What we have learned

Or is it "learnen"? Anyway. Slightly over a year ago at the IQSA meeting in San Diego, whose first and best lectures I unfortunately missed, I mused about colonising Venus. I already had the Chernenko / Landis basics that we'd be settling the atmo. And then I posted some stuff I shouldn't have, and needed to fix.

When I figure the Settling Of Science I link it however over-eagerly I have figured it. I did a lot of that fixing over the four-and-half day weekend so here is where I will take a breather and discuss Lessons Learned.

In December I got to pondering aerodynamics. I figured I could use Venus' own headwinds and solar power to keep an aeroplane above the clouds for near-eternity. I learnt here that panels degrade, that they'd have to be VERY efficient to move any mass in bulk even here, and that there is - er - a difference between "fuel", "energy", and "propellant". Fuel being, for jets, the combination of both. So I'd not be using a jet turbine; I'd be using something more like an electrical Cessna which, luckily for me, did actually get invented this year. Still, as time went on I realised this was pointless and the "forever flotilla" idea unworkable. Probably about when I started pondering Pluto Ramjets of all things.

Meanwhile I considered a nuclear powered Cessna. I dropped that notion too for efficiency's sake. Although I revived it on the helicopter principle for a power-plant balloon lower in the clouds.

On the Libration orbits, learning what libratio actually means - another focus of orbit - was fun. Much rewriting of my December posts ensued.

Boy howdy did I ever find out more than I wanted to know about Venus' "sphere" of influence. My problem there was that I got caught up in the Libration Points, specifically L2, so I thought that might be the marker buoy and I marked the outlying satellites accordingly. L1/2 is not the marker. Neither is the Hill Sphere, between them - necessarily. SVL2 is at a million km out. The SoI is 616 thousand km out. In that shell between the spher(oid)s is nothing stable. UPDATE 12/9: and for actual orbits we're looking below 536412 km.

Zubrin taught me about Hohmann and, here, what caught me out was the notion of "opposition class", where Mars shoots stuff to Earth (1) off-Hohmann and (2) inside Earth's orbit. The Earth-Venus route has, historically, done (1): Pioneer 12 is the best example I find. Nobody does (2) for Venus' own sake. The point of (2) was to use Venus on the "fry by" to get to another outer-planet.

This segues into, why skip the Hohmann to Venus in the first place. Besides simple delay back home, a la Venus Express, I find that the angles matter. Relative to Earth these cycle, synod by synod, in accordance with Lucifer's Pentagram. That will expand on the Venerean calendar which I still think will be exactly the Earth / Venus duet, minus two days per eight Earth years. Anyway if you want to inject into a more circular orbit from the start, Pioneer 12's long route or even Magellan's two-orbit route will be where you start.

Especially now we know the journey to Venus differs from synod to synod (I always knew Hop David's timetable was approximate, but underestimated how much), it is vital we get a day to anchor the (Earth / Venus) calendar. We get that in the Conjunction.

Along the way I've pondered settling Venus' surface (katabatic wind power at Maxwell east), what we do in the cloud-layer (farm 50 north), relaying more energy to cold SVL2 (high-orbit polar satellites), trapping hydrogen (en route to L2). Although here I didn't need to retract much.

Nick Brown OWNS the cons with FACTS and LOGIC

All hail Twitter myrmidon Nicolas Brown: COVID skeptics: "We are approaching herd immunity. Probably there already". Also COVID skeptics: "The whole thing is ridiculously exaggerated. I don't know anyone who's had it".

THE HYPOCRISY! Sick BURN, brah!!

The skeptics would, of course, respond "I'm talking about symptomatic cases, you [censored], how else would we - who won't bother getting tested - even know". And probably then dump a lot of muh sweedun and It's Just A Cold studies, or at least PJMedia / Federalist summary of same. But I'm not OWNING the skeptics (here) either.

I'm here to say that Nick Brown is a smarmy douche on Twitter whose Tweets shouldn't be relayed or cited. They don't make the citer look any smarter either. And if you find yourself typing out such nonsense as cited here, consider a few minutes away from the keyboard.

It might be best for everyone if we all got off that platform entirely.

When you're tired of the isolation

We earlier had ruled out that Hohmanns will meet... ever. Unless they find a meeting table...

Consider the Earthling, once inbound to Venus, whom Hop David has stuck in his 0.8 of a year cycler. Five runs of that is four years for us Earthlings! For Venereans it is exactly twice as bad: they have to go through it all again to get home. If they follow The Rules, that is.

An A synod inbound passing Venus, and a post-A outbound from Venus, both, during C synod some four earth years later, will next enter STL5 - 71 degrees behind Terra anyway, but at least headed in the ecliptic direction. Both become there "A inbound". Here is one last Hohmann return to Venus' orbit. But not to Venus. The erstwhile A synod inbound was Earth based; if it doesn't return to Earth on C, its second four-year whip 'round is destined first for SVL3. Its counterpart post-A outbound is blasting through SVL3 on its way, yes, to Earth. But let's talk four years after that: E synod.

The old A inbound, now cruising out in the STL5 basin, could run one more 4/5-year half-synod to maybe cross paths with the post-E outbound... but that's all that crosses, paths. The A Train's passengers may be fed up with the isolation. Such might board a shuttle to skip back a few degrees of halo orbit, to join the next post-A Hohmann to Venus, thence Earth that way. Again these guys won't meet the post-E outbound; the post-E is too close to Earth. They get to Earth themselves also later but desperate people get desperate.

Luckily for all those in STL5 (and STL4), they are basins. Once there they can skate along and find their own Hohmanns down to Venus. It took 280 m/s to get from STL2 (approximately) to the Earth / Venus Hohmann; it will take exactly that delta-V to get to another Solar orbit shared with Earth. For a halo orbit like STL5 coming from behind, less, I think.

STL5, I think, will have merchants. Some are making their last score before returning to Earth in the good company of that next outbound. Some are just shuttle-pilots. With enough presence in STL5, or in SVL4-5 for that matter, I suspect Hohmann longtermers will choose just to stay there not over E synod but at C. Those will need to wait that bit longer of course.

Who meets whom?

Looking at Hop David's ten cyclers I drew up a diagram for the angles when inbound Hohmann starts. Running in the direction of the ecliptic, and given the almost 0.8 year of the Venus-Earth Hohmann ellipse: that's a pentagram. Morning Star indeed! (That ellipse is 1.3 of a Venus year. Odd number.)

Anyway the inbound from the A synod will find itself 1/5 a circle ahead of Terra on its triumphant return to nothing, at the start of B. 72 degrees. (Actually a tiny bit less but I'm allowing for a solar-sail to keep the most valuable junk together so Earth and Lagrange tradesfolk can get it all back some day.) That's ahead of Achaean STL4 at 60 degrees - still in halo, but we're additionally discussing whatever doesn't stay there. Which a Hohmann won't because it is going forward in the ecliptic, and faster than STL4 is going at that. (Unless it's delta'ed.)

The fun starts because Venus and Earth are pretty close together when a Hohmann starts - any Hohmann. They actually get to the zero degree Conjunction when the inbound and outbound Hohmanns are in orbit / transit. On 9 November 2005 when the Venus Express started (admittedly a few weeks late so Venus was further along), the angle looks less than 45. The two planets and that Hohmann mission between them were all easily in the same quintant if that's a word. And that's when Earth launched its inbound Venusward; Venus outbound would be five days later when this angle is tighter.

And if I hadn't clarified all this, that angle runs behind Earth. The Venusward runs ahead of it but I don't care about this one for its own sake... yet.

Venus outbound, after any inbound synod starts, is in position to boost supplies to that very synod's inbound in transit. That synod's inbound can in turn (especially if it now has spare propellant) help the previous synod's outbound which is on its way to STL4. So who helps outbound?

Outbound should come into view from the inbound synod stray from behind STL5 and four synods back - which of course had also commenced after the outbound launched. Anything still here from Earth will have been stuck in interplanetary space for maybe six-and-a-half Earth years. (And anyone still alive, who didn't disembark at a Lagrange, will appreciate this additional foretaste of home.) For A, that will be the prior Metonic's B. One synod later, the outbound after B inbound would so "intersect" with the old C synod stray. And so on until post-E outbound when those Venus expatriates catch up with earlier A's Earthers.

The walk of shame

People on Venus hoping to climb out of that gravity-well are pretty much stuck there until Hohmann. Venereans abroad, by contrast, always have an early option back to THEIR home - the fry by. From Earth to Venus as of 3 January 4:37 PM MST I couldn't find a relevant chart on the Internet, so I had to back-of-the-envelope this... in crayon.

I am reverting this post and reposting it, today. Because we can do better... much better.

For background, Bob Zubrin discussed Type II inbound as ideally no better or worse than the classic. It just launches at a different day of the year, at a different angle; and takes (much) longer to get to its inner-planet destination. Usually it also takes up more delta-V to start out, but you might be able to shave that off at the destination depending on the angle you want down there.

Our planets are not ideal. Mars - for one - every now and again happens to get out of whack with Earth due to that ridiculous Martian ellipse, running up delta-V and trip-time, both. In a case like that, instead of running the Type I trip right to Earth, some Mars/Earth Type II windows open where you can run it by Venus on the Mars/Venus Type I. Venus' aerobrake delta's your vessel's V to get your package to Earth on the Venus/Earth Hohmann. One Type I and the outgoing Hohmann, together, improve that "II". Cheaper, if slower.

[JANUARY'S CRAYON: An average Earth-Mars half-synod (ignoring eccentricity) is 390 days. The Type I Hohmann trip there chews up 259 of those. This leaves 131 days before opposition-day. But Zubrin claimed a 30 day stay. Instead of half, I'm guessing typical fry-by windows to be ~289 days of the ~780 day synod - a proportion of 0.37. Or about 133 degrees on the circle.]

For Venus, no body runs interior to its orbit fit for aerobraking, except the Sun (LOL). We are just trying to get there - our journeys thither shall ne'er dip beneath her circle. For that one issue is Earth's ellipse, but that's not so bad. The real issue is the relative Earth / Venus inclination because both happen to be solar-system outliers, on opposite sides.

So today, Don Mitchell sets me right... sort of. He discusses two Type IIs and miscues on at least the latter. Former's not looking good either.

Mitchell's first "Type II" was at synod D in the A-E metonic, after 27 March 1972 in the chart. That Type I was a very quick one; but also 6.1 MJ/kg = kJ/g. (Or, since E/m = v²/2... delta-V was 3.5 km/s.) Venera 8 took that route. Mitchell alleges a cheaper Type II trajectory left on April 4, took 170 days and cost 4.1 megajoules per kilogram. He doesn't say which mission that was. Not. Even. Wrong.

Mitchell cites later Pioneer 13 in 1978, the "Multiprobe". This went on a C year, whose Type I window was 15 August. Pioneer 13 went up 8 August; separated into components mid November and arrived 9 December. Mitchell has that as the Type II - this one is at least... wrong. But a better wrong! Mitchell should have discussed Pioneer 12, which as Colin-Hall 1977 doi 10.1007/BF02186467 pointed out launched 20 May estimating transit time of 186-197 days. This Venus Orbiter duly got to orbit-insertion 4 December.

Then... there's Magellan. This launched from the shuttle 5 May 1989. That was an E synod whose Type I Galileo swung by Venus that October. Magellan took two orbits. Its first orbit went to 9 March 1990 arriving back where it was and where Earth wasn't anymore. Magellan inserted Venus 10 August. I don't even know what you call this. Type IV?

From Pioneer 12, let's go with that 190 day Type II usually opens maybe three months before the classic Type I Hohmann. From Mitchell - and take this with much NaCl - Type II saves delta-V only on the D and E synods. Type II always takes much longer than the later Type I to arrive around the same time. If Oppositional, this longer trip goes out of communication with Earth. Tho' it gets to communicate with the SEL3 anticthon. Tho' I am unsure that Pioneer 12 was Oppositional anymore.

I should point out that Type II has a transfer-angle over 180. That makes it good for orbiters... like Pioneer 12. Clearly Magellan was built for similar.

Persian Arvad

Apropos of not-much I went looking up Biblical / Canaanite Arvad. The island earned some minor notoriety among Islam specialists when Lawrence Conrad looked into the hadiths about its Late-Antique conquest. Lately there's been talk about intercepting Hawaii's underground springs to trap more of the water currently slipping into the basalt. It happens that Strabo 16.2.13 discusses how "Arados" hit up a freshwater spring at low tide during times of war.

Someone mooted that the Persian era might have been such a time of war. He'd thought he read it in Herodotus. As noted I found it in Strabo, but I didn't rule out that Arvad might have resisted the Shah.

As I look around, it appears that several Canaani cities foederated themselves for a common league under / against Persia. John Betlyon's contribution to the Oxford Handbook names Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos. Their "D.C." was Lebanese Tripoli. Each polis retained its own MLK, usually translated "King" but "phylarch" will do; these were all commercial cities and the real power was held by the merchants. Arvad's MLK might even have been elected. Arvad had a presence at Tripoli but did not join the rest when they revolted against Persia, which they did twice over the fourth century BC. Alexander was able to pry Arvad off Darius III's network; it stayed by the Seleucid dynasty until the Roman era.

A literal footnote to history, perhaps; but not without interest in studies of the later Persian Empire.

The Hohmann supply depots

The Hohmann trajectory is, in truth, an orbit. It exists to send freight from position to position, which positions happen to be two planets' orbits, on assumption those planets own no gravity for their own. If we apply no delta-V to pull said freight into its new orbit, the freight... keeps truckin'. It will end up where it started. Empty space, with its former planet moved on. But, not forever . . .

It may happen that both planets end up near-enough where they started, too; thus aligning together with their Hohmann. For Earth-Venus, we're in luck - that's only five synods! which is 2919.6 Earth days. Hop David / Clowder figured we could build five cyclers one way and another five the other way. Or however-many to insert freight into one or the other's L3, L4, and L5 spaces.

I hadn't taken this seriously on account I don't like maintaining a vehicle with nowt to do but pick up rads for, what, 2800 of its 2919.6 day cycle (although Earth does get to look at it again, halfway through, and it gets some Lagrange opportunities). I went looking into Hollister and Aldrin alternatives and didn't much like these either so I just figured: let's stick with shuttling two craft and parking each in orbit during the meantime.

It occurs to me that, where the Hohmann inbound won't ever meet its subsequent Hohmann outbound, paths at least will cross where there are five pairs. Not a meeting but close-enow for a cargo boost, nu?

I propose a purpose for our ten regular Hohmann trajectories: nonperishable supplies. Our Hohmann passengers might appreciate a depot en route, from a different Hohmann. The Venus-to-Earth runs would contain propellant (fling it over by tether); the Earth-to-Venus, essential metallics. Both carry food. And of course either planet can add to the Hohmann's cargo on its way past.

On the converse side - space junk. Watch out for that. Although the Lagrange basins in addition to the Solar wind and don't forget two planets all stand to spread that out, some.

Also, if there is a habitat on the cycler route (which I don't recommend): legislate that one shuttlecraft be left docked to it. This is for whoever forgets to disembark. That shuttle can join another Hohmann on its own way, so the stray isn't left alone for 2800 days.

WHICH ONE 11/29: Outbound Venus-to-Earth will meet STL5 inbound. Also known as, four synods ago.

Parking Earth's supplies at Venus

They let us out early at work. So: earlier Wednesday post than usual. Let's look at Hohmann insertion into Venus.

I might not be as smart as some working this field but even I know we're not landing on Venus' surface. I'm here to park supplies in orbit - "supplies" including monkeys. So I want some place cool. Some of these supplies will go to the Landis-stan in the clouds. Some will go to SVL2. Mind, first we have to get there.

I find the easiest way to get Earth supplies to Venus is the Hohmann trajectory. This is an orbit... based on the Sun. We need to shift that to some orbit around Venus. That is: Delta-V. Hop David calculates 400 m/s. He gave us a spreadsheet, which is XLS but easily conversible to ODS for those who don't trust Bill Gates. I am looking at F51 insertion burn from periapsis. Periphrodisis, here. Also called pericytheree.

This orbit upon delta'ing the V shall be an eccentric / elliptical orbit. Venus' influence goes to 610238 km over the surface that is 616290 km radius, not far over Wiki's 616 Mm. (Nor from mine own maximal calculation 616176 km.) So this delta-V gets us an ellipse swinging from that down to - whereever you like, mate. The spreadsheet goes with 300 km up. The higher up, the more delta-V I need.

On initial entry, we're at an angle to the Sun. The "sphere" of influence is squashed. Given a unit sphere and angle θ the C# factor is Math.Pow(Math.Cos(θ)*Math.Cos(θ)*3.0 + 1.0,-.1). So: from straight-on zero radians a 0.87055 factor to, when at right angle π/2, cleanest 1. This initial θ differs from synod to synod over the metonic. Either way I expect initial effective influence to be on the high side; but angle will change in a fraction of the Venus year. I expect Venus' influence to dwindle as far down to 536412 km. No matter what happens I need more delta-V to pull in my orbit.

Such craft which we want to return to Earth on the next synod or two, will prefer resonance with said synod. That 616290 km maximum / 6352 minimum around the planet is, I reckon, 311321 km semimajor. With more delta-V I can increase the semimajor to 317078 km which yields synodic 20.13 days, 29:1 against the Earth/Venus synod. At the same time I'm aiming for worst-case 536412 km maximum... 219335 km pericytheree. Obviously I cannot use the atmosphere to brake me to that.

But that's for the return trip back to Earth. That's a different angle than the angle I arrived. My arrival angle is useless for Earth for the next four synods. The distended orbit I start in is not even good for SVL2 for another, what, 400 days. We do get SVL1 sooner - not the most useful Libration, and the riskiest for capture by our own Sun besides. So in the meantime, I want to circularise this orbit some. (I'll have to twist inclination too but only by, what, 1.5 degrees.) I can lower my e by skating atmo; here, to pull this orbit closer to Venus for an overall (much) shorter "month". Kerbalians have other ideas, doubtless better ones.

As long as I'm adjusting orbit I care less with being resonant with Earth directly; more with interfacing with whatever stations we have over Venus - or, indeed, with Venus herself and its Lagranges, as in those polar satellites. Hop David figured the atmo could knock apocytheree down to 68000 km. Maybe alongside its personal satellite, one of five to receive cargo. Five other 300-68000 km satellites are angled toward the return Hohmann.

For such craft as I'm returning to Earth I've got 467 days for well over 23 "months" to pull the apocytherion in, and then to push it out where I want it.

We depend here on the (new) satellites' mass and robustness. Maybe it takes another synod or two to convert a full habitat's orbit from Venus-facing to Earth-facing. The very angles might be closer on that later pass. That suggests sending spare Hohmann-ready habitats at least modules. The good news here is that Venus got lots of energy and propellant. If we want to push craft to alternatives, yea even unto SVL2: we can! - once we get started.

Once we really get going here: old Earth might dispense with Type II shots like Pioneer and Magellan, forever.

Trump's coattails

Observers of the past American election sometimes discuss the Coat Tail Effect. The Republicans did well at the State level. They didn't win the Electoral College. The Senate was a draw, to such an extent Georgia must redo both their Senatorial elections next January. Now: on to the House.

The Republicans fell short of wresting the House. It would seem like evidence against Trump's coat-tails. Here's Audacious Epigone on that: if each state's Electors were decided from the House elections, Trump actually would have won AZ, GA, WI, PA. And, he notes, Blue NC is an artifact of one race there being uncontested.

The D win in the House looks like a gerrymandered anti-R map, to me. Mind, we're coming up for redrawing those maps. The House looks attainable in 2022.

Epigone figures that independents voted heavily Biden, but that many of these didn't bother down-ballot or even voted R. Other independents sat out the top and voted R down-ballot (I did this in 2012); although I don't think very many this time.

I expect Epigone is right inasmuch as the Trump family will be shadow tribunes of the Deplorables. At least twenty serving Senators don't like it (plus McSally and I'd add Gardner but they're outta there). I expect a few will be in primary trouble. And Georgia Republicans might not fight for McConnell's Senate as they fought (and lost) for Trump's White House.

The Ice Age hit Europe hard

Major paper came to the bioarxiv last night: Nina Marchi et al., "The mixed genetic origin of the first farmers of Europe".

First: Western and Southeastern European H[unter]G[atherers] are shown to split during the LGM, and share signals of a very strong LGM bottleneck that drastically reduced their genetic diversity. The new Neanders, indeed!

Meanwhile, Near Eastern HGs were settling down to do some F-ing. No, not that, perverts; although, having more food and shelter, they were more able to do more of that too. The Near Easterners got to the Aegean, married (minimally) into some of those attenuated SEHGs, and moved north.

Anatolians, here, are not linked to the movement of farmers through the northern Med. They may have been east- and south-facing. Like Hittites in the Bronze Age, viewing their west as a dangerous nuisance.

Supposedly European and Near Eastern HGs mixed to create those Fs in Anatolia and the western Levant. Origin of the AfroAsiatic / HamoShemites? I know Semitic arose in near-historical times, especially if you do not count Akkad in their ranks. Anyway the Levant and Anatolian populations must have done all this separately since there are absolutely no AfroAsiatic elements in the first Anatolian / Caucasian languages of which I know: Kartuli, Hattic, Horite, Caucasian-Albanian. Even IndoHittite if you count that.

One inconsistency in the abstract: they have Europeans wash back to Anatolia and the Levant, shortly after the LGM which spells inter-Dryas, to me. 13 kBC, say. But weren't those Europeans precisely the Balkan Europeans whom the cold had almost wiped out?

Orbital fuel depots

I notice that we got a lot of dead(?) metal canisters floating around in LEO. Some proposals have a "factory" in LEO and other proposals want the canisters reused. I've been pondering a scrapyard, to do both.

Our rockets will do to get extra fuel or at least propellant to any LEO station or beyond. Mind, when they do, that's potentially one more late-stage booster floating around LEO. I further assume that "ion drive" and other electromagnetic means to accelerate neutral propellants don't give us the thrust we want between orbital tiers - when I say fuel I mean things that go bang.

As we get better at handling liquids in microgravity I suggest we find ways to shift propellant across rockets. Some of those second-stage rockets likely still have fuel(s) sloshing around in them. If they don't, our orbital tiers will need this fuel, especially where inhabited by us primates who'd like to go back home some day.

Do we have plans for refueling spent "boosters", in space? Can an old booster with hydrazine, oxygen, and/or hydrogen be refilled with - say - paraffin / Nytrox or nonmetallic salts?

The Milky Way before us

Our sun and its system formed "about" 4.567 Gya. The universe, depending on your Hubble constant, is more approximate: 13 Gya. In between, the Milky Way had formed... as we know it. J. M. Diederik Kruijssen et al. are sketching the formation process.

Galaxies by now are not pure entities. They merge. Two billion years from now we are to merge with the Andromeda; I think we're too big to be a mere part of their spiral, so we'll be forming a spherical galaxy together. There's an analogy with "formation of the Earth", given that our Earth as we know it comes from a union of proto-Earth in this approximate orbit, with Theia come from outside.

So they say that 11 Gya, our Milky Way sucked in another young galaxy, the "Kraken". Then Helmi Streams and Sequoia. Then comes the mergers they knew about (but I didn't), 9 Gya - Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage. The most recent at 7 Gya is Sagittarius, which turns out to be the least massive known; I assume we gobbled in earlier dwarfs that the research cannot yet find. Sagittarius was known from previous studies so proved a good test for the method.

HALO

Thanks to Stephen Green at Reynolds' side of PJMedia, Northrop Grumman passes muster on a high-earth-orbit habitat... design. 2023 for the product.

They want this "HALO" as a waystation to the Moon. Its supplies last over the synodic month; then we need to supply it again. That's by Lockheed's annoyingly-named "Orion" or maybe SpaceX's Falcon 9, much as I love Rocket Lab.

HALO really should be orbiting alongside the Earth-Luna propellant depot along with other supplies. And a factory. It's not the main factory; that one was proposed for LEO and I like it there. That lower factory could boost some of those dead rockets further up to HALO.

I do hope Northrop are shoring HALO against radiation. Or are they running this thing between Van Allens ~15 Mm? I think the 35786 km geosynchronous orbit is actually in the outer Belt, albeit outer-edge of that.

IT'S SH!T 11/14/21: I just looked this up, they're selling to the Gateway. Since there will be no Gateway there will be no HALO.

Rocket Lab

I missed this at the time, but something told me to check: Rocket Lab's booster-parachute works.

It's on the babystep principle. Eventually they want to send out helicopters (or drones) to catch the booster on descent. That part was tested already - for dummies. Here they were testing the 'chute. This booster ended up in the Pacific - but with much less damage than usual, because parachute.

The main part of the mission was to put some more space junk satellites into orbit. That worked too.

Sincere congratulations to the Rocket Lab.

We may ignore the map southwest

I find the northeast of the players' diagonal to make sense, as it clusters to the main D-series route. Since the ghouls are over on the northeast of D1's Players Map route, that constrains what we put there. By contrast the southwest side of the map past that first bypass is a tangled mess. The bypasses southwest don't go anywhere. Therefore the whole southwest poses no interest to D-series parties.

We got a few encounter areas to sit out there to the west of that other, western bypass: LM19, S27. But that's all they do: sit out there; with no effect on players' bypass unless they spawn monsters. The Dragonsfoot community would have LM19 as a trade entrepôt but I don't know that I care.

As to those monsters, I can only work off the modules' Encounter Tables.

The north half of the western edge must be kuo-toa, especially that bolthole N²O²51 but again - why even go there. Or you can skip module D2 by hitting up E²43 then I²47-J²48. Which are certainly gnomish and kuo-toa, respectively. So you're playing... D2.

We must assume that to the southwest is D1-based. The gargoyles own a lair on a primary road into Caverns chamber 4. ZA²35 is a thought for them, if you agree with Dragonsfoot that LM19 is cosmopolitan. Umber-hulks go tertiary so I don't even know they have a lair.

I left the illithids for last. The GDQ appendix told us rather a lot about Dra-Mur-Shou the mind flayers' city down here. Despite that it is not on Dragonsfoot's map, I'd assumed it was that X-A2 sexthex on the western edge, where they got "forsaken city Naavros". The problem with illithids is Aristotelian: the 'flayers are at least as powerful as drow. That means they distract from the plot. A D-series DM cannot permit illithids much of a footprint. As "poetics" go the ghouls and (pace D2) the kuo-toa were pushing the limit.

Overall, it is difficult to inline this stuff with the D-series quest.

Descension

I got out on 1d4chan last week and expanded the Descent into the Depths of the Earth entry.

The "D" series was seminal to the extent that pretty much every roleplayer is aware of it. Our family got a used copy of the D1-2 compilation in 1983-4; my little brother was technically its owner, but he didn't DM so I ended up with it. I would later run him and the other brother through a homebrew adventure which started on D1's main "two hex" map but minus the drow or illithids.

Because this ground is so well trod, I reckon about a full hundred sites have been posted - and mostly lost! - since the 1990s. And they are still at it! Here's an advice-thread.

For one standout in Lolth's side of the 'Web (heh) I found a better Players Map. Amazing it took until 2017 for someone to do this. Although I should retain the icons from the D-series original; I never liked that the GDQ bundle took them away. Also: for spies, icons are proof against anyone who knows Drow language or for that matter the Comprehend spell. Exalted-Deeds takes the... unique take, that Underdark spies there interfacing with the surface are using for their sooper sekrit map the main surface language - English being the standin for Greyhawkian Koine or maybe Keo - but with a cypher alphabet. So: icons! San'te Cuthberte, ora pro nobis . . .

For the DM's side, here is the full DM's Map, with recommendations on what to put in each one-hex, two-hex, six-hex. To the extent there exists a D-series / Drow-Vault Community, Dragonsfoot is it, and Maldin's Greyhawk is canon.

Over the next few days I hope to dissent from this community. Over the past year I've decided that my goal isn't to fill in the original design, if I can improve upon it first. I did rather a lot of this for Taladas and (especially) those other great elvish shadowlands, last May. I reckon the D series gots it comin'.

I'll be concentrating on - rather, around - D1 and D2. D3 is a whole separate issue: there's only one way in, and - from the Players Map run - two ways to get there. The caverns are no longer the sandbox, at D3; the Vault is the sandbox. I propose to treat these as if I was in Wisconsin in 1979: using the monsters available to the D1-3 encounters, with that map's ecosystem. Although I won't entirely ignore GDQ.

Deadly shelter

A new study finds a sweep in East Asia, clustered around the genes affecting coronavirus. Razib Khan goes into the data and finds less of this in Japan, suggesting that it hit the mainland after the Jomon had already settled Honshu.

This blog has had a couple of comments about Palaeolithic / Latest Glacial 'rona. Here we are noting that Neanders didn't get the bug at all, to such an extent that when they interbred with us, they cost us immunity. That immunity was restored in places - like Aurignacians in Europe, heavily involved in I2 and R1b profiles - but not in India despite its R1a Brahmin-caste.

When all this started I was, I freely admit, a basic bitch who thought this was a China Killer, perhaps due to those Neanders, and not to be fretted by us huwite folk, because the old northern winters fixed it for us. This new research tells a different story: it was a China killer... past tense. The late 20s kBC past. By that time the Neanders weren't around to tweak our genes anymore. Nor were the "Basal Eurasians". Nor even the Gravettians.

As genetic markers, that metronome is in the human generation, standing in for a tree-ring. We infer the year from that. As for which genes, we're talking pure human so not the Neander rs10490770; however I also see nothing in the paper by that format, so that's annoying for those of us who like our papers to communicate in the same language.

The "CoV-VIP" genes went under selection 900 generations ago, really getting underway 800-500 with a 870 peak, and staying under pressure until 200 generations. In years that's 23000-3000 BC. For reference the LGM - the Ice Age - was worst 24500 BC, running to the 18s kBC somewhere but really staying Pleistoceney until the Younger Dryas. The protein peak and LGM correlate such that I wonder if that corresponds to shelter in bat caves.

Other lines of evidence point that the Beringians had already left Siberia by then. The Native Americans aren't under this selection, so that adds more evidence to that thesis and a constraint on when they started out: 900 or more generations back. The CoVIDs having done their damage along the Yellow River I expect that future migrants north then had that Cov-VIP advantage, so were able to move north and replace those old Siberians with the Manchu-types living up there today. It would be interesting to see the genetic profile of pre-contact Alaskan Na-Dene and (especially) Inuit here.

The fifth extinction, delayed

I suppose it's that time of year we ask What If No Chicxulub.

The fabled Food-Chain consists of many herbivores for fewer carnivores. The herbivores as a result won't suffer the same genetic bottlenecks as the carnivores. The main herbivores at end-Cretaceous were hadrosaurs and 'ceratopes all doing just fine thankyouverymuch. Perhaps not so much tyrannosaurs by now split between more, smaller continents. (ARRRRGH 6/30/21: Pyrate!)

In our timeline the Caenozoic got hit by a Thermal Maximum 55 Mya. In its wake smaller, smarter, more muscular mammals pushed the (mammalian) top carneys off the top of the food-chain - becoming bears, wolverines, mongeese and of course cats n' dogs.

I propose that the Palaeocene / Eocene spike would still exist at about the same time, if Chicxulub had missed us. That, I think, would have put the big raptors out of our misery. It would have spared the herbivores. Reckon the primates would have been doing okay too. Our humanoid cousins-that-never-were would look back at 55 Mya as the Fifth Extinction to end the Mesozoic and, to be fair, I expect it would be doing more damage than it did in our timeline, simply having more brushwood to burn.

But I've said as much already before.

MODEL 12/21: 120 Mya. Few dinosaurs were harmed in this event.

Antivaxx Catholicism is errant

If we're taking the SP10 Society as to the right of the Latin Mass's furthest Right, they're going Talmudic on the RNA vaccines. They rule most such vaccines, kosher. Jokes aside I expect the Jews have done the same and that the saner imams will be stamping the halal sign on it, too.

RNA vaccines are based on human stem-cells. On topic of telomere-length those cells' DNA are purest the younger you go - down to the foetal level. And, horrifically, many stem-cells used and abused in medicine have been supplied from medically-induced miscarriages - "abortions", so-called. By Christian ethics this is vampirism. Subhânullâh.

Muh Stem Cellz, dumbed down, was a wedge-issue applied from the Democratic Party to oust George Bush and his Congress in 2004. (Do you hate Science?!) Bush with Karl Rove came up with a Solomonic compromise (that's no compliment), to use a fixed number of abortion-based stem cell lines. To bolster up his now-wavering Right, Bush made a run against homosexual "marriage". Short-term, the plan worked for the Republicans... for two more years. Longer-term, researchers figured out how to make adult stem-cells work for most of their needs; the issue was thusly off the table.

... except for antivaxxer paranoiacs, that is; especially if they can worm their way into Catholic philosophy circles. Here's that Fresno bishop.

Whilst it is true optimization is wickedness (pbuh) this tradeoff does not apply to adult stemcells. It would break caste, as Hindus would say, to use cells from that 1972 abortion; so Pfizer is here problematic. But unless you are in a high-dollar hospital equipped with sub 200 K refrigeration, or living on Ganymede, you are probably not getting Pfizer. We're likely getting Moderna.

Then there's the Problematic of using RNA at all. It reprograms your cells. Yeah... but. It reprograms them according to a peer-reviewed plan. It was not in this plan to make your neurons squirt out Xanax nor to mess with your reproductive system. If it was going to do the former, they'd have coded a vaccine for our mental-patients and violent criminals, and Pfizer would be announcing that - with glee - to its stockholders. The vaccine might do the latter accidentally; but that is hardly a problem for its main market, which is old people and sick people mainly (far) past the dating game.

Science, especially immunology, is hard enough for geniuses. The build-our-burger-back-betters are smarter than the average conservative, yes. But so's the family dog. There's a lot of stupid among our BBBs. No way can they plan out a Vaccine Of Evil.

In short, the antivaxx case has not been made as an ethical case. As a result, it is no problem for Catholics, even paraOrthodox / neoNovatian schismatic exCatholics such as found at Sanctus Pius X. So far the benefits are pro-life, and the moral risk is unlikely-to-nil.

Allow me to be as blunt as is possible for a Catholic: Catholics should take the vaccine before approaching the Eucharistic Altar.

And I better not be seeing Catholics making that antivaxx case on the grounds I have exploded above, because I deem them in moral error. It's a trap! Don't be stupid! sleuther propaganda don't work on me. Such Catholics should find other grounds, or they should repent.

The Venerian spa

Israeli research suggests telomeres lengthen in high-pressure oxygen. For those who can afford it. And may I suggest not lighting a cigar to celebrate...

On the face of it, the costs for the main ingredients are trivial where oxygen-content is a matter of adjusting a dial, and where the air pressure is arbitrarily dense. The sticking point on Venus is Boyle's Law: where the pressure rises, so does the heat. I had to shift my farms to the 50°s and work them with barrel-chested high-Amazonians. And they're maximising carbon dioxide.

Air-conditioning, therefore, is that necessity for the hyperoxic/-baric spa.

We float one spa down in the industrial altitude. Since oxygen gas is reactive indeed flammable, hyperoxia is not for the shop floor. Supplying that separate floating spa-bubble with energy costs money, so is pay-for-use. Maybe the rich in their own bubbles can afford personal hyperoxia in lower altitude.

Up with the farms, air-conditioning is cheaper, tho' still a thing at least for visitors. Here the spa's problem is keeping its hyperoxic air pressurised whilst floating that high. Again: separate bubble, pay-for-use. Above the clouds, the energy is near-free; but they'll soak you on the shuttle fee.

The FSB advises on how Americans handle the virus

With that phat h/t to Ace of Spades, Russia Today - funded by a tax levied upon Vladimir Putin's subjects - has Things To Say about how Governor Whitmer is handling CoVID. Unconstitutional! Extreme!

Meanwhile Tsar Putin has his own way of handling the virus. Good luck explaining Russia's Constitution to him.

As to why Vlad the Poloniator is tweaking American state governments, I can only rule out possibilities. I don't think Russians feel particular hatred for us. I don't think even Putin, tho' tactically homicidal, is needlessly genocidal.

Here's the most likely take: A geopolitical rival expecting a Biden win has motive to rile up American citizens against that government, and against its state allies. Vlad likely figures Michigan in particular as ripe for violence.

The Martian village

Assuming we are putting doodz on Mars, glass domes is about where I'd start. Glass houses anyway; illustrations of MASSIVE DOMES with the city inside of it overstate the case. Each dome would be 50 meters diameter.

The planet is cold. Greenhouses are warm, for Mars' long day. And the thermos principle should keep the heat in overnight. Glass is fluid-tight. As to where we find the glass: Mars' surface is glass, in sand form. Admittedly with some iron rust staining it, but that can be filtered out, maybe with magnets.

Robert Zubrin was talking paper-thin pup tents subject to implosion but, let's just call it: he was wrong. The most slapdash temporary mining-colony will be erecting greenhouses as soon as the aliens (that's us) find a semipermanent home there.

Later I'd prefer the colonists find and fill out some underground lavatubes or at least sandstone outcrops. I agree that people like to go house-to-house without suiting up first. But the first surface colony - even camp - will be of glass houses, perhaps connected by those plastic tubes, perhaps by more glass.

MORE 12/12: we (now) gotta talk keeping those perchlorates stable. Since we've got a use for them. SCALE 12/21: Per Casey Handmer, linked above, we all might be better off inside a big inflatable squarish mattress. But still, I want some way of keeping a blowout in one sector from killing all million Martians.

Dominion is the new Diebold

Steve Sailer comes, I expect against his will, in defence of statistics and against the Newcomb–Benford matheyness. I disclose here that I don't like the results either - nor how we got them. But maths are maths.

Sailer is aligning with David Cole\Stein, David Bernstein, last night spectacularly Tucker Carlson, and lately Powerline. There were many elections here a fortnight ago. Some may have been Irregular - and I do support action up to Amendment to ensure this not happen. We have to prepare ourselves that the Presidential election may have been Regular.

'Tis all wearyingly familiar. The complaints against DOMINION! mirror the December 2004 complaints against DIEBOLD!. The big rallies in red look like the cooterhat rally in Denver January 2017 (100,000 Strong, gushed the Post, on that). And I detect the Right's leaders are taking notice, and I'm not talking about the "cucks". The mass whining of the MAGA Cult, never reciprocated by its object, is leading to Strange New Respect for Kevin Williamson(!) over at PJMedia where Mrs Helen Smith [Reynolds] has just ordered Williamson's essays, which she didn't have to do since the essays were all out on the 'web already.

As I look at the precinct-by-precinct map, the arrows blueward and the arrows redward look right to me. Trump worked very hard for the electorate he got, which was a more diverse and female electorate, at the neglect of white working men. It would be impolite to deny him that.

PIZZA PIZZA 11/21: Tucker Carlson TEH PAEDO!! Oh for... Whatever. This marks the point where we play Hail To The Chief.

SO SOWWY 5/1/21: Newsmax says: neeev'rmind.

The Aqsa is not at Jerusalem

Here's a twist: the Saudis are questioning where Aqsa's at.

A "mosque" is a masjid in Arabic, a place of sajjâd / sajda. That is prayer... toward something. The Aqsa, "furthest mosque", is mentioned at the start of sura 17. From my reading of sura 17 the whole text is Deuteronomic and Palaestinian, from start to finish (in that way that, as Nicolai Sinai noted, its followup sura 10 is Egyptian). That's a reading I've read since at least 2003 and have seen no reason to revise, unlike I admit I've had to revise other views.

Mind, this is sura 17 as it stands in the canon. As sura 10 (among others) cited sura 17; sura 17 may have cited other work. And as textual variants afflict other suwar, including sura 17 as you may read in Arthur Jeffery, a variant might have tweaked the beginning of sura 17. Robert Spencer among others wonders exactly when and how sura 17 got pinned down to its present state.

The Problematic in the opening chapters of sura 17 is that sobriquet it allows to its "mosque". Jerusalem did have masgida / mezgitha in very early decades, as the Georgians and as Anastasius tell us. For our purpose: if the qibla focus of worship is at Jerusalem, whatever masajid it has cannot be Furthest. Yerushalmi masajid are closest.

Say this sura's qibla is to Mecca - which I rule out, but if you like we can go with Dan Gibson's less-silly thesis that it was to the petra Rock of old Reqem. From either, there are assuredly places on this very Earth further than Jerusalem. Or is sura 17 theologically trying to promise that there will be no mosque erected beyond it?

I don't even know and, frankly, I don't think I will get to know in my lifetime. I think sura 17 although early, or maybe because it is so early, is too difficult to use as a proof-text for early Islamic geography. The earliest witnesses to sura 17's content, which are of course other suwar, do not touch the Aqsa. We will need more witnesses to that text. About all I can be assured of is that the Aqsa is not in Jerusalem.

What birds lost

From Ineffable Island, a study of bird genetics. Phase two of four.

They are triangulating birds against lizards and mammals - since we have no dinosaurs left beside birds. They are promoting where birds lost such genes as survive among the rest of us (especially alligators?). Phase One overcounted the losses; it turns out that some far-fledged [heh] birds keep these archaisms, to the tune of 142. Phase Two still reports 498 genes not found in any birds today; most of these must have been lost at the baseline.

Losing genes allows, even forces, evolution down a different path. Some of these genes hit the throat. Where a mammal, even a singing mammal like a primate, can sing with an overtone; a songbird has lost this gene so can't. So a songbird sings purely. We may dovetail (so to speak) also with the loss of teeth.

This particular paper isn't sketching out timelines. We must go to the Island to be told when the bird diffused from the dinosaurs (150 Mya - very roundly!), let alone on what sort of dinosaur (that's coelurosaurs). Maybe that's for Phase Three. Or Four.

Science-fiction authors might consider an alien race that communicates entirely through musical notes rather than through the vowel-consonant system only sporadically infused by tone.

I don't care so much either

... but in the spirit of Vox Day, I'm going to discuss Nagorno-Karabakh too.

Over the past few weeks, Azerbaijan invaded a part of their own "sovereign territory", which Armenia sort-of claims. The Azeris won - kicked ass, in fact. Armenia at the time was being run by Democracy!! which we are all supposed to support or else be called nasty names. Armenia's democratic opensociety Build-Back-Better leaders are currently disgraced and ... not leading very much; to the extent there is a leader around there anymore, it's Putin. You know, the Russian guy. Whom we are supposed to detest or else be called nasty names.

I disclose some more sympathy to the Armenian position than to the Turks'. Azeris are interesting here in that they are not exactly Turks. They speak that language but they seem to have adopted it secondarily. An "old Azeri" language once existed - it was Iranian. The Caucasus and Caspian-shore regions tend to attract languages and to keep them around for longer than usual. Azeri Turkish is rather an exception to this rule. As for religion, the Azeris are Shi'ite; I recall they belonged to some nativist heresy and went to Shi'ism later, like Iranians again. The Safavids were Azeri, ended up ruling Iran - if not inventing "Iran". Because for a third time they're Aryans.

Where the Azeris weren't to be found was up in Nagorno-Karabakh. Stalin - Georgian - had given those hills over to Azerbaijan's SSR for reasons, possibly just not liking Armenians very much. After the USSR collapsed and before Putin, the local Armenians simply (okay, violently) got it back. The Azeris recently smelled an opportunity in Armenian incompetence and made a move for it again.

Azeris know as well as I do that their claim on N-K is unhistorical. So they've argued it belongs to historic Caucasian Albania. Not to be confused with Balkan Albania; Albania means generically "white-mountain-stan" I believe, sometimes contrasted with a "Montenegro". Azeris include a Lezgic minority in their north, clearly preceding any Turkish or Aryan presence, so they sometimes claim to be descendants of them. The main literate language in that region, unlike Azeri, survives today: Udi.

Nobody has broken it to the Azeris that the Caucasian Albania was always diverse and, as it happens, often run by... Armenians, when it wasn't run by Iranians. At least in the late AD 600s, my focus, this was so. (The Greater Armenia was politically diverse in those days, too.) As for the Udi they're northern folk, akin to Chechens and various Lezgics. N-K is to (now, in) Azerbaijan's west.

But who really cares about 'oo lived, er, 'ere. Right-of-conquest, bitchez! The Azeris won N-K and could well keep it. Except they made one tiny little mistake. They murdered Armenian captives. And then Turks abroad made some UGLY marches and declarations against Armenians - as a race, wherever they reside. Now, the Armenians aren't blameless here either. The difference here is that when Azeris are murdered, only Turks care. When Armenians are murdered, Orthodox Christians care. And so does their protector, Putin.

I agree with The Saker and with Karlin and with the other Unzite Russophiles on this one. Armenia lost a battle, to Azerbaijan. But I suspect she might not lose this war. Azerbaijan is no match for Russia, and Turkey - under Erdogan - isn't getting what he wants either.

In retrospect, the Azeris may end up wishing they'd stayed put and kept the peace.

OR NOT 10/7/23: They had Israeli help. How's that working out for Israel.

North Colorado is headed back to lockdown

I saw Red coming the first week of this month when the politicos were threatening Orange. Red arrives on the 20th. Purple is when slowdown becomes lockdown - I expect that's next. Maybe by Thanksgiving; absolutely afterward, because nobody takes this stuff seriously, so the case-count will rise, and the hospitalisations following, and the quiet nurse- and doctor-strike, which is when the shutdowns go ultraviole[n]t.

Thanks, Trump voters!!

On topic, Ace of Spades is officially an antimask site. I fought the Mask War (as FenelonSpoke called it); I lost - I am banned there. I lose all of my battles, where my battles are for others' hearts-n-minds. I literally cannot enlist a fellow Catholic in a debate against witchcraft. Hearts-n-minds are at issue here; we were supposed to be wearing masks and taking our activities outdoors by our own free will. But enough about me...

As masks go, I have pointed you to the antimask side. That's the side which asserts that Building The Wall works against motivated humans, but that building a barrier does not work against freeform floating proteins. I could (and thank G-d for HBDChick for keeping us informed) discuss that masks were always advertised on the "my mask protects you, your mask protects me" paradigm. I could talk about how masks reduce R but only by a set amount - HBDChick did relay a number, I don't recall it, something like 0.25 - which R-minus must be combined with other mitigatives. I could talk about the decade of life lost to the disease. Among those who die outright, mind; not those hit with the Long CoVID - including mental illness.

But I cannot, at the HQ; because I am banned.

We on the Right are being asked, from Right sites, to Stand Up For Free Speech. Exercising that Free Speech on Right sites will get you banned, but they expect us to stand up for their free-speech. Even, or especially, when their free-speech is freedom to speak a damned lie; and our free-speech is freedom to deliver facts with links and to extrapolate accordingly.

We need the Right perspective, say they. After all we hear the Left's takes in all the major media outlets; don't we want a second opinion? (They may hear those takes, but they refuse to listen to these takes nor to acknowledge them. Oh, SCIENCE says . . .)

Maybe we don't, brah.

MUH SWEDEN: Yeah, that. MOAR SWEDEN 11/19: Academy of Sciences asks for masks.

SYSTEMS 11/20: When you will not voluntarily live as civilised men, civilisation will be provided for you. MEANWHILE: This was going on. They still won't mask up.

New Orleans mattered once

Next up on the LOCKDOWN List: Kilmeade and (second-billing) Yaeger, Miracle of New Orleans. Basic, star-spangled account of rah rah 1812. I do find a few points of interest, though.

First up is that the battle mattered. I admit: I didn't know it mattered. I bought into that whole eccchshually line, that it was fought after the treaty was signed. Well... yeah, but there was fine-print on that pact; the Brits held the line at the territory "already" conquered. The Brits were convinced they were, in that meantime - given a little leeway to get the treaty over to Washington City - about to conquer New Orleans and maybe also Mobile, with a taste of Spanish Pensacola. If the Brits had occupied these cities, Madison's government was not going to be able to dislodge them short another war, which the Americans didn't want, because up to then they'd been losing.

Another interesting point that seems to have been lost on all sides (except Andrew Jackson's, and maybe Henry Clay's) is that New Orleans was the United States' most vulnerable and most vital point-of-entry, especially for Tennessee on up. President Madison and the first two War Secretaries he ran through thought they were conquering Ontario. New England thought Madison was an idiot (they were right). The Brits thought they were out to teach some Yankee dogs a lesson, by striking Maryland. It took at least a year before the major players realised - wait a minute, America has rivers, and that geography points south to the Gulf.

The Gulf Coast, in those times, was (legally) divided into Mississippi Territory, the Spanish coast "Florida" east of Mobile on the Alabama river, and New Orleans. New Orleans was basically French. Jefferson had "bought" it from Emperor Napoleon who had stolen it (back) from the Spaniards, owners of the territory by a treaty signed with an earlier French government.

But who actually lived in all that land? Modern "revisionists" - who aren't revising anything anymore - will say "derr duh Indians I mean First Nations". Well... up northwest, sure. But we are talking 1812, when nobody dared venture to Arkansas et al.. The land at stake in 1812 was northeast. Different Indians lived in Mississippi Territory: Shawnee, Cherokee, and Creek. The Creek were the most dangerous of these, being led by one of those métis guys.

Andrew Jackson, being about the first American to understand where the real war was, could just about get to New Orleans by boat but he wasn't going to keep it unless the Indian Nations were sweet. So that is what he set out to ensure, largely despite the bumbling from his Washington command.

Also frightening (if you're American) is how close Jackson was to death the whole time. He was battling dysentery and some serious wounds, not all inflicted by enemies. You heard it right: Jackson was a dueling man, a border-ruffian through and through. Without Jackson's eye for geography I am unsure the Americans were set to keep the Gulf Coast. The Brits likely wouldn't have been able to hold it either, nor even the Spaniards... directly. I suspect the correct British play here would have been to set up a Creek protectorate along the Alabama river, with New Orleans as a chartered "Free City" a la Goa or Macao. (Hong Kong was a city of 1842.)

Maymuni's witness to the Sahifa so-called

The Pakistani scholar Muhammad Hamidullah published a document under the name "Sahifah of Hammam ibn Munabbih" in the 1960s, and continued to revise his treatment of it for over a decade. The document in turn purported to be the report which this Hammam took of accounts of the Prophet Muhammad, mainly via Abu Hurayra.

I heard about the Sahifa from Islamic-Awareness, in the early 2000s. I did not and do not trust that site, and I trust Hamidullah less. Harald Motzki didn't trust any of this either. Not finding Hamidullah's Sahifa elsewhere I went to Berkeley in October 2005.

Then in Menlo Park from 13 October 2005 I draughted some "notes". I polished that project Wednesday 19 October 6:20 PM at home in Houston - and posted it to my SBCGlobal site. That page's argument was, like many arguments I came up with before 2009ish, not a good argument. So when SBCGlobal killed our web pages, this page was one I left to die - although I still harboured that page's prejudices.

I am here this evening to rethink its premises, enlighten'd by Ugi Suharto back in 2002 at the university Putra Malaysia (pdf) pp. 153f with expansions and updates, based on Mizzi especially. I did not have access to Suharto at that time. So, on to my Second Take:

Hamidullah's text is a critical edition of two manuscripts as contain a common collection of Arab traditions ("hadith"), all with the chain of transmitters (Arabic "isnad"): 'Abd al-Razzâq from Ma'mar from Hammam thence mainly from Abu Hurayra. Hamidullah prefaced this with an argument that the documents witness to a primary source of Abu Hurayra's eyewitness accounts.

Elsewhere it turns out that 'Abd al-Razzâq transmitted a whole book of Ma'mar: the Jâmi'. This presently exists as part of his own legal compendium, Musannaf. That (per Motzki) is 90% transmitted through Dabari; the appendices comprise a book on "the people of the two books" through "Hudhâqî", lastly the Jâmi' of Ma'mar which disproportionately (but not totally!) concerns us here. One al-Hasan bin Yahyâ further transmitted 'Abd al-Razzâq's tafsir containing much Ma'mar content; Tabari would use a recension of that. This Jâmi', especially, overlaps extensively the purported Sahifa. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, another student of 'Abd al-Razzâq, overlaps a lot of this as well in that Musnad his grandson transmitted.

Ibn Hajar knew of a series of traditions that Ma'mar had transcribed from Hammam; all these have but one single chain (Hamidullah pp. 63-4, from Tahdhib XI 67 #106, I 574). I find this in al-Mizzî, 30.298-9 #6600, on what Abu'l-Hasan ['Abd al-Malik ibn 'Abd al-Hamid, d. 274/888] al-Maymuni had from Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. As I translate what Ahmad told him:

His brother Wahb relayed from him. He used to go out on campaign, where he'd acquire books for his brother Wahb. [In those days] Abu Hurayra held court in al-Madina, so Hammam would listen to him. [When Ma'mar knew him] Hammam was old, his eyebrows shaded his eyes, so his vision grew dark. [The sahifa] is about 140 ahadiths with a single chain of transmission. Its [content] is divided in the [Hadith] books; and among them are things that are not in the hadiths.

Maymuni here gives out that in his time a Ma'mar < Hammam < Abu Hurayra bundle was being disseminated as a separate and canonical collection - not entirely overlapping with excerpts in Ibn Hanbal, that Jami', and others. As Suharto notes, we may also look at Ibn Sa'd's fifth volume, which thanks to Aisha Bewley is in English translation now.

The manuscripts witness that such sheets were in circulation from Maymuni's time to ours. Hamidullah told the truth for once.

What the Jews didn't say

Cohen's last chapter compares Jewish goy literature under Islam against that under Christianity. Persecutions happened in both places, we are all agreed. Most of these were under Christians, especially as one went north, as I think Cohen demonstrates to satisfaction even to exhaustion. But persecutions happened under Islam as well and in those cases, the Jews often didn't tell us. Some narrative may appear in Islamic chronicles, and may be mentioned en passant in Jewish letters or ad-hoc reminisces - but often goes unrecalled. This silence, reticience anyway, rather casts doubt on the entire Cohen enterprise. (Here is why I played up Mutawakkil earlier. We Christians these days often find ourselves doing the Jews' apologetic on their behalf.) So what's up with that?

We do take into account that Jewish historiography along the Muslim side of the Med was ass. Still, you'd think a few more poems, at least, might be composed than were composed. At least.

Part of this may have to do with the Jew's image of the semipagan Christian in the European village, against his image of the misguided Muslim in the North African city. [We can set Italy, the Byzantine realm, Spain and midi coastal France in the middle.] For the [Talmudic] Jew, the Christian was a diabolical fiend; and why wouldn't he be, since Christian bumpkins expressed that very sentiment against Jews. If a Christian did a Jew wrong in Europe, the Jew understood - goys will be goys. If a Muslim did a Jew wrong in Baghdad or in al-Fustat, the Jew was... well, confused. How could he do this to me?, he'd ask. Often he'd blame some other Jew who provoked the Muslim.

Also, as Cohen notes, plenty of Jews under Islam - under pressure - converted to Islam. The martyrdom-accounts among Ashkenaz came (much) later to the Sepharad. Because the Jews of Islam wouldn't martyr themselves in the face of Islam: Jews would just add Muhammad to their already-copious lists of prophets and carry on, as marrano. (Especially once even Muslims like Biqa'i were arguing for the restoration of Torah.) Look at the Donmeh under the Ottomans.

So through to the Fatimi / Buyid era, Jews joined Islam and related whatever tales of persecution they had to now-fellow Muslims, through their tradition. Not so much through their own which, as we've all bemoaned, was frankly inadequate at that time.

Nationalism under Islam exits Islam

Mark Cohen p. 168's claim that Islam discouraged "nationalism" is arguable. But as I think on't, I suspect it's an argument Cohen will win. On points, as it were.

Patricia Crone's Nativist Prophets is a fair compendium of how "nationalism" - nativism, then - expressed itself under Arab Islamic dominion. Cohen might even be nuanced in light of Cohen's earlier chapters, which wax nostalgic on the convivencía practiced between Jew, Arab, and Berber across North Africa.

As long as each subgroup wore their ethnic markers in the souk, all lived in harmony. Separate but equal! So, yes, I judge Cohen correct; insofar as all would accept their lot in life under Islamic fatalism.

On occasion one group or the other rejected their lot. At that point the Nativist Prophet would appear: Barghawatas among the Imazighen, the Khorram Dên in Iran. Among the Jews: Abu 'Isa, or those guys in Yemen in Cohen's penultimate chapter. Maybe Shabtai Zvi.

I find that people on the outs under apartheid do not tend to accept their lot. Islam is apartheid: it takes what it has learnt in its dhimmi law, and applies it to Berbers, Iranians, and Indians. Those who argue for that - like Cohen - are arguing that case against the European alternative. But the actual primates, under this second-class state, don't compare their lot to the lot of their fellow citizens in some foreign land. They compare their lot to the lot of their alpha chimps. And they rise up.

As non Arabs, they abandon the Arab gospel.

Quibbling Cohen

Here is where I will proffer errata / corrigenda to Mark Cohen's Under Crescent & Cross. Overall keep in mind that Cohen has, overall, convinced me of this particular thesis of his; as surely as Kevin MacDonald has convinced me that the Byzantine Empire had a few antiSemites out and about, whatever each author's minor errors. To what degree I disagree with Cohen, or with MacDonald for that matter, on philosophy: I can deal with that elsewhere.

I have already quibbled Cohen's reading of 'Abd al-Razzâq (or is it Ibn Jurayj?). We absolutely must bring Milka Levy-RubinLuke Yarbrough and lately Sarah Mirza into the Pact of 'Umar; p. 164 on Mutawakkil is just plain wrong. For some of this Cohen was writing in 1994 and, honestly, as of 2008's edition there wasn't much more added to our body of knowledge.

As I look around the innertubes for other critiques, I think Shatzmiller's apologia for Christian tolerance amounts to quibbling given that Cohen does, indeed, speak of European tolerance... sporadic tolerance. Although, sure, more evidence is better evidence.

I excoriate this man Cohen for not including a Bibliography for ease of reference. You want PDF pirates? This is how you get PDF pirates.

Cohen p. 171 falls into the same mistake about Gregory of Nyssa that our own antiSemites do. Chrysostom would have served his case better - or, at all. I'll allow that Cohen's point goes more to Catholic acceptance of this pseudepigraphon.

Cohen notes what historians of Islamic-era Jewry lament: the lack of Jewish historiography within the Orient. Cf. Hoyland, 238: woeful. Although, the Letter of Sherira does exist. Sherira, I propose, based his Letter upon such minor chronicles in Jewish Aramaic as Andrew Palmer relayed to us 1993 in the "West-Syrian" Christendom. We are simply not as fortunate in our Jewish studies; we do not (yet?) own a Jewish Zuqnin-Chronicle.

Hunting further around, I find Daniel Pi[e]pes, basically agreeing with this book. He thinks that Islam's approach to Judaism and to Jews hardened from the thirteenth century on, in parallel with the northern Christians'. He wanted a more diachronic organisation to Cohen's project as a result. I am skeptical that Pipes read this book closely enough.

I'll help Pipes out here, albeit for an earlier time: Cohen's definitions of "Islam" and "Christianity" aren't static, despite what Muslims and Christians themselves will often tell us. Islam on the face of it looks easy: as Cohen points out, normative Sunnism. But al-Andalus / the Maghreb swapped legal theories: they had Awza'ism inherited from the Umayyads, then the Malikiya from the Hijaz. Out in Iraq, it's again caliph-centred Mu'tazilism by way of Sufyan al-Thawri, swapped here for Shi'a-friendly Hanifism. Cohen doesn't quite take these changes into account, exactly legal (with some ideology of the Islamic state). I find Cohen better on Christianity, although Justinian aside he's mostly looking to the Latins. Here, I see a difference between "The Church" as local bishops largely independent of the contemptible Dark-Age Roman episcopacy, before the AD mid-eleventh century; and the muscular Papacy of Leo IX, Gregory VII and beyond. Cohen seems aware of this himself; noting the long tail of Theodosius II and then Burchard bishop of Worms issuing his own canon-law before these Popes, in AD 1012.

A wandering star

As you can tell I've had Mark Cohen, Under Crescent & Cross on The LOCKDOWN List this week.

This is another one in the Power Hungry file. For each text I bought the book years ago and, at the time, didn't feel I had the background for it. For Bryce, I needed to catch Chernobyl and Michael Moore. For Cohen, I needed more Spain - I needed Fernández-Morera. Possibly/technically português.

At stake for Jews is whether they (we) should trust one side or th'other. It sure looks like life is better for MoT's in Long Island these days than in, say, al-Raqqa; but can they count on that? Al-Raqqa was a different place under Caliph Harun. At stake for the rest is the moral-dimension. Should Christians feel like we (they) are better people than Muslims, or vice versa? Both Islam and Christianity own text at a scriptural level - Divine writ - which cannot do otherwise than distance these religions from Jewish scripture (including Mishna). Both also own a Tradition. Can either be better? ... should either be better?

Cohen argues the longstanding majoritarian (but not unanimous!) claim in Jewry that the Muslims were kinder to them than the Christians were. As Fernández has pointed out, this is a case that needs be argued, not assumed. If you caught a Jew on a bad day, he might well go into raptures about the Muslims... elsewhere and elsewhen... having just fled a pogrom in Moldova. A different Jew on a different day might have a different story to tell. The Mizrahis from Baghdad post 1941 done tol' them stories, at length. So did Maimonides about the Almohads. Cohen is aware of all of this so proposes a sifting-of-evidence. Overall, quibbles aside, Cohen Gets It.

Also here must go definitions of "Judaism". I think this is what Cohen misses.

As noted this is Mishnaic Judaism mediated by the (Sasanian-Iraqi) Talmud. (As with the Shi'a, we may excommunicate the Karaism, at least from our calculus.) I am sorry to report that as a Late Antique Oriental document, the Talmud is hardly superior to the Qurân, in terms of how it positions Jewry against its neighbours, and in terms of its recourse to magical demons. The Talmud's neighbours include Christians and cannot include Muslims, who did not yet exist. Those Christians as Church-Of-The-East were, moreover, very very like Augustinian Catholics. (And not like Monotheletes.) Not all Jews accepted all the Talmud. More to the point, not all the Jews played the same economic role.

Islam inherited the thirsty Late-Antique slave trade. Jews, owning text banning them from keeping slaves for very long, got into selling them, to others. North of the Alps and Massif, keeping slaves over winter was uneconomic. Here the trade was predatory - few were there to buy slaves, and only foreigners would sell them. And... to whom? Cornishmen and especially Vikings did have their thralls, but. With the reduction of the Cornovii and especially the taming of the Norsemen, slavery dried out. That left the local northern Jews to compete with gentiles for farmland and trade, and/or to get into moneylending. Usury, we Latins call it.

Leaving aside the Christianitas, northern Christians had a real case against Jewish practice, which Muslims along Algeria did not. As the north fine-tuned a Christian philosophy, they discovered how slave-traders and usurers justified their predations.

Cohen, then, provides a service in detailing how Christians were less tolerant of Talmudic Judaism at base, than the Muslims. I would make a case that Christianity itself is necessarily hostile to the Talmud; where Islam is not, beyond swiping at stray innovations to the deen Ibraheem which Islam cannot accept. I venture, though, that the problem may lie less with Christianity than with the Talmud. (Some Jews have felt similarly, which is how we have ended up with Talmud editions and extracts which no longer contain passages obnoxious to modern WEIRD sensibilities.)

Ibn Jurayj on the People of the Book

Let's read Makkite kitâbî-law more closely.

'Abd al-Razzâq was one who relied upon the notebooks and lectures of teachers before him. Ma'mar bin Râshid is the most striking source, whether or not he is the main source: the Musannaf's Maghâzî and closing Jâmi' sections are so heavily Ma'mar that we consider them recensions of Ma'mar's books. Sean "Tron Honto" Anthony even ventured a translation of the former into English, to rival Ibn Ishâq.

The late (and MUCH lamented) Harald Motzki argued that 'Abd al-Razzâq had books from Ibn Jurayj as well, but incorporating these into the mainline.

The ahl al-kitâbayn book as the "Hudhâqî" contribution to our Musannaf presents it is broken out into segments, abwâb. The first four each start with Ibn Jurayj: #19209, 19217, 19222, 19228. The fifth is bracketed Ma'mar, #19231 / 19235; Ibn Jurayj is there absent. Sixth is Thawrî #19236; tho' here our man gets the second word, and the last (19243). Seventh Ibn Jurayj starts off again #19244, then eighth 19250-4 resuming 19260-1; and ninth 19264-6.

Now: I am no rival, much less heir, to Herr Professor Motzki and this blog is no place to compile a full database. But I can float a hunch. Ibn Jurayj made a specialty of kitâbî ahadith, to such a degree that *Hudhâfî < 'Abd al-Razzâq could transmit this as a book with commentary from other Razzâqî authorities. 'Abd al-Razzâq did not intend it as part of the Musannaf... but he wanted it taken as seriously as the Musannaf.

'Abd al-Malik Ibn Jurayj (80-150 / 699-767) was, himself, a grandson of a Christian: George or maybe Gregory. His father 'Abd al-'Azîz seems associated with the Umayyads, I'd guess converting in Egypt 70/690ish. 'Abd al-'Azîz would have moved to Mecca in the aftermath of al-Hajjâj's reduction of the place. 'Abd al-Malik was born and he taught there.

Our man is related to have written a Qurân-commentary (published this last month!), and a Manâsik, and a Sunan - this Sunan, Motzki argues, was the core of much of the Razzâqite Musannaf. I am convinced that a Ibn Jurayj text, even if only oral, underpins the Ahl al-Kitâbayn as well.

I do question, however, that Ibn Jurayj intended his kitâbî-law lecture as part of the Sunan. As with his student I think we're looking at a discrete book, hitherto unknown.

Amir's mirror

Mark Cohen evaluates dhimmi law, finding that Muslims usually didn't treat this as a dedicate topic. Usually.

The exception Cohen finds is 'Abd al-Razzâq whose published editions include, in the Musannaf, an internal "book" on the People Of The Two Books, ahl al-kitâbayn. Cohen must have got this secondhand because he calls it the ahl al-kitâb. In Habîb al-Rahmân al-A'zmî's classic edition, this section picks up volume 10 page 311 hadith #19209. To what extent does this exceptio, probat regulam?

The ahl al-kitâbayn book / section starts with its own transmission-chain: Abu 'Umar Ahmad b. Khalid < Abu Muhammad 'Ubayd b. Muhammad al-Kishuri < Muhammad b. Yusuf "al-Hudhâqî" (I suspect a mispoint for Hudhâfî). Note: not Dabarî as usual. It is also the last section before Ma'mar's Jâmi' which is volume 11.

This rather suggests an independent text attached to the Musannaf elsewhere. 'Abd al-Razzâq transmitted the Musannaf mainline to one company of copyists; and he transmitted the Ahl al-Kitâbayn to another.

I moot that kitâbî-law did exist, and was copied. Cohen remains correct inasmuch as the topic was never grist for the Musannaf / Sunan genre much less Sahih. The Musannaf was meant to adjudicate Muslim conduct among Muslims, mostly. Kitâbî-law was a mirror of Maghâzî (and Sîra) collections. As the Maghazi advised on conduct in war abroad, kitâbî-law handled the infidel within. There were places where so few kitâbîs lived, like the Madina in the Hijaz, that the topic wasn't worth a full book. Even as Maghazi goes, Ibn Ishâq strikes me as an entertainer concerned with the whole arc of the Prophet's heroic life.

From place to place, kitâbî-law competed with treaty, especially where the ahl al-kitâb were more numerous. The Pact of 'Umar so-called comes not from the law-books, but from the treaties: over the last decade see Milka Levy-Rubin, mainly based on the Samaritan experience; also Mirza. Under caliph Mutawakkil, the Pact - or some canon of it - became law and superceded the other books. (Although Arietta Papaconstantinou questions that.) SEE NOW 4/29/23 Yarbrough.

Theodosius' Code

Roman Emperor Theodosius II in Constantinople started a law compendium AD 428 and kept at it through the 430s. In the meantime Nestorius got booted from the capital. We own a contemporary and fairly-unbiased historian for it all, in Socrates Scholasticus.

Mark Cohen, in Under Crescent & Cross, there asks Is It Good For The Jews. Cohen is of mixed mind.

The Code sets out a bigoted Christian state with protections for his Tribe, but limited. It's Race Law, one might say.

Constantinople would update Theodosius, and harshen it, under Justinian a century later. But the Latin West has considered Justinian an enemy so didn't adopt much of his updates. Roman bishop Gregory (r. 590-604) defaulted to Theodosius. Even the Visigoths in Spain - no friend to the Jews - preferred Theodosius. A century after Justinian Heraclius would simply ban Judaism; thus, that Emperor didn't even try to bring Justinian's Code west. So the West didn't read Justinian well into the High Middle Ages. For us Latins meanwhile, Theodosian Law remained baseline Catholic Law, especially given the first-millennium weakness of the Roman episcopate, "Byzantine" or pornocrat.

As I see it, Theodosius II started out as a Nicene Christian moderate until "Saint" Cyril of Alexandria mobbed up his mob and forced the Empire's hand. Patriarch Nestorius, the true Nicene in Constantine's City, lost that political war. It was long noted that Arius and his "Eunomian" followers were Judaism-friendly if not -curious. Nestorius got associated with the Eunomians and, thereby, with the Jews. (Along with Chrysostom. LOL.) Theodosius in this position of weakness had to take a harsh line against "Nestorian heretics"; the Jews got caught up in that dragnet.

Saint Augustine was dead by then. Although Theodosius does not cite Augustine, and never acknowledged him as a saint; Cohen believes that Augustine's shade tempered Latin interpretation of Theodosius.

The Sunni caliphate

The Buyids were a Twelver Shi'ite family who lorded over al-Iraq until Tughril Beg wrested it for the Seljuqs AD 1055. As contemporaries with the Fatimids across the Red Sea, and since their own (Arabic) imam was occulted, the Buyids saw fit not to impose themselves as Shi'ite caliphs as the Fatimiya did. But like the Fatimis (except Hakim), they tolerated the other religions. Among the tolerated subjects was that leftover 'Abbasi caliphate in Baghdad.

As the Buyids lost ground abroad - all Egypt fell to the Fatimids - the Iraqi caliphate grew more assertive at home. That caliphate chose the Four Schools' Sunnism with Hanbalism highest, and the exclusionary Zahiriya rejected. Enter the Akham al-Sultaniya. There are two but I deal with Mawardi's here. A short summary of Mawardi's political-theory can be had from Ringgren 1972 (pdf).

Mawardi promoted the "imam" over "temporal" suzerains... such as the Buyids. Melchert has Mawardi composing his Ahkam under al-Qadir's successor al-Qa'im, after AD 1045 and published before his death 1058. Al-Qa'im would outlast both men and the Buyids, and indeed Tughril (d. 1063), ruling - governing anyway - until 467/1074. Al-Qa'im lived to see Alp Arslan wallop the Empire at Manzikert (but let us not ourselves overextend, here!). Melchert suspects it was under al-Qa'im that Mawardi abandoned his oecumenism to become just another Sunnite NPC like Abu Ya'la.

Overall, as Twelvers, I would say the Buyids never had a chance. They ruled on behalf of an imamate who... no longer existed on this Earth. Mawardi could be read as Shi'ite-friendly theory, in case the Twelfth Imam returned; it was convenient for everyone that this pretense be kept up. But in the Iraq, the Sunnis had an imam already. They had Shaybani's imam: the 'Abbasi caliph, still un-deposed. Mawardi knew this and everyone reading him knew it, as al-Qadir and then al-Qa'im re-arrogated to themselves the temporal powers of al-Mu'tamid and then al-Muqtadir a century before. When the Seljuqs took over, their ideology allowed for 'Abbasi control in Baghdad. The Seljuqs rectified the names, as they say in China.

A tale of two Ahkams

Christopher Melchert in 2010 evaluated two titles "Ahkam al-Sultaniya".

The first - he argues - was by Abu Ya'la al-Farra, not to be confused with the musnad-author Mawsili. Abu Ya'la wrote a compendium of Hanbali law for caliph al-Qadir, r. 381-422 / 991-1031. He elsewhere refuted al-Ash'ari, a mainstream Sunnite. Melchert thinks Abu Ya'la may have had more time for the Mu'tazila.

By then, another Muslim jurist had already established himself: Mawardi, sixteen years senior.

Mawardi's Akham al-Sultaniya consistently parallels Abu Ya'la's - b.t.w. not by plagiary: he will say "it has been said" during these parallels, where his later tradents don't delete it for space. Mawardi although a Shafi'i himself infused Hellenistic, Iranian, and - like Abu Ya'la - Mu'tazili thought into his work; less so in his Ahkam however. This one's work piqued the interest of the Muslim world at large and has stayed in print. Indeed, his Ahkam piqued as far as the French and English worlds, since it has been translated into both. Abu Ya'la got copied, if at all, by Hanbalis; the Ahkam being among the survivors, and even that not to the West (yet).

Because Mawardi was older than Abu Ya'la, a lively debate ensued in Islam over which one wrote first, carrying on to our times among the Orientalists. I think, though, that Melchert has the best of it.

Plandemic

Razib Khan, erstwhile Unz.com blogger, vouches for Alina Chan[g].

This looks like the PLANDEMIC! meme might not be as dumb as Fred Reed moots @Unz.

Reed is certainly in his rights to mock the Right commenters who sometimes said this was no big deal, sometimes wept bitter tears over the seniors in Cuomo's nursing-homes, sometimes demanded we Do Something about the Chinese Coof. Always we got these dueling messages at the same sites, often by the same bloggers.

Personally I always knew that this thing was bad and that the Chinese Communists had a large hand in throwing it out here. But, not being an epidemiologist or a geneticist myself, I could not evaluate Alina Chan's particular take on it. Chan was buried under the chaff we were reading at Khan's former blogging-ground Unz at the time. As noted by Reed.

Biden energy

Right Twitter made hay with the images of Trump rallies, yuuge and frequent; against Biden rallies, not so much. A minority report pointed out the energy on the Left was being expended in racial-equity protests. This report was also Rightist but focused on the evening riots, to tar Biden with that brush. Sometimes Rightists noted THE HYPOCRISY that the Left made noise about "super Spreaders" for the one but not for th'other. I'll observe here that HYPOCRISY talk rarely works coming from hypocrites as it did.

The verdict is in: the racial-equity protests were political rallies. And they worked. Maybe even the violence worked although Left media won't likely voice that out loud.

American voters want whites to relinquish their "privilege" - meaning, rights and property. Whites who object to that are - to the majority - deplorable, and deserve the looting. I don't exactly blame the voters, although my reasons differ.

Second stage

The first stage rocket is getting caught and reused at home. The last stage is left... to drift in orbit. WIRED presents a plan to hollow these stray rockets for space-stations. The mastermind is one Jeffrey Manber, CEO of Nanoracks; they're looking to next May for attacking the junk. [ALSO 11/4: Popular Mechanics, but that article isn't as good.]

Meanwhile because everything is political the WIRED article excoriates the Clinton / Gore Administration, for scotching reusability in favour of the International Space Station. I'll finetune here that 1993-4 was effectively the Hillary / Carter administration, with an assist from about the second or third worst Congress in my memory, and that voters remembered, which is how Hillary failed 2016. For Hillary-Carter's defence I'll do my In Fairness thing and say that the ISS was demonstrable science, and that we arguably needed a precursor to doing the more-advanced science - like for reusing space junk. What was the alternative to the ISS: having nothing up there, over the past decades?

This reuse plan has issues. Some of the issues are legal. On that topic, I'd propose: if you leave space-junk behind, it remains yours ... for a year. You have that year to grab back your junk for whatever peaceful purpose. After that year, it goes to that Life In Hell law of the briny deep: finders-keepers. And there's no grandfather-clause; all that sh!t the Soviets and Nixon tossed up there over the '70s is up for grabs. I mean, the US should look to its own hardware first, before pirating some Hindustani orbital poo; but that's just out of poo-fessional courtesy, and if the Chinese or Brasilians grabble it first... meh.

I also must warn that rockets that get you to LEO are, also, in LEO. So getting them back might not make them junk anymore... they remain traffic, tho'. [UPDATE 11/23] First, I'd like most in the same orbit at around the same place. I have my eye on that LEO factory. We should have a whole scrapyard around the factory, corraling all this crap in one place for reuse and/or repair. And some habitat-ready spent tanks can be raised to higher orbits, for use there.