their own fifth-century record. Aba's synod in AD 544 adopted the bulk of Chalcedon, we are informed.

Was Euphemius a Nestorian? - LOL no

But wait... there's more! Philip Wood really did a number on Nineveh-Siʿrt. His article literally is several in one. That's what I'm here for, until my brain gets too tired again...

Quite a bit of Siʿrt and Mari together comes from the Greek Rhomania. Wood for C1 sees "Eusebian material" perhaps from Symeon of Beth Garmai's seventh-century translation of the Chronicon UPDATE 2/19/22 which is hardly Tur Mardîn's. C3 is diverting, in every sense of the word: instead of discussing the "dyothelete continuation" to the fifth century AD in Siʿrt, which we've noted simply isn't there, Wood takes us on a magical mystery tour through Mari. For C4, is a series about Constantine's patriarchs up to Emperor Justin; this opposes the Theopaschism, and is here to contrast the Nestorians and the Latins against the heretical Empire. Wood for E then sees a "Melkite history of the emperors" in here up to Constans II, which is... where Siʿrt's manuscripts end.

Eusebius was of course common-property in Late Antique Syria. C3 is, like, not even Siʿrt. The E list of emperors, to me, seems like it was had from Constans son of Luke. I want to discuss C4. Because Wood doesn't unpack it as well as the casual reader should like.

Patriarch Euphemius had come into his office AD 490, under Zeno. Zeno was a moderate between the Ephesians, swiftly becoming "Miaphysites"; and the Chalcedon synod, itself a moderation of Ephesus. The Roman bishop was Felix III, a Chalcedonian who took it upon himself to be just as immoderate as were the Ephesians. I am really not seeing Zeno at this time especially appointing anyone whom an Edessene could possibly tar as "haeretic".

On Zeno's death AD 491 the mob in Constantinople demanded an "orthodox" emperor implying that Zeno (and Euphemius) had failed. Euphemius forced Anastasius to swear allegiance to Chalcedon. Anastasius turned out to be a Miaphysite and nursed this grudge. Meanwhile Euphemius proved unable to moderate Roman bishops Felix and then, from AD 492, Gelasius. Euphemius, of course, lived closer to the Emperor so suffered more political hazard from him.

In AD 496, as Siʿrt records, the emperor exiled Euphemius. It is nowadays agreed that the contention was Anastasius' written oath, which he wanted backsies on, which backsies Euphemius - growing balls at last - wouldn't give him. Siʿrt claims Anastasius' rationale being that Euphemius had refused to renounce Nestorius by name.

It is entirely likely that Siʿrt has recorded a lie - by somebody. It was impossible for a Byzantine Patriarch to rehabilitate Nestorius, at a time when the Latins - further from the capital - were not considering that. (Although some Antiochene outsiders might take a shot at it.) In later years, even such a Dyothelete as Maximus Confessor would not do that. Although since we've mentioned Maximus, we must note that his Maronite enemy George in ReshʿAyné will accuse Maximus of same. So I'd not put it past this Emperor to be the liar, earlier, in the same Monothelete cause.

If Anastasius lied, I do wonder about this anti-Theopaschite strain in Siʿrt. Is the core a Constantinopolitan liber pontificalis? Such might veer politically depending on which Christianity was then dominant. It would then need to be edited. But the Emperor was consistently Monothelete (Anastasius, Heraclius), or in sympathy (Justinian I), or at least wanted the headache to go away (Zeno, Constans II). This headache lingered until Constantine IV in the AD 680s who finally accepted Chalcedon (and Nicaea) in spirit, excepting the hangover in Vardanes. During this time was ample opportunity for Constantinopolitan lore (and rumour) to get out into the Near East in Syriac.

A liber pontificalis model might explain how two patriarchs, holding the same dogma, would be viewed positively under Zeno but negatively under Anastasius. Pace Wood, who sees C3 and C4 as different texts, and may I remind everyone once more that C3 is a non text in Siʿrt's lacuna. Hey if Wood can speculate then so can I. We'll not likely know for real since Siʿrt craps out on us in the 640s under Constantine's father.

Out East, naturally, any bogus tale of a late fifth century Patriarch(!) being a closeted Nestorian, or - better - a convert, would have been read as AWESOME. So the lie was repeated, in a more-orthodox context.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Bar Sahde

To what degree mediaeval East Syria had light on the dark age, this was had via Bar Sahdé, "Martyrides", of "the Seleucian Karka" now Kirkuk.

Nineveh-Siʿrt knew Bar Sahdé, using it in several places, albeit whatever it said about the dark age is lost. Elias of Nisibin (d. AD 1046) cites that part of it... in a "chronicle of disaster" form. Mari bin Sulayman (AD 1140) doesn't tell of Peroz. Mari neglected Elias overall despite being a coreligionist, and likely didn't own Bar Sahdé either. Same goes for ʿAmr b. Matta.

Elias was conversant in both Syriac and Arabic, writing his chronicle in both tongues in parallel. I know not if this holds for Siʿrt; if Bar Sahdé had been translated into Arabic before Siʿrt and Elias got to it. A study of Elias' bilingual might resolve this.

From Siʿrt and Elias we know Bar Sahde discussed shah Peroz - a widely-excoriated failure, unless you're a White Hun I suppose. I have no idea what he made of Barsauma. Bar Sahdé went on to discuss Justinian's Plague AD 540. There's also material on monks and on catholicos Aba. Quite a bit on catholicos Ezekiel.

Wiki dates our man to the eighth century, Philip Wood to the seventh. I would pin him pre-Islamically.

Bar Sahdé seems like an apocalyptically-minded moralist, an earlier Bar Penkayé [UPDATE 3/19/24 or Daniel of Tur-'Abdin]. Now that Mingana's Sources syriaques is out on the interweb it would be interesting to see where those two link up, if at all. Bar Penkayé speaks like a Nisibene theologian with much to say about Cyril and Ephesus (and Armenia!); he doesn't talk about his own place so much, skipping pretty-much straight to "Islam and the countries conquered by it". UPDATE 1/25/22: I'm on the case.

Bar Sauma, the Protestant

Bar Sauma of Nisibin worked within the dark age. Philip Wood in his overview of Nineveh-Siʿrt has some words about him, taken second-hand of course.

The west-Syrians recalled Bar Ṣawmé, "Son of Lent" or - to his enemies - "Swimmer among the Nests", as among those in the "Persian" school in Edessa led by bishop Ibas; although, maybe that was more-directly Mara of Qardu, his master. Three decades after bishop Ibas' death AD 457, the Empire had Zeno the big pussy, who was having a devil of a time keeping the Miaphysites on board. On AD 489 Edessene bishop Cyrus II forced his liege to expel the "Nestorians". Barsauma had left for Nisibin I think in between, because he's agreed to be a big force in Iraqi Christian politics over the early 480s.

Wood's main source Barhebraeus disliked Barsauma and considered him the great satan introducing error into Dadishoʿ's Ephesian Church. Barsauma had allowed priests to marry, and rehabilitated Nestorius as the continuator of Nicene Christendom against Cyril and Theodosius II. At least the former was properly Acacius' work. As for "Nestorianism", that could be as late as Aba.

More to the point Barsauma had floated that the Church might not need a strong pope - at all. Barsauma did have a pope: one Babawayh. I wonder to what degree this dismissal was on principle, and to what degree he was keeping himself aloft from some schism under Dadishoʿ now lost with what was lost in Siʿrt. This was the doctrine Acacius didn't keep.

Mari and ʿAmr, who unlike Barhebraeus belonged to the Eastern tradition, I expect had their own opinion of Barsauma, although Wood doesn't tell us what. Wood does tell us that Nisibin's "university" was pro-Barsauma, the catholicate anti-. Inasmuch as ʿAmr was a papal chronicler, I expect that ʿAmr didn't approve.

Barsauma would, I gather from Wood, have got along fine with later Melkites such as are had in Putin's Russia, or maybe Ludwig of Bavaria. He'd have gotten along even better with the Lutheran monarchs. Best of all with Jean Hus. (I personally prefer unmarried clerics - and nuns - but will allow an "honourable discharge" option should they find this vow impossible.)

The Nestorian

As to what saved the Orient: Wood pins Acacius mid AD 480s for the recovery of early fifth century historiography, and for the reconstruction of the Church's history before that - mainly done from saints' lives. Most such vitae were themselves being (re)composed around that time.

Acacius also laid down the canon of Catholicoi, which sequence Barhebraeus (for his own reasons) approved up to Dadishoʿ [and Ephesus]. Acacius believed that Catholicoi were what we'd call Popes; against Bar Sauma's opinion, which seems to me more Ludovician. In this he had the support of the new Shah Kavad, in need of a stronger West in the face of a now-Hunnish East.

Woods further claims that the histories start to note the diplomacy between the shah and the Church. Of course there had been quite a bit of this diplomacy back in AD 410-24 when that first Yazdegird enabled the synods. But (if we are to credit Woods) the earlier segments of the histories - therefore the fifth century historical sources - did not emphasise this.

Acacius dabbled in theology also, going so far as to dress it up in terms familiar to Nicaea and Constantinople-381 (i.e. Theodosius I). The Oriental Church could, thereby, at least explain itself to Melkites and to Miaphysites. I suspect this, not Bar Sauma, is about where Nestorius comes in. Nestorius might not have come in very strong, even then - Nestorius' magnum-opus won't see translation until the middle sixth century AD.

Where Acacius agreed with Bar Sauma was in abolishing the celibacy requirement. Here followed another turbulence in the East, Catholicos Shila being called out for nepotism if not full pornocracy. Up to the AD 530s a strife broke out between Elishe, related to Shila; and Narsai, not. Ripe for reform.

AD 424-84, when Christianity nearly died

So far discussed are what [Nineveh-]Siʿrt is, and its mostly-theological context.

Philip Wood sees a lot of editorial work in Siʿrt. The whole thing was, everyone agrees, compiled in AD 900 and even after that not free from later glosses like one to the ʿAbbâsid Zâhir, who had the caliphate AD 1225-6. In this light, Wood finds reference to monasticism (Barsaumite?) in the third century, deeming such anachronous, so intrusive. These injections - says Wood - come from the late sixth century or even, like Saint (mâr) Awgin, the ninth. The fifth century is less adulterated, in Wood's sight.

But then Siʿrt breaks off. More: Mari breaks off, AD 424-84. Wood sees a dark-age in the East over those six decades.

Siʿrt certainly knew something on Peroz's reign because it has a section on Babowayh, dated in Peroz's regnal years. This - says Wood - comes from Bar Sahdé. Mari doesn't use him and doesn't use Elias of Nisibin, either.

Likely ignorance of the East is one reason why Mari's talking Rome instead; another reason may be to account for Nestorius, by Mari's time a hero. But also it was not a nice time at home. Here is Barsauma perhaps an archeretic. We will observe for the lacuna that Yazdegird II's reign features in it, a great persecutor at least against the Armenia then deemed "Aryan". Also herein is Chalcedon, that half-hearted retraction of Ephesus, which caused such great tumult in West-Syria (Mari correctly sees Chalcedon as Nestorius' revenge). And Peroz's misadventure in Hephtalia. We might also ask about the Talmud.

Maybe Siʿrt lost only that one page, or had two sides of two leaves stuck together like Agapius. Maybe someone (an antiNestorian?) deemed that one page as rubbish and scraped it off for something more useful, like a life of Mar Awgin. It's certainly easier to imagine one lost page, especially if the text was bad; rather than dozens, where the text might be good.

East-Syrian / Iraqi Christendom returned under Acacius and shah Balas, as far as metastability.

The context of early Oriental Christian historiography

Seert / Nineveh-Siʿrt starts before the Council of Ephesus.

Before AD 430 Christendom was more-or-less united. In AD 410 shah Yazdegerd convoked a synod in Mahoze (Seleucia-Ctesiphon) which ratified "Nicaea". Anyone outside that consensus, implicitly the the Theodosian consensus, was simply deemed a heretic, in their day and in ours (Vox Day notwithstanding). Per Philip Wood, Nigel Abû'l Farâj Barhebraeus marks Dadishoʿ, from AD 422, as the last "orthodox" Catholicos. Siʿrt as noted breaks off right when Dadishoʿ got started.

In Dadishoʿ's time there came to Rome a second Theodosius, in the end a puppet of politics. Here is the birth of the Miaphysitism - and of the East's rejection thereof, eventually to rally around the memory of exPatriarch Nestorius. This process of schism and reconstruction took some time. It also took place under a foreign régime, that of the Iranians, who did not come from a Semitic world and, further, weren't (yet) prepared to accept a Semitic Scripture.

In this context, Nestorius got "retconned" into a founder of the nascent Oriental Church. Barhebraeus likewise retcons Dadishoʿ, into the founding father of a Miaphysite Eastern maphrianate. Barhebraeus marks Bar Sauma as the villain in his story, and he does make for a good one, although maybe not all for Barhebraeus' reasons.

Mari like his counterparty Barhebraeus sees no schism before Ephesus. In fact Mari doesn't just stick with the Eusebius / Socrates canon; he will include Roman material as far as AD 500. Note that this takes us to Chalcedon. As to why Mari doesn't use (say) Procopius beyond that, it may just be because Mari loses interest.

As far as I can tell the whole East-Syrian world was about done with Rome, from Emperor Justin on. West-Syria (and Caucasia, and Egypt) remained much better informed, especially Melkites and Maronites. Siʿrt recognises this and pulls its Constantine-era lore from Qusta bin Luqa / Constans son of Luke, wr. AD 900s. A Melkite, sure; but, viewed from Kurdestan, at least not a Miaphysite.

Seert, the Zuqnîn of the Orient

I am digesting Philip Wood on "Seert". This is Siʿrt in Syriac mangled to Sirta in Greek; it is not to be confused with Sîrt in Libyan Arabic lacking ʿayin. There was a chronicle compiled out in the Kurdestan, covering AD 251-423 and 483-650 but probably composed in the 900s AD. Addai Scher in 1900 found two MSS, one Siʿrt and one Nineveh / Mosul; these, both Arabic, make up our text. Wood is trying to make sense of that. Like James Howard-Johnston on Pseudo-Sebeos.

In 2000, Butrus / Peter Haddad published another chronicle from Iraq closely paralleling up to about AD 400 of Siʿrt. This helps reconstruct that Siʿrt likely started before its extant start AD 251. Likewise Siʿrt assuredly had something about AD 423-83.

So far Wood has compared the first three quarters of Nineveh-Siʿrt to other Late Antique chronicles, in what they report and what they don't report, or in what they sometimes fail to report. Compare how historians have traditionally handled "Pseudo-Dionysius" from Zuqnîn. Where Zuqnîn's early movements tracked John of Ephesus; Wood for Siʿrt finds the best match in the Church Of The East.

Hence why Andrew Palmer in 1993 - concentrating on West-Syria - relayed Zuqnîn but not Siʿrt. Zuqnîn rode with the Miaphysite West. Siʿrt would ride with thoroughly Dyothelete Khuzestan and Bar Penkayé. Not that the Zuqnîn Chronicler would have had a problem with the Siʿrtî material, nor the Siʿrtîs with that Chronicler; both were mutually tolerant, as Christians went, living under a common heretical Islam. But anyway Wood's quarters go only to AD 585. Their sources weren't, at that time, always so mellow.

As intimated, chroniclers sometimes cherished theological disagreements which prevented them from taking each other seriously. But also, sometimes a chronicle simply didn't spread very far. Zuqnîn's effort did not get copied at all; our MS is its autograph. For our topic, Siʿrt did not use Bar Penkayé's world-history, nor Khuzestan. We might suggest Siʿrt was making stuff up like "the Augustan History" or - as Wood notes - the Arbela. However Siʿrt seems to get the facts right, where they can be checked. Again - like Zuqnîn.

Wood finds that Siʿrt's material (beside Haddad) matches best Abulpharagius Barhebraeus and Mari b. Sulayman - "ʿAmr b. Matta" too but Wood won't be talking much about him. By "Mari" and "ʿAmr" both, Wood refers to the Gismondi: so please read "Majdal", so Bo Holmberg (pdf) as endorsed by Hoyland, 716. Barhebraeus belonged to the Miaphysite colony in the East, so aligning with Maruta of Tikrit and indeed PseudoMethodius. But Barhebraeus nonetheless needed Eastern sources. Compare Dionysius (the real one) of Telmahré pinching his nose as he relays Theophilus.

Friday, December 18, 2020

Turn out the lights on dark-matter

Turtle Island for years has been banging on about modified-Newton to explain gravity in galaxies. The core of the problem is that galaxies spin too fast for the matter observed (so far), both in Newtonian and in Einsteinian dynamics.

The classic fudge factor is to propose some as-yet unobserved form of matter; chiefly, inherently "weakly-interacting" matter ?particles (WIMP). How to observe that, is the rub; even a neutrino might bump a proton under observation someday. WIMPy candidates keep getting constrained out. I've no real hope that, say, better clocks will do more than constrain them out further. Dark matter is the Planet Vulcan of the [1915-2015] twentieth century. Or the luminiferous aether thereof, take your pick.

Mordechai Milgrom in Israel, back in the 1980s, proposed an Einsteinian solution: gravity works differently under variant acceleration. In his "Modified-Newton Dynamic", low acceleration means higher gravity. MoND also predicts an external gravitational field, made up of all the masses elsewhere. I hadn't paid attention because few commenters outside the Turtle have paid attention, who is not always on-point himself; also, ProjectRho doesn't approve MoND, and I dread that wedgie from its housecat. So I wasn't prepared to rule out some mostly inert paraparticle like D Star Hexaquark. Although even then I knew we were reaching.

We might now have evidence of the external field effect. Triton Station has been doing a victory-lap.

I don't blame people for proposing dark-matter and for trying to find it. Like aether and Vulcan we can at least come up with testable options. But at some point, you need to hunt where the ducks are. MOND seems where the ducks are, from this point on, so physicists should next constrain that.

THE SEARCH FOR BIGFOOT 12/21: AXIONS!! blah blah blah we imposed a constraint. That's academese for "we ain't found sh!t". I'm reading a lot of this in <3Science! press lately. BEETLEJUICE, BEETLEJUICE 1/22: A tighter constraint 2/8: Garbage in...

IGNORE TURTLE-TRITON 11/25: Milgrom is wrong.

Becky

I have read a few books this year, including fiction, but I didn't report on the fiction because I've completed only nonfiction works. I have had books recommended to me, in the meantime, sometimes also fiction. Thus Rebecca Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

Chambers, like Andy Weir with The Martian, self-published this one; like Weir's, her book got snagged by a publisher.

As I scan reviews about The Long Way I'm finding SF for Tumblr, nothing much happens [until the last 40 pages].

If we bring these together: Tumblr Twilight.

This sort of book isn't something we're supposed to read so much as something about which we're supposed to boast that we've read. Chambers has the same sort of origin-story as Rowling had: SHE BEAT THE SYSTEM! - whilst being a stalwart supporter of said system, all the way.

Thursday, December 17, 2020

State punishment

The Irish cops arrested a maskless. A fine is more like it!, is the sentence HBDChick would lay down.

Here in the States, we do have a system where we fine, not arrest and imprison, violators. If you are following the Right here, even this is "dehumanizing". The people serving the warrants are Just Following Orders - they are Nazi Gestapo. In the eyes of the American Conservacon.

We either have laws, or we do not. We either serve warrants or we do not. If you are imposing fines upon violators; then, you are extorting money from them, on pain of imprisonment. And if you think that this disease is an existential threat, then you will quarantine those who will not quarantine themselves - even in the limited sense of wearing a mask in an enclosed space.

Trust me, they don't respect your half-measures; so you shouldn't bother, either.

Old Boom Boom

It's time this blog constrained the Orion. This rocket was pretty much done in the late 1950s but, alongside the NERVA thermal project, kept floating across various Presidents' desks. Until it didn't.

What the Orion proposed was to go find some place nobody lived, line the ground with Plumbago, set up a honkin' big rocket and, er, set off uranium fission bombs. Or plutonium, whatever. There's something about pressure-plates that I didn't pay much heed to. Anyway if it doesn't scatter bright blue fallout all over Nevada then this would push sufficient delta-V to raise bell-bottoms and bongs off the gravity-well. A lot of them.

Later the Orion (and NERVA) madlads learnt that over magnetic 80° Arctic / Antarctic would be best for not interfering with Van Allen and/or our satellites. This angles away from the solar ecliptic and the lunar orbit. If we're not aiming for Luna, peak blastoff times are the twin solstices; but I think we will be aiming for Luna (see below).

One in space, you do need to pivot it for one more burn (rather, blast) to approach the ecliptic, which is where everything is. There are additional limits as to what it can do next: Solar-well Oberth maybe? In particular, like Air Qaeda, it can't land. But you're in space. You should be assembling new rockets out there. Some Earth-Luna Libration halo is best for that.

As a result, for Orion engineers, your job is to load up as much mass as you can and say, "nevermind" to anyone whining about ISP. You care about one thing: thrust. So on the Orion chart, as Project Rho had it, we want the full Interplanetary package but only so much as to get us to ELL1. It takes 9.3 km/s for LEO and, from LEO, 3.7; but since we are shooting past LEO, I expect a Pythagorean solution for total delta-V. Our escape velocity is 11.186 km/s; nudging into ELL1 halo or even L4/5 is trivial compared to that. So: we'll be shifting cargo from the polar capture-orbit to ELLx somewhere in the 5700-6000 ton range. I think those are metric, so mega-grams.

As to what you send up there: people. And life-support. The awesome thing about Orion is that we're not forced to squeeze astronauts into pressurised Dr Pepper cans with big ring-target signs on the side saying "SPACE JUNK AIM HERE". We can even line the hab and electronics with lead against the EM pulse from the rocket's own radiation. Which shields we can reuse outside Van Allen.

Although we assemble the various spacefaring ships at ELLx, where Earth can see it, some of those ships might be some other sort of atomic torchship... where Earth can see it. Those, we don't launch from ELLx. We launch those from ELL2.

Ultimately we want to be mining thorium in the Moon and Mars, so in future, we don't fire old boom-boom from Earth excepting for biology. The Moon and Mars fire boom-boom because they don't have environmentalists. Although I'm unsure where they find the graphite. Maybe there's Martian cliftonite? Or do we soak the Martian ice-caps with boron...

UPDATE 1/4/2021: Mot-O-Rion! 2/20: Let's distinguish from NERVA.

OBERTH 3/13: Something to do up there.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Bi-elliptic to lunar midway

I've been talking Hohmann a lot here, getting from one orbit to another orbit, neither orbit being too different. I wondered if anyone had found other transfer possibilities since that German guy. Turns out that Ary Sternfeld way back in in 1934 figured upon a "bi-elliptic" track.

As usual there are maths, more maths than even I like to do, but Kerbalians have done the gist of it. Basically bi-elliptic trades speed for efficiency. High initial burn and then... you wait. And you only use it to get from a low orbit to a very high one, as in 12:1 semimajor. So... not Earth to Saturn (9.537 AU) but assuredly Venus (0.723 AU) to Saturn. I assume you can't / won't use inner-planet assists between Venus and Saturn - but from an inner planet using Venus as assist, yeah, we'll have that thrust. If you pay off the SVL2 cowboy.

Fission might help to get you started; fusion would be better, maybe Zubrin's saltwater reactor later.

This site points out that Hohmann is still competitive between 11.94 to 15.58. It depends on the size of the ellipse (doesn't everything). That matters from a planetary perspective because beyond a certain height we would be taking interference from other bodies, like the Sun. From Earth there's the Moon before that.

Where everyone gets hot over this is in pushing from LEO to twelve or more times that, say 9000 km semimajor to 120000, definitely beyond 140000. That is far above geostationary (and Van Allen), but remains 'neath halfway to the Moon. The real midway is above that, at TL L1, solved here. Nobody is using nuclear fission for this. Sadly.

For my interests I'm hoping Venus herself gets satellites in all sorts of orbit. Let's use worstcase 15.58 for our factor. The limit of permanent influence, where I might be orbiting farms, is 536412 km. I can use bi-elliptic to reach that high up from 34430 km or below. Aim it so that the elliptic apocytheree is still in the capture-ellipsoid, so at right angles to the Sun. Time it so that the orbit is right.

REVERSE 11/19/22: Better-late-than-never, the alternative to Crazy Hermann. This starts with a transfer from starting orbit to that transfer ellipse - with periapsis very close to the central body. Down the well, we don't shift again to the lower orbit. Instead somehow the main vessel finds its own way to yeet itself starward. If the central body is the Sun, several options open up: a Solar Isp drive, or the boosted lightsail (with returning booster).

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Richard Hanania says, hello fellow Americans

I've been occasionally routed to Richard Hanania's old man cloud-yelling from several sites: HBDChick, GNXP, Cerno... Richard Spencer. As I shovel through the poo-posting I find one substantive post: an apologetic for Xi's Imperial China. Hanania argues that Xi ("China") threatens only our "elites".

This, whilst admitting that China is competing with America's working class on the level of jerbs and of basic manufacturing.

I say to Hanania, which is not a notably American name, that if you want to make the argument that America's working class just sucks and deserves to be driven to White Reservations - then do what Kevin Williamson does, and make that argument. Don't dress up your anti-American policies as attacks on their elites. I too have no real sympathy to the MAGA / Tea Party / #stopthesteal / REOPEN NAO base, these days. But I don't pretend otherwise.

Vox Day has not been hacked

Google / Blogspot this afternoon is Considering Vox Popoli Harmful. From a Blogspot URL no less.

The site is, of course, no such thing. Its content is frequently "problematic" but these days, just funny. Sorry lads, Kamala Harris will be President maybe February, but certainly within the year. Nah, I'm just sorry I said "sorry".

As to why Google has chosen to redwall the silly site, that's another question. It's a coward move in my opinion: if Google want to play publisher, they should just delist the site and dare the US government to do something about it. Or maybe Google staff are going meta: playing the most gamma card possible, to provoke him and his fanbase.

DANGER AVERTED 12/16 AM: Well, at least he can sell shirts off it. The site is just as silly as it ever was.

LOL 12/17: Last Sunday questions were asked. As usual, the questions had an answer. "No." FAKE BUT ACCURATE 12/18: Justice John Roberts wasn't the J.R. on the Epstein logs but there remain unconfirmed reports that he was eating DC pizzas on 22 March 2010 and 10 Feb the following year. When he was in DC. And not over the Caribbean.

Monday, December 14, 2020

Hohmann as seen from Venus' Lagrangians

The Earth / Venus Hohmann is slightly under 0.8 of an Earth year, 1.3 of a Venus; so after ten of its own runs, it will be eight years for Earth and thirteen for Venus. It's 4/5 of an Earth circle on its return to Earth's orbit so runs 72° ahead each time. In five of a cycler's own runs it will be back where Earth used to be. But that next trip out will be hitting SVL3. Dodging that Sentinel telescope, at high velocity. It needs to run another five before - for that cycler - Earth / Venus align again.

First, this explains how come we have a five-Hohmann, four-year cycle from Earth's perspective, tho' we need ten Hohmanns to get back to Earth so we get back to Venus again. Hence also why a "synod" is so long: five of these making eight years - a Hohmann full orbit is half a synod!

Recall here that anticthon L3 is metastable. By contrast L4 and L5 are stable basins centred at 60°. So if you're at 72°, and have some propellant handy, you can get into this basin. From Earth, on that fourth run, hitting STL5 isn't as awesome as I'd thought. The ninth run - well.

What does the Hohmann angle look like for Venus, and for its L4 and L5? After a cycler returns to STL4: when it goes back to Venus' orbit, the inner planet has made a full circle plus 0.3. Venus is therefore ahead of Hohmann, but here by 108°. That is no Libration. Next (third, synod B) time, 0.6 ahead / 0.4 behind, in opposition - but too far for L3! - so, still, no Libration. The fourth time it's 36° behind Venus, just barely in the Plain of Troas and headed to Earth's own L5. Fifth time (starting synod C) it's at 72° in Venus' Greek vanguard and, as noted, on its way back home. It gets to Earth maybe one day after Synod C reaches Venus.

Second half of the metonic: first from Earth to SVL3. Then (synod D) STL4 to 0.8 so Trojan, 72° behind Venus. Then nowhere special opposite Earth and 36° ahead of Venus; then (E) nowhere special again either way. Then STL5, ending still 108 degrees behind Venus. Finally back to Earth then Venus. Cycle repeats.

Canny readers will notice the direct Venus-to-Earth route NOT appearing here. That's another cycle but it'll take the same kind of route: first to Earth, back to 108° ahead of Venus, then STL4 &c until repeating at Venus-then-Earth. This one hits Earth again midway as well. And its second stint at STL5 comes back to Venus direct.

Venus has a tighter orbit so its incoming Hohmann cyclers aren't so hard to feed from Venus. By the same token, though, it takes more delta-V to break into Venus capture: 360 m/s, against 280 m/s for Earth capture. Venus may prefer to to feed the George O Smith stations at Venus Equilateral. They can feed the cyclers. As well as Earth can.

REGULATIONS 12/22: First off, there's an asteroid ban. They'll call it the Rammer Rama Bill, I am sure. It follows that there will be maximum-mass restrictions per Hohmann synod, on both sides. This further constrains the Hollister "Cycler". Quite a lot of Hohmann traffic will be forced to end up around Venus or, failing that, some Lagrangian.