One more Syriac palimpsest

I missed this piece of Syriana: David Taylor, "New developments in the textual study of the Old Syriac Gospels" (2020). This introduces a publication provisionally-titled A New Fragmentary Manuscript of the Old Syriac Gospels: Sinai Syriac New Finds 37 and 39 ...

...for Gorgias. Which means we won't be able to afford it. But we can all appreciate the introduction.

Taylor teaches about new texttype "F". We learn that the manuscripts "C" and "S" are to be aligned with this "F", which like Lewis' "S" is also a Sinaitic MS. We also learn that certain Peshitta MSS lean toward Old Syriac whilst still being Peshitta. The current project to deliver a Peshitta for Anglophones is called "Antioch Bible" by (sigh) Gorgias.

Taylor less-happily reports that "S" itself, being a rescript / palimpsest, was poorly published in its first phases - for which Taylor is swift to absolve Lewis at least, on account the technology of 1900-era Sinai was primitive. Taylor notes the "annoyance" that "S" itself had messed up its exemplar, as all copies do; whereupon Lewis had often intuited the original reading against the pages before her(!). Of the new "S" readings which Taylor relates here, I most appreciate that for Luke 19:29-30, which names the two disciples: Mattai (=Matthew) and Philip. Taylor promises to publish a better "S" as well, after Gorgias gets "F" out there.

"F" was probably composed around the time that some upper-Euphratian translated Eusebius; they share similar archaisms. "F" proper was copied not long after composition, since it did not fix the archaisms (although I do see the malkhutha d-shmaya where classical Aramaic should prefer the construct-state). It overlaps text also in "S" so is not a simple outtake from those fragments. It agrees with "S" often but not always, so is its own Old Syriac and not a copy nor exemplar of "S" as is VI4 of "C". As to Joosten's supposed Palaestinian jargon, Taylor doesn't say.

"F", at last, offers an Old Syriac for the first part of Mark - made notorious by Bart Ehrman, who noted readings in which Jesus was "irate" in the presence of a leper, particularly the Bezae D/05. (We Catholics would suggest that our Lord was angered at the leprosy.) "F" may have dared its own harmony among Mark MSS, like the Byzantine tradition in Greek. Taylor instead notes, "F" agrees with Ephrem: Now he, Jesus, had compassion on him and, being angered. Ephrem, Taylor had also noted, was commenting not upon Mark but upon a Syriac Diatesseron, which was a harmony across Gospels, not MSS. So, "F" could be less bold: early enough that it couldn't buck the Diatesseron yet, which Diatesseron mingled Mark's true reading with that shared between Luke and Matthew (and others?). Ehrman might note that either way, he wins.

More drastically, "F" asserts this from Matthew 16:18: upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Sheol shall not overpower you. I never liked the textus-receptus, that the church - a structure - owns some means against the gates of Hades also a structure. The "F" reading makes more sense. It is also a lectio difficilis, being particularly Problematic given Shim'on's rocky legacy in early Christendom. 2 Clement and the Johannine Gospel (chs 1-20) agreed that Peter was a coward and a fool, who acted more the foil to Jesus in life than as the executor of his Church in post-life. "F" by the way has much John from 1:39f, but lacks John 21. The Diatesseron - apud Ephrem - tamps John's anti-Petrine sentiment by its nature, and agrees with "F" here too.

Then, there's "C", the Curetonian - famed for its pre-Bezae sequence Matthew, Mark, John, Luke (then Acts, in Bezae only). "C" is herein verified as a later update from its own exemplar. Reminds me of that orthodox Mashhad Quran in Ibn Mas'ud's order (which MS itself would get reordered).

The starship with black sails

Avast ye hearties; Paul Gilster is talking aerographite, for solar sails. I'd thought lightsails were supposed to be reflective. Aerographite is absorptive - it is black. But it can also be stretched thinner than known canvas for mirror-sails. What the black sail loses by inelastic momentum, it gains by... not existing (as much).

Gilster cares because Gregory Matloff and Joseph Meany are talking interstellar. Gilster has also cared about the solar-lensing region, or maybe out to wherever Planet Nine is out to these days. For the Baghestan, aerographite sailships can be used for non-Tsiolkovsky small package sailshipping, closer to home.

[SCALE 10/5: one gram for 32 hours to Mars. The sail itself is likely gram-scale; for reference, a penny is 2.5g. Suppose we are sending a dozen sail-loads at once. We might get some appreciable cargo to my NEO-station in about a week: flashdrives and seeds/pollen, I think. That timespan further depends upon synodic-period, like Hohmann and cyclers. But those are major cargo; we are talking quick postage here.]

Gram-level sailshipping demands lasers - or at least an initial push sunward. The authors suggested 0.1 AU peri' (21.5 solar radii); but now going down to 0.04 AU (8.6 Rsol). I worried a bit about aerographite... melting. To that end, Gilster relates Matloff and Meany: maximum operational temperature of 3,500 K and a payload mass that is one-tenth of the sail’s. The authors expect absorptivity of 90%; albedo of 0.1. 8.6 Rsol is "only" 1655 K; there's a chart which points to 319 g (3130 m/s²) for a speed of 0.02 C, skating Einstein. Down there, I'd worry more about the cargo melting. Or the sheer disc of the visible Sun, firing photons from almost half the sky. Or coronal eruptions.

A laser hitting 1655 K for 3130 m/s² might miss the cargo, just hitting the sail. Still: 3130 m/s² would seem to rule out fragile cargo, like Laika the Russian goodgirl... and like the sail. Matloff and Meany therefore prefer a laser at 1 AU (Lagrange? Luna?); a gentler push can get the sail up to 0.033 C. The laser would be "1.8 km" (long?).

If there's a destination; this would, its own self, also want a light-source - to decelerate the sail. Maybe the Q-drive, where ions; or aerobraking. Rubblepiles might offer a cushion - lithobraking. Alpha Centauri of course has three lightsources. For local destinations, they should be supplied with their own honkin' lasers. Anyone up for pursuit-curve maths?

Footfall

I spent the last week slogging through Niven/Pournelle Footfall. So here is my review: it was bad.

What, you want more? Um. Aliens attack the Solar System, olifant style. (Everyone in the book calls them snouts or fithp but I like the Afrikaans version best.) Their tech is Hard SF Tech so they got here by ramjet. We have to fight back, with the Atomic Rockets arsenal which Pournelle had mooted to Congress over the 1960s and 1970s. Including ol' Boom Boom - called "Bang Bang" here but punctuated by WHAM WHAM.

The main review to read is Nicoll's; whom I'll disclose, isn't one of my favourites either. The SIGMA reference was cheap.

Then there's this: I regret that I did not reread this long enough ago to ask Fred Pohl how he felt about how the book divides the SF writers into military veterans or liberals. I would also have liked to ask Theodore Cogswell what he thought. I don't believe we are missing anything by skipping Pohl. Cogswell, I don't know. Dallas "Mack" Reynolds is the best Left author I've yet read in hard SF but he'd died by 1983, likely why Nicoll didn't count him.

The book although lacking in merit as literature has some use as a snapshot into Pournelle's thought over the SDI / Ronnie Raygun era. Niven cared about aliens; Pournelle really didn't. Pournelle instead was arguing for a robust presence in space lest the Soviets, or any other adversary, take space first. From space, an adversary can rain down all manner of horrid things upon us like the "flying crowbar". If the adversary were evil enough it might pull a big rock upon an ocean. I actually like that Pournelle had constructed this argument via aliens; the Soviets might not be the most-dangerous adversary to take space. Nowadays we gotta worry about Xi's China. India gotta worry more.

Nicoll is likely right that this authorial duo's initial intent was to drop the rock upon us first, in Lucifer's Hammer; and then, in this book, reveal that aliens had dun it. Kind of reminds me of Stargate on its way to Not Independence Day.

On THAT topic, Independence Day owes much to Footfall. There's a massive cast of characters who band together against a common threat; they even catch an alien and interrogate him (male in both). Both start as in-part a political thriller and, indeed, Tom Clancy blurbed Footfall. This book precedes Red Storm Rising by a year. As to Emmerich and Devlin, 'tis clear they lacked Clue One about what Niven and (more so) Pournelle were trying to do. Admittedly the ID4 characters were more likeable; I hear, because the directors let Smith and Goldblum ad-lib.

Anyway since these aliens aren't stealth-attacking with a big dumb rock, and since even in 1985 observers were running out of likely rocks, Lucifer's Hammer wouldn't do as a first act anymore. No dino-killers here; just something that "only" hits five times worse than Tambora, the best the olifants can scrounge.

As to the winks to other SF authors like Heinlein (as "Anson") and - I am told - Cherryh: Nicoll noticed; I hadn't. I wouldn't have minded if I had noticed, like in Deep Space Nine's famous "it is reeeal" ep. I did roll my eyes at Niven-Pournelle murdering a journalist, by means of an environmentalist who now - OH THE IRONY - is supporting the Orion. Talk about cheap.

Crustless world

This site has noted a few "lavaworlds" before - but by that, we intended possible lava pools on the crust. Wolf 437's planet isn't quite there yet; Gliese 1132's and LP 791-18's are more like Io. A true lavaworld means ... no crust. The entire surface is liquid rock, which should happen over 880 K. Ohio State is on it: more like 1700-2400 K (the release says between 2600 and 3860 degrees Fahrenheit).

That's for silica. Metal planets like GJ 367 b might melt at lower temperatures. But they're rare.

That silica-melt temperature-band is attained at 55 Cancri e.

Lava should bubble over rock; remember, water is an outlier in its density over Ice I. How is the surface molten, is now the question. OSU are talking layers of the mantle. Maybe there's only one layer, above the core (by analogy with our planets, its own thing - a metallic ball, liquid or solid or both). Or, maybe the melt sits atop a hard lower mantle. The third option is that the melt is on top, a solid middle mantle, and a liquid lower mantle. This might be because lava is more compressible than solid silica (which I didn't know). OSU think the latter two are more likely than a pure liquid mantle.

I do have to ask what the atmo will look like, considering escape-velocity of a superheated liquid sea passing energy to, what, nitrogen. And wouldn't most molecules, like, break down to ion plasma? Mind: if the atmosphere is thin enough, liquid doesn't transfer heat by convection. If by radiation, large-volume worlds leach out heat slower (and they're next to a star radiating that heat right back in there). Starflight "airless lava worlds" are... a thing.

Starflight had other problems. Lavaworlds all sit very close to their star so aren't wise to orbit. The delta-V cost alone is a problem for Mercury let alone 55 Cancri e.

6 Hebe

I've done Ceres (lots of Ceres), Vesta, Pallas, Juno... I'll skip #5 and head over to #6, a stony one like Juno and maybe what became Dimorph.

Be careful doing a search for "Hebe", by the way. Apparently it's code for something disgusting. Like "Ganymede" honestly; except that "Ganymede" is much more famous, so search-engines aren't as nasty for that. Um. That moon of Zeus in Alien Legacy? Maybe?

Hebe is 3810 kg/m³ so rock-dense and also irregular. It spins 30% of an Earth day, so, 7.2 hours. Fairly fast but not Bennu-fast. I expect it is, indeed, mostly solid rock.

There's been talk that we Earthers own meteorites from Hebe like we got 'em from Vesta. These are the H-chondrites, and circumstantial evidence is strong for that general hypothesis. Problem: there's a H-chondrite asteroid family as well, and these do NOT come from Hebe. Hebe doesn't have the mass for them all. So perhaps there existed, once, a proto-Hebe; which has since shattered more completely than Vesta has shattered, leaving Hebe as the largest shard.

K Blutstein is one who uses H meteorites as a Hebe proxy. He calculates much useful metal on Hebe (pdf) despite that Hebe is S not M. Hebe has the advantage over Psyche that Hebe is, I think, closer.

Still: getting to Hebe would be a problem. Hebe orbits outside Mars and is eccentric, so sometimes far outside Mars. Inclination is high as well at 14.736°. And I don't know how any colonists are going to dig in there and spin it.

Even if Hebe herself be not worth the visit; other S-types are closer to us, and might be more easily settled and processed.

The new C++ compilers

Among the pages I'd looked up when summarising the Unity fracas were pages about C++. I recalled that Q_rsqrt isn't awesome anymore, even compiled as "unsafe" maybe in Rust. So - why not? - because life is different for a now-a'day C++ programmer than it was when I was almost failing COMP 212 at uni.

C++ (and Rust) is like most languages compiled. Back when Gene Loves Jezebel were still cool, C++ compiled to assembler. At uni, it compiled to something just high-enough above assembler that it wouldn't destroy an expensive Sun / Solaris workstation when you (well, I) ballsed it all up. We took assembler classes too, in COMP 210. I think that even in x86 32-bit, C++ compiled close to the metal; hence why id Software had to plunder 1970s papers on doing /√.

Nowadays C++ yea verily unto Rust really doesn't compile to assembler anymore, "unsafe" or not. It compiles to something that links-together instruction sets. One reason: multiprocessing. We want program X, like an Unreal Tournament remaster, not to hog it all up from such program Y as, er, Windows herself. But C++ is still better - compiled closer-metal - than, say, C#. Although C#'s libraries, like Unity and even (I think) System.Numerics, are often done in C++ below-the-hood.

As to the best compilers these days: obviously I'm noo hear. I hear that open-source has been beating back the compilers done by the major corporations, opposite from game-engines where Unity and Unreal are years ahead of Godot. We used Gnu's "GCC" in the early 1990s; GCC is still around. CLang is Gnu's competitor here. Most other companies, like Embarcadero, are atop (in this case) CLang. Microsoft now allows a CLang compiler alongside its own. I don't know what's even happened to Borland.

Anyway, if you have some maths you'd like optimised, it were best to hunt up a library, since these are smarter with the newer processors, whilst you're probably assuming a 8086 16-bit DOS system.

BACKDATE 9/29

The sign of Jonah

'Tis sunset on 10 Tishrei. Let's talk the Akītu-of-autumn; let's talk the Ninevene Prophet.

TheTorah point outs that its autumn cleansing-period exists on the Ugaritic plan for marking out the new year. This Tishrin new year is also the Seleucid reckoning, and (October) Byzantine. Iraqis instead planned their new year around Akitu in the month Nisan - for spring. The Pesach is likewise in Nisan. Maybe that's why Darius - the Persian - touted Pesach for the Jews of the Syene cataract; there is famously nothing of the Exodus in there.

Jonah did not preach in autumn, even if we assume the book fictional. He preached to Assyria just prior to Akitu, in spring.

Which brings me to John's Agnus Dei, who takes away sins. Luke doesn't go there; his Jesus is the Levitical Torah's ox. I wonder however after John, with his Passover lamb. Did John believe that Jesus was the atoning sacrifice of the Iraqi springtime Akitu? ... were the Johannines a protoSyriac sect?

The synod of Syracuse

Our canon credits Paul with two letters to Corinth - as said canon has preserved. The second one might be a collection of Greek letters, some not to Corinth proper; also these refer to a "Letter of Tears" which might exist buried in there but also might just be lost. Either way Paul cared a lot about Corinth. The long letter 1 Clement cared too; it is to Corinth. From "Rome". Where's Rome?

Technically Paul didn't write to Rome; he wrote to the Romans, and he did it in Greek. That implies that Paul wrote it to Roman citizens in Italy, generally - although some might have been in Rome. 1 Clement issues from "Romans" to Corinth; I ask: which Romans? I do not think that 1 Clement was aware of Luke and the letter certainly did not accept Acts, given its Pauline terminus in western Hispania (pace this guy). I see nothing special about The Civitas in 1 Clement. Its "Romans" sounds like a synod. Whence the bishops? Did episcopoi yet exist?

It happens that plenty of native Greek speakers still lived in Italy, but they lived in Magna Graeca - in south Italy. Among the largest and oldest Greek cities here was Syracuse. This actually would become a capital of the Roman Empire, under a "Constantine IV" remembered as Constans II. Syracuse was by origin the daughter-city of ... Corinth, as Carthage was of Tyre.

Clement bore a Latin name. I don't dispute Tradition that he sat a bishopric at the city Rome. But.

Paul pre-Vesuvius, and 1 Clement, inhabited a Hellenic world. Their Christendom was Greek and Mediterranean - Latin was the language of Empire, secondary to Greek at best and hostile at worst (UPDATE 9/24: it occurs to me that a Latin version does exist of 1 Clement as may be concurrent: e.g. it does not transliterate "presbyter" but calques "senior"). I propose that even as "Romans" such Christians were rare in Roma herself. Inasmuch as they assumed a relationship with Corinth, that could be done best from Syracuse.

So I doubt Clement for the primary "elder" who issued "1 Clement". The most-interested Western presbyter, for the wrangling of Corinth again, was the Syracusan presbyter (probably not Clement either). Although the Western Assembly en-banc perhaps already harboured Questions about which should take the lead; hence the vagary in authorship [UPDATE and hence so-early a Latin, extant].

HORIZONTAL RHETORIC 10/10 - One church to another...? Coming from "Rome", lowly Corinsians (whose city Rome had leveled) could hardly miss the point.

Kalašma

I'd thought we were done cataloguing and editing the Hattusas tablets but - it seems not. Here is a new one, announced late last night Western time. In a newly-described language: Kalašmaunili.

Like a lot of not-Knesian, not-Akkadian text at Hattusa this is a ritual from some other city. It is introduced as from Kalašma. Daniel Schwemer and Elisabeth Rieken reckon that it is an Anatolian language, more like Luwian than like Knesian or Palaumnili "Palaic". Kalašma is supposed to be northwest like Pala, so - a Luwian dialect isn't what we'd expect over there.

How they can tell - unsure. They know it is a ritual text. They may be able to tell it is parallelic and poetic. They may also be able to tell sentence-structure and morphology as looking Luwian-like. Synonyms should be easy to piece out from the babble. On the other hand... it may also be full of jargon not spoken in proper Luwian or Knesian - nor in Palaic. (I am guessing that "Kalašmaunili" is what the Knesians of Hattusas called this language.) Hence why they cannot just read it (bro); if it were simple Luwian, that should be easy by now.

There is a lot of hype about it being "IndoEuropean" but Anatolian is properly a sister to IndoEuropean as classically delineated blah blah blah you've read me say that before. What we might get, from Kalašmaic, is further constraint on the proto-Luwian language, and more clarity on Anatolian as a whole.

The big chill: Venus

Two years back I mused what might happen to various planets if they got Birch's orbital ring: they get cold. I had most interest in colder Venus. Last July John Strickland brought up how to chill Venus, again (not to be confused with Bishop Joe). I reckoned I could do better in 2021 and... I still reckon as much.

Birch himself had opined upon SVL1-Lissajous (pdf). Birch (here) and Greg Leal were going for the quick-fix, which will take solar energy away from Venus orbit thus, er, blocking it from Venus' satellites too. Strickland, I sorrow to report, is similar. Inasmuch as Strickland is hoping to land upon Venus, I say he has missed a step. I get particular hives when people bring up muh cathedrals for a multigenerational project. I want something at Venus' AU soon. I have long said here that nobody much wants Venus for its own sake; they want Venus for its central location, its cheap energy, and its mass conducive to stable orbits.

The orbital ring brings Venus' own resources into easier-access, starting low-orbit. The ring can drain up volatiles especially oxygen, sulfur, carbon, and nitrogen (certainly better than my first shot at this). This helps Leal's project of removing at least the carbon, Leal not saying much about how it be done. Leal (now Strickland) said(/say) further: shading Venus will create a new equilibrium there; Jeremy Lichtman in 2018 has added, if the ring can radiate the heat. That carbon dioxide now supercritical turns to liquid, and eventually (under 2 bar N₂) an albedo 1 snow.

Chilling Venus will lower the atmosphere so the ring must lower their tethers that much further down. It might not even affect the colonists; Handmer (for one) never did much approve Landis' floaty cities. And now the planet proper can be landed on, maybe even mined. Just without (much) water.

I hope that the orbital ring should be inhabited so with a population with some motivation to keep the place running. I don't think we can ask for settlers at SVL1.

Someone should have asked Leal - who wants those venereal volatiles? I hadn't the answer at the time, but now... asteroid Atira crosses that orbit. It is stony and barren. Atira'll take this stuff, in return for silicates and iron. UPDATE 10/14: If only to get it started.

Launchpads as commodity

This present Administration (but don't call them gangsters) has the word out that Elon does not go to space today. (FAA says October looks good; Interior / Fisheries says no.) Yesterday Zim noted that Blue Origin has been building launchpads, in Florida. But aren't doing, you know, launches. Hey - I might have a plan!

The key here is location. FAA - supposedly - rules the air; Interior is looking at the land... supposedly. Honestly I doubt that Interior own jurismuhdiction between a Union State, another nation (Mexico here), and a body of international water between them; Louisiana (say) is hardly affected. Interior see no interstate concern with unlawful migration into Texas; Biden got his own glorious wall. This leaves what happens at the Rio Bravo for NAFTA - at best.

Elon himself has more concern. I gather Texas overall has more concern. The Bushies in the present Legislature are unlikely to care but maybe the Texans can clean House, later.

Anyway, since the BFR test "mishap" (which somehow was worse than Rocket Lab losing actual freight), I'm considering if we could commoditise our launchpads. Say: Elon can't launch from South Padre. Fine. Then nobody gets to launch from South Padre. NASA is allowed to launch that stupid SLS from Canaveral. That means everyone gets to launch from Canaveral.

Some other business needs to sell launchpad services, which can be to Elon, but can also be to Rocket Lab or to NASA. Some other business like Space Origin. The launchpad company is responsible for rating their launchpads for Raptor 2 or (soon) Next 1337. Interior can deal with them.

Meanwhile Zim has noticed that SpaceX have Constitutional considerations on some of the Federal animadversions to other SpaceX practices here hiring. I reckon that Texas might have some considerations of its own, against the Fisheries and Interior, out where there is no Federal interstate commerce-clause interest.

Jonah as follower of Elisha

On these high holy-days TheTorah has been discussing the Prophet to the Ninevites, Jonah. Jack Sasson points out that the book in our canon echoes aspects of the calling of Elijah to Prophecy. It reads like Hebrew text its author(s) aimed to inject similarly, into the 3-4 Reigns narratives.

If so, Jonah's last editor gave up the attempt. He shifted it (belatedly) into the Twelve Scrolls of the lesser Prophets. It wouldn't enjoy much support in Qumran (neither did Ruth) although, for us, the Gospels will note it (in Jesus' name) as foreshadowing of Christ's sojourn in Sheol.

I must at this point wonder if there existed Hebrew books of Elijah and Elisha before they got spliced into the Deuteronomic History. Was Ruth a similar attempt? It may be that Deuteronomic editors sifted available content such that 1-4 Reigns gathered Elijah and Elisha, but ignored such as Ruth. Of course the Deuteronomists were never going to accept Tobit.

Anyway after the Exile, Jonah's books, if they did exist 500 BC - or even centuries earlier which this blog is not ruling out - would have been considered Diaspora texts. Esther was a Diaspora text, as were the sources for Daniel. Jonah aimed at the right time for 3-4 Reigns... but the wrong place.

Unity considered harmful

Last week Pixy Misa noted that the Unity game-engine's c-suite planned to charge per-download of the software done on their engine. Now: personally I don't write high-end games, which look difficult to do, in any language. But I do run maths here, and that's mostly what games rely upon, vectors and trigonometry and Newton-Raphson. On account I use C#, I was tempted to use Unity for the vectors; but (thankfully) I took the downgrade from double to float, System.Numerics.

I figure that the fog has cleared enough that I might, belatedly, poast something. (I'll likely backfill the last couple days, later...)

My first inclination is ... not to care. High-download, free-to-start games stink of "freemium" pay-to-win stuff. Unity reducing its association with such predatory "games" seems like what Jim Sterling has demanded for decades. We'd still have the problem of griefers deliberately downloading a game hundreds of times to stick it to the game's dev. Also, you know... pirates. But these might be handled by improvements in TOS and maybe Unity's ability to spot what's a real (dev-billable) download and what isn't. Um. Spyware DRM?

Yeah, Unity's overlords led by John Riccitiello do not seem men of principle. They had merged Unity with ironSource. They had earlier been in talks with Applovin'. There is talk that if a developer includes ironSource, they don't have to pay to Don Giovanni his vig. Applovin' is now publishing guides on how to move off Unity.

Among the Unity games is Caves of Qud. Qud doesn't need the highest-end vector mechanics. Its developer Brian Bucklew spent a weekend getting the core of the game from C# into GDScript, which Godot uses. Bucklew meanwhile had learnt a few best-practice tricks as the compiler threw errors at him. So once it's all in GDScript, mayyybe he can consider porting his files back to C# (if not Unity).

Godot and GDScript are open-source. Unity is considered a good platform, with a solid development team, despite their overlords. Godot meanwhile has the reputation - I don't have the quote - that it is good for your first game. I gather, for a 2D game or for something cartooney like Ecstatica.

Sam Pruden started a GitHub account for the sole purpose to complain, that Godot is bad for "raycast" - better known 'round these parts as raytrace. As open-source, Godot is not API. Godot does a lot of processing high up the stack, such that it loses the deep Microsoft dives into DirectX which Unity promises.

Meanwhile I hear we might not need all those raycasts after all. There's talk about Gaussian Splatting, with ellipsoids. Yes, those pixelated balloon-monsters from that Ecstatica game. Sure: that was back in the early 1990s, the DOS / Windows 3.0 era. It is 2023 with higher resolution. New problem: if we're not deliberately aiming that aesthetic, we expect millions of ellipsoids. These chew up RAM. Programmers are looking into reducing the memory hit(s).

NELL-1

Since the last hibernation post here, I'm just adding additional pieces: like the external lung. Here's another piece: the skeleton.

Personally I don't want my Belters taking hits from lowgrav and from radiation. That's why I've been looking into spinning up space habitats on the quick and on the cheap, for low populations. But the shuttle to my stations can't be as large as Bennu. And what if the shuttle misses? At some point someone is going to have to lounge around in a hammock.

Back to my habitat, which will be low gravity at first. All throughout there's the industry topside, and trips to check on the outer shell. The crew won't get the worst effects, but I expect at least bone to suffer for those crew who are EVA or just topside for too long.

They call the wonder molecule NELL-1. The trick is to create a smart "bisphosphonate" to deliver that to the bones rather than, say, to the carotid artery. And to make it last long enough to bind to the bone. It's been tested successfully on mice.

Sift II

A fortnight ago I suggested how to start a dumbbell colony: by sifting the big dumb rocks out of the pebbles and regolith; so's to dig into the latter, easier. Once at the pebbles and regolith - then what? I figured - then, we'd want in on the topmost layer of the pebbles and regolith. I'm starting the spin easy, at Luna gravity 'pon the roof: 15m down for S-types, 30m for C-types.

I reckon we can "dig" more easily with a second net. This mesh will be a little finer than the rough thick-cabled net which got our big rocks onto the counterweight. What I'd do here, would be to sift out the smaller-but-still-sizable rocks - themselves no greater than 15m ideally - above the pebbles-and-regolith. That secondary net (tertiary, counting the net around the counterweight) would be 400 meters wide and less than 400 meters long (because curved). Once this roof is hoisted above the naked gravel, we lay down epoxy on that gravel, and put up some rough rock columns periodically. Ceiling maybe ... aluminium? titanium? or even plastic. We want a design as can keep gas from escaping a flattish rectangle.

As we fill this bubble with gas [UPDATE 10/14 744.1 kg/dekameter³, which I don't envy for rockies], we lay the rocks back down there. Fifteen meters of shield above, all worthless chunky rubble. Below-decks the colonists get that much more percentage of regolith from which to make glass and fibre. As for how high the ceiling of our inbetween gap: that much depends on spin-rate and the distance from the fulcrum, not to mention how much gas (in practice: nitrogen) we can spare to fill it with. The great cathedrals are 25m-50m aloft. For a S-type without the volatile-reserves of a carbonaceous, I recommend a modest start. 15m approaches 50'; a dekameter height makes the maths easier.

The upper-parts will mainly look like the gymnasium in Revenge of the Nerds. Low-g and high-nausea do suck, but it's all better than what ISS inhabitants get. Top/innerside makes a fine site for running-sports - less shock on the knees! Although, for ballgames, Coriolis encourages only one goal. That is: baseball or cricket, neither which I recommend at low-G in cramped conditions.

As time goes along, I am hoping to turn as much regolith into building-material as possible; to burrow into the lower layers. Meanwhile scatter some of the topside rocks down and aft. At the same time we're lengthening the distance from the fulcrum, to increase gravity belowdecks. I was aiming no more than 850 N/m² stress on the bottom/outward shell.

The top low-gravity layer will become stepwise, fore remaining 300 m above the bottom, aft tapering off. Also as the rock above gets heavier we'll need and want less of it, to counter the airpressure.

Leonardo the heretic

There's a movie out: The Inventor. Most Rotten-Tomatoes reviews are favourable for what that is worth. It concerns Leonardo Davinci's last years, with the pope Leo X and the king of France Francis. Davinci and Leo fell out; Davinci was a dissection guy, which is... kinda gory, but more to the point he had some notions on the soul of the foetus.

Davinci did well at explaining that a baby shares genetics with mother and father. A Christian can compare the Gospel teaching that a man and woman in marriage have restored the rib to Adam. Which is why it is so jarring that Davinci went on to say that the baby shares its soul only with the mother, until birth. Obviously they don't share a brain. Therefore they don't share a mind.

... unless Davinci's sense of "soul" isn't about body and mind, but about an ideal. Davinci is making a move upon the law - about what women may do with "their" bodies. If the baby is part of the mother then there is no sin in aborting it, until... whenever. The Church also has ideas on what a "soul" is; Davinci crossed at least one of these. Except in this case, Davinci crossed outside reason as well as doctrine.

I do see why Daisy Ridley wanted in on this one. "Blue Fox" might not have had to pay Comcast and/or Warner for the reviews this time, either. It is current-year fodder for suburban white moms and their nonbinary children.

2 Clement's "harmony"

The Phoenix Seminary got into the latest papyrus a few days ago. Without getting into details, this claim stuck out: This is the first known occurrence of the weaving together of material similar to Luke and Matthew, on the one hand, and material similar to — and otherwise known only from — the Gospel of Thomas, on the other.

I was like - wait, what, don't we have Thomas-leaning stuff from gospel-harmonies; and what about "2 Clement". The former is Problematic in academe so let's leave that aside. "2 Clement" although relaying Thomas lore ("Gospel of the Egyptians" lore, to Clement Alexandrine) doesn't quite "weave" that lore into other sayings. What POxy-5575 shows, be the possibility that 2 Clement's source might have woven it.

As with Justin's source. Albeit, Justin went without Thomas, and, being a haeresiologist, may have avoided this "gospel" deliberately.

Let's return to the second-most-famous departure of 2 Clement from Synoptic orthodoxy, here chapter 5's parallel between Matthew 10:16 then 28. This homily had cited 10:32 before that, in chapter 3.

The Matthean evangelist is recalling a long speech, not to the people around the new Sinai this time, but to the future Apostles. Matthew 10 likewise as 6 reads like a collection of earlier material. Luke will be relating much the same material but in different orders and contexts; hence the "Q" hypothesis, presumed common to both.

2 Clement 5 boldly asserts a narrative here. As in Matthew, 2 Clement has Jesus compare His entourage - presumably without His protection thus (also) Apostles - to sheep among wolves. This time Peter challenges Him. It is in that respect that Jesus points out that once the sheep are dead, they are done with earthly suffering; thus, for the sons of the "Father" (he is not "heavenly" in 2 Clement) the afterlife, wherever that be, is of more concern. In 2 Clement this flows naturally. More so than in Matthew, anyway.

I find no overlap between 2 Clement and POxy-5575. POxy-5575 only has Jesus' homily, with no dialogue nor narrative content. In particular: POxy-5575 / Matthew 6 commands μὴ μεριμνᾶτε where 2 Clement / Matthew 10 alludes μὴ φοβεῖσθε.

2 Clement elsewhere cites a saying as "the Gospel" as parallels Luke 16:10-12. Luke here owns no canonical synopsis; but follows this with the two-masters comment, which is Matthew 6:24. Koester assumed 2 Clement was using a Matthew / Luke harmony.

But 2 Clement's Peter dialogue looks more like the homilist is using something else entirely. If not POxy-5575, and not Egerton - then what?

Justin Martyr and POxy-5575

On Rubbish-Heap Papyrus 5575, someone called Dave asked of Peter Gurry a question: where's Justin?

The short answer is, Justin's in the First Apology chapter XV. Usually that's where to start; Justin will break up his argument a bit in the Dialogue with Trypho[n], "Tarfon" to the rabbis. Wiki relates Bellinzoni (1967) and then Koester (1990) that the Apology has been collecting and adapting a catechism which he'll continue doing until XVII.

So I have imposed, upon Gurry, mine own little synopsis. I've hijacked the man's "Thomas" column, hereby Greek #27 alone, for Justin's stuff in red:

What I see overall from Schaff's footnoted English translation is that Justin's catechecal basis was probably Matthew. Justin's quotes started Matthew 5:46,44 and carried on through Matthew 6. "God" (Justin v. 14) / "the Uranious Father" (Matthew v. 26) feeds "these things". Where Luke and POxy#5575 would introduce the rich-fool parable, Justin doesn't. Justin v. 15 will repeat his opening v. 14 like Matthew v. 31 repeats v. 25a.

Where I would see Justin (or his source) in parallel with Luke (alone) is that, although Justin v. 15 is all-too-aware of Matthew vv. 26,32's Uranious Father, v. 14 just says God. POxy#5575 at this point had also cited the Uranious Father.

Justin adds a reference to "of the θηρίων" alongside the birds (Matthew's πετεινὰ; not POxy#5575's ὄρνεα, much less Luke's male crows). There's none of that in the nonJustin text I find... but Matthew and Luke do note θερίζουσιν. I see that Justin makes no reference whatever to birds (or beasts) reaping crops (or building granaries); and I cannot find such in POxy#5575 either (unless it's in the Rich Fool story above). So maybe someone in Justin's orbit, by θηρίων, nodded to this harvest in Matthew and/or Luke, by wordplay.

In further negative-common with Luke and POxy#5575, the catechesis - whether or not Justin composed it - won't declare this whole farrago a part of the Sermon on the Mount.

[UPDATE 9/15: Phoenix Seminary notes, further, Justin and POxy#5575 agree to omit gentiles seek after such things before that the heavenly father knows that we need them.] Most-tantalising: Justin v. 15 ὅτι τούτων χρείαν ἔχετε sides with POxy#5575 against both currently-canonical "Synoptics".

A reed rather slender, perhaps, upon which to lean. But if Justin is using earlier sources, the earlier we get, the less-canonical their sources. I mean, look at Ignatius' gospel in Smyraeans.

I also must ask after the authorial sequence of this catechesis... and Luke. Sure: Justin wrote after All The Above. Did all Justin's sources?

Neutrino Chernobyl

This blog is not on the theoretical-physics beat. We generally prefer engineering out here. So let's ask some crazy questions:

I poasted last May my (feeble) understanding of neutrino properties: great velocity, but sub-C so [tiny] mass. My neighbouring Turtle offered more understanding last month; various spectroscopes remain on the case. Lately the University of Hokkaido is offering interactions with... light.

At energies sufficient to merge the weak and electromagnetic forces, a "Hall Effect" is to apply... to neutrinos. This can happen in star plasma, and - Hokkaido claims - is happening at our own Sun. This is what is heating up our corona as hot as it is.

Thermodynamics would suggest, to me, that the neutrino and the photon exchange energy, with the photon taking it from the neutrino. As with cosmic rays, particles as go too fast might hit a photon, squirt out a pion, and slow down. But for all I know neutrinos might be quanta. Maybe that's how neutrinos change between "tau" and "electron" types. Something must be reduced, either rest-mass or velocity (which at relativistic speeds is also a mass function).

This rather leads to what might happen in fusion reactors, once they start fusing, so releasing photons and neutrinos. Teller's thermonuclear toy, like, exploded. Was some of its (unpredicted) extra heat due to neutrino / photon Hall? - ehh probably not. But what if this reaction were contained?

Could the added energy lead to quark fusion?

Invisible Hyades

The head of Taurus is a collection of bright stars 153 lightyears away, which cluster we call Hyades. The stars here were formed 650 million years ago - we're seeing the leftovers, after the heaviest and brightest stars went supernova. If they were big enough, they should have formed black holes.

Based on some maths, Stefano Torniamenti's team calculate they are still there. Or at least were there until recently; some may have been ejected by the other bodies' gravity. But they'll still be in the 153 lightyear average.

Getting uncomfortably close!

The primacy of POxy-5575

Peter Gurry has spent the last week putting together a synopsis of POxy-5575. We have this as of 1:30 AM last night. Busy guy! Tonight we'll evaluate why anyone in this context is talking about Luke. This should start with Luke 12:24 - against Matthew 6:26.

Here all three record the speaker, a son of the Father in Heaven, as he points to the birds. As you remember from Life of Brian, the Father feeds them. POxy-5575 is fragmentary, but Matthew and Luke fill in some additional content: the birds do not sow (σπείρουσιν) or reap (θερίζουσιν) or gather (συνάγουσιν, Matthew only) the excess into barns (ἀποθήκας) or granaries (ταμεῖον, Luke only). For Matthew and Luke, is intertext. Matthew is referring back to vv. 19-21; warning not to "thesaurise" on Earth on account the best treasury is in heaven. As for Luke...

Luke interposes 12:12-21. Here a rich man has no space to gather (συνάγ-) his crop. So he would upgrade his barn (ἀποθήκας). But finally "his life is to be demanded of him". The gospel of Thomas in logion 63 is only Coptic so far; but some Greek seeps in, like ταμ-. And it's disassociated from any followup. We do learn that the rich man "died" in the night.

POxy-5575 begins that "he died (-θ̣ανε)" before the narrator commences "I say to you". That is why the editors believe that POxy-5575 is here paralleling Luke, who had the story; even if the one Greek word POxy-5575 provides looks more like the direct speech of Thomas 63.

A longstanding problem, relevant here, is the direction of Matthew / Luke dependence. There isn't much need for Matthew to note whether birds have a harvest, nor if they συνάγουσιν (in fact they do, it's called a "nest", but whatevs); POxy-5575, for its part, doesn't bother [UPDATE 9/14 nor Justin]. Matthew 6:19-21 has nothing about farming, just about thesauri. This implies Matthew knew Luke's parable of the rich fool - from somewhere else. (Evan Powell would have kittens if he'd noticed this.)

The problem is soluble if we allow that POxy-5575 was composed first, that Matthew borrowed from it, and that Luke took Matthew and restored POxy-5575's parable. Also restored in Luke, I think, is the context, because Luke sequesters the whole section apart from his Sermon On The Plain.

K2-18 b is a waterworld...?

As we hold tight for more Bird-Gospel news, let's do some sciencin'. Remember Hycean worlds? K2-18 b may be one.

This is one of Kepler Telescope's transits, 120 light years away, habitable-zone. At 8.6 earth-mass, it was presumed to have a thick atmosphere. The James Webb 'scope reads the atmosphere: high methane and carbon dioxide, undetectable ammonia (or carbon monoxide). Well big deal, right; sounds like Titan. But it's warmer than Titan - in fact, with flux 1368 W/m² its orbit approximates Earth irradiance.

The assumption is that there's a waterworld down there. Where's the water in the press-release...? - the arXiv paper explains, it shares a band with the methane, which methane is swamping it, and also the planet has a stratosphere, which is dry. Water condenses into clouds, below that, in the troposphere.

Most tantalising is dimethyl sulfide. Like phosphine, usually this is made by life - specifically phytoplankton. Although as we found from Venus, at least phosphine can come right out of volcanoes. The dimethyl sulfide isn't a sure thing but it's surer than the (non-)ammonia.

QUESTCHINNED 10/20: David Moore ponders instead the "Type C" Titanlike, where carbon rules. I dislike titles with ? at the end but, on occasion, I've already written the title, and don't want to take the whole thing down and rewrite it.

What is POxy 5575?

Yesterday I relayed a summary of some bible-scholar postage on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5575. Although I have no access to this eighty-seventh volume, I believe I do have enough data from those who've also commented on it, especially Candida Moss. Hey, that's what biblical-scholars generally have to do, for the likes of Papias . . .

Candida Moss keeps hitting up Matthew: 6:25, then vv. 26-33. These, for their parallels with Luke 12:22 / Greek Thomas 36 + Luke 12:24-9; but Nongbri notes that the parallels with Matthew are stronger, such that a fragment in 2018 was assumed part of Matthew. Moss notes further Thomas 27 in the Luke 12:22 context (which maybe she shouldn't); and Coptic Thomas 63 has wandered in. More likely, wandered from this papyrus, to the Coptic...

The context although very much a wild version of Matthew 6:25-33 [/ Luke 12:22-9] does not look Matthean [nor Lukan]. This is no sermon from a Super-Samaritan Sinai (I never suspected it would be). Matthew's and Luke's versions do however own some internal textual-integrity; and agree there was a fixed moment the subSermon was uttered. This looks like a quick exhortation to the Disciples and/or their pupils, as they go out to the villages. Mark may or may not have known it; but it doesn't use the apocalyptic argument which Mark would have preferred, so instead of inserting such there, Mark might have simply omitted it.

Either way it deserves the "Q" tag as much as any scrap does. I mean, I don't even think Luke had "Q"; but the Matthean Gospel got all that lore from somewhere, with only its assemblage being his. Or maybe... it's not all his; and he'd inherited (say) the Sermon on the Mount, from something like POxy#5575.

Burton Mack back in the 1990s asked if "Q" was a Cynic sage. As pertinent to this scrap, Matthew mentions your heavenly Father, and contrasts the clothing of the wildflowers to that of Solomon. Only a Jew would do any of that. (A Samaritan sure wouldn't.) I'm unsure if POxy 5575 itself contains the overt Biblical allusions... but it could well lead in that direction. [THE TEXT 9/12: yes, Solomon's here.] The scrap alludes to the "Oven" as the flowers' destination, should the farmer deem those flowers as weeds; contrast "Fire" in Matthew and Luke.

Although assuredly apocalyptic Judaeo-Christian, as were Mark and the Matthean gospel: I must still ask if POxy 5575 ascribed this speech to Jesus himself. The Epistle of James collects traditions of the early Assembly without ascribing them directly to Christ as a living man; we also get Paul asserting the most-important commandments as "Apostolic" authority without quite ascribing them to the Apostles' master Christ, in a vision or by tradition. We'll be seeing Mark take that particular explicit step, later.

POxy 5575

Somehow I missed this one: Peter Gurry worked with an Oxyrhynchus sayings-collection in 2010, #5575; its volume is now published, as "LXXXVII". Candida Moss has a very good piece on it, posted end-of-August. The team-leader Daniel Wallace made his announcement 4 September; today, Brent Nongbri.

Moss makes clear that "Jesus said" does not appear in there - is Jesus named in the main body? (Also published are POxy#5576 and #5577. Jesus is formally the speaker in POxy#5576, and someone addresses Mary in #5577. But these are Valentinian.) The overall thrust of the POxy#5575 fragment-bundle parallels what Matthew, Luke, and Thomas share: about taking less care for worldly possessions. [THE TEXT 9/12! "Son of the Heavenly Father" is implied, but - we're all such sons.]

I gather that the editors hold this one to be a predecessor for Thomas = POxy#1. Which makes sense as Thomas is generally considered a Gnostic update of the Gospel tradition; relevant here, the 36>37 chain. The editors also say that POxy#5575 is not Q.

The history is a bit chequered, as Nongbri reports. One fragment was exposed in Nongbri's presence in a convention. It was then presented as an extract or maybe quote from Matthew - so, not really Front Page News. Also, Professor Obbink the thief and the Green family's Museum of the Bible were involved - in fact, Obbink might have stolen it for them. Luckily the British Museum has the paper-trail so we know it's not a froggery like a lot of the Greens' buy-bull.

Digging into Bennu

Last weekend I mused that when a spinning Bennu is inhabited, it should start in stages, with the initial colonists moving to the top parts of a 300m-deep parabola immediately. It struck me that it would be easiest to start where the weight of the rubble counteracts the air-pressure.

Air-pressure needn't be wholly earthlike at first. I worry about nitrogen and noble-gas, especially for stonies. 1/3 oxygen and 2/3 inerts should, at 0.6 bar, provide the human body with the same number of oxygen molecules as are had at sea-level. Denver gets 5/6 that but let's not be too stingy. 600 millibar (60 kPa) would push against each wall with 60 kN/m².

From my trough-design: h=320, ω=0.68 rpm which is 0.0712 rad/s. Also, let's limit density - by using Bennu, ρ=1190 kg/m³.

1190 * 0.0712 * 0.0712 * (350 * 350 - 320 * 320) / 2 = 60628

That means, a little less than 30m of Bennu's rock above/inspin, will counter the airpressure the early colonists need. If we are using a S-type's silicate and nonporous regolith: more like 15m. Either should be fine for countering cosmic-rays.

MOLES 10/14: I assumed volume of a "perfect gas" therefore moles; alongside 32g/mol oxygen, a space-colony must further assume inerts of pure nitrogen 28g/mol. At comfy 295 K the mass we'd need for 0.6 bar is 463 kg of nitrogen gas per cubic dekameter (10×10×10 meter), out of 744.1 kg (the rest oxygen, which is cheap). I look to have been right to suspect that S-types are trouble.

Yay math

Having written a terrible equation a couple days ago, let's try again. Good ol' SpinCalc actually has a JS file. function calc (what) was giving me gravity = ω * ω * r. If I just integrate r dr then

ρ * ω * ω * r2/2

First up is to see how much pressure this is pushing upon the bottom of the bag:

= 1190 * 0.0712 * 0.0712 * (620 * 620 - 320 * 320) / 2 = 850.6 kN/m2

That is of course before hollowing out empty-space; but later, we'll be increasing the r values as we acclimatise our crew so - figure 850 kN/m² for a maximal strain, which we work with, as we perfect the habitat.

As a bonus we also get the tangential-velocity at the bottom of this 620m motheaten donut: 44.15 m/s. Useful for delta-V calcs.

Sean Martin finds Scott Hahn to be unsporting

As for Dr Scott Hahn's theology, Dr Sean Swain Martin has offered some engagement with its argument, from a modern Catholic perspective. I have (accidentally, on the holiday morning) found that the engagement was commenced in a dissertation. Hence the "Dr", courtesy University of Dayton.

I haven't yet found a proper counter-engagement, not even with the dissertation which anyone may read. I found John Hanretty's pietistic nonresponse, which - frankly - triggered my sympathies more to Dr Martin. One more thing: as long as I'm addressing his thesis, I'll be treating it as if Martin were still a mere PhD candidate (cf. p. 50 on "Ratzinger" before his Papacy). Do allow me to continue without prepending the honorific. By the same token, I will further endeavour to remind myself that the thesis might not represent The Doctor Martin's thought as of 2023.

Martin's opening lays out that Hahn's approach to apologetic is to argue from the baseline scriptures, ignoring "Tradition". Martin relates (ch. 3) that Hahn argues in Covenant and Communion the Catholic canon to be inerrant scripture (Also Rome Sweet Home, 5; “Introduction,” Letter & Spirit Vol. 6 (2010), 14). Hahn takes (p. 37: "I", sic) Peter 3:15 as an exhortation to defend and to promote the Faith, among the nations as might not yet accept it.

Martin disagrees with Inerrancy. Martin suspects that this is a legacy that Hahn has brought over from his Protestant youth. Martin against this (pp. 32f) argues from Dei Verbum - a Vatican II document. Here he highlights that document's insistence on Tradition, which naturally includes itself. Martin doesn't counterpose Biblical Infallibility, meaning in dogma; here I might.

Martin also implies Hahn to be intellectually arrogant. Martin challenges the reader to find (p. 44): Where then, in the story of his own journey of faith, does Hahn, like Saint Augustine and Blessed John Henry Newman, turn away from confidence in his own abilities to fall upon the wisdom and strength of others? Here I agree: "Acknowledgements" sections in Hahn books, as opposed to footnotes, are rare. Hahn's intellectual pride poses a problem. (This sin, or foible, poses far less a problem for - say - Brant Pitre; Pitre is always thanking - for one - the bishop Barron.) Rome Sweet Home's "preface" thanks only Terry Barber and this only for materials, not for guidance. Signs of Life p. 6 notes in passing that Hahn had personally called upon the top rank of scholars; I suspect that these were secular scholars, like Crossan. If we are told of Hahn sitting amongst his Catholic peers, as he had sat among the evangelicals of his youth, I have not heard Hahn tell it. As I read Martin's summary, I'm finding that Hahn tended to fall upon "the wisdom and strength" of the Saints. Many Catholics seem to allow this. Martin wants more from Hahn, and Martin may be right.

Patristics may go toward what Hahn accepts as "Tradition". Martin will note Hahn's reference beyond Peter 3:15, to Justin Martyr and to Thomas Aquinas. Hahn cites them as defenders of the Faith, inasmuch as they took the verbal battle to the infidel. Martin here says that Hahn is doing it wrong. Justin and Thomas - claims Martin - warned the Catholic against arguing for Catholicism among nonCatholics. The true Catholic doesn't reason his way into the Faith; Christ embraces the sinner, and then the Catholic convinces himself. With the aid of a friendly pastor, and of the Assembly at large.

As we all agree, Justin and Thomas did take the offensive against "errors". That is different - claims Martin (pp. 38f) - from attacking nonbelief in Catholicism overall. Justin and Thomas presented their works as defences against errors levied as aggressions, by pagans (who slandered Christians as cannibals in a seditious superstitio) and by Jews (who accused Jesus of being a bastard and a sorcerer, thus a liar).

Where we separate attacks on slander from an overly-aggressive stance contra Gentiles, would seem (to me) a matter of degree. Some might say that Justin and (more so) Thomas, in allowing their "defences" to be widely published, had taken a rhetorical stance, presenting themselves as merely defending their case against aggressors whilst - in facto - posing some aggro of their own. Take Justin on paganism. Justin argued that the pagans were in Diabolical Mimicry. It wasn't Roman paganism which could claim antiquity; it was Judaeo-Christianity from which the demons plagiarised, to better corrupt the heathen.

Justin had a point, I'll interject: he knew that much of the Hebrew Bible preceded any text which the Latins (at least) could present in favour of their own religion. The Greeks could bring Homer and Hesiod but even our scholars would find difficult to rule their poems earlier than (say) Deborah's song in Judges 5. Justin would go further even than (I hope) Hahn, on account Justin assumed 1 Enoch 1-36 as anteDiluvian. But the specific merits of Justin's case... don't even matter, for Hahn. Hahn needs only to point to Justin's muscular approach, as precedent, for what Hahn is doing now.

Likewise, even if Martin disagrees with the merits of Hahn's case; Hahn has every right, nay the duty, to present that case law kariha al-mujrimûna if you please. And if Hahn is overstepping Peter 3:15's boundaries, he's not doing any different than Justin and Thomas did; Hahn might differ only in his level of honesty.

Thus far, Martin's first chapter. Thus far, I am reading a selective and unfair hit-piece. Thus far, if I'd been reviewing this for Dayton, I'd not read further; before sending it back to Martin for revision.

Who's the Ark?

Joan Taylor last December pondered the Gospel, according to Cerinthus' disciples.

For Cerinthus, Jesus in sarx was the Ark. His bodily form was entered-into by Christ; and then at the Crucifixion, Christ abandoned Jesus' flesh. Taylor deemed the Longer-Ending of Mark as a Cerinthist appendix, whether or not Cerinthus wrote it himself; albeit perhaps mutilated a bit in transmission. That Christ liberated from Jesus' form, now a shapeshifter, may have taken the form of the young boy at the tomb. (Brant Pitre will note this proteanism in Luke and could well add the Acts of John.)

I've brought this comment up from last June because we need to compare this against Scott Hahn's assertion that the Ark is, in fact, Mary; Christ within her being the shekina Itself, body and spirit. Hahn, as detractors noted, didn't footnote the assertion. But it did not take me long to find Orthodox - not Catholics, note - bringing Patristic evidence for this, starting (at least) in the AD third-century, namely Hippolytus and Gregory.

Brant Pitre's Case for Jesus brings John too... on the side of Cerinthus(!). John presents Jesus' body as the Temple, whose wounds at Golgotha issue water and blood like so much Passover effluent. Pitre by contrast does not read Mark as the Cerinthians will; when Mark's Jesus cites Psalm 22, Mark is asserting himself as the begotten son of God, maybe even on Psalm 110 terms as coëqual.

As to where these Church Fathers might have got the idea of Mary's tabernacular nature: I think Pitre is correct to assert that Mark allowed for it (which John didn't/doesn't). But that's insufficient. Two years ago, I implicated the reception of Luke. Luke concentrates (instead!) upon Mary's childhood in the Temple, and conceives Jesus without even Joseph's DNA (pace Matthew). Luke, for his part, was carrying the Priestly strain from "Hebrews", in citing Melchizedek and Psalm 110; but Luke goes further.

It's safe outside

Last weekend I mused that when a spinning Bennu is inhabited, it should start in stages, with the initial colonists moving to the top parts immediately. We should look into Coriolis - at its worst, which is the rotational-interior/upward vacuum-facing surface.

Since we are only getting started here I don't care if the centripetal forces are Marslike, even 1.625 m/s² Lunalike for the crew. Also said crew just got off a zero G shuttle. That G should be enough to sift the larger rocks out, meanwhile.

I just need my fore/aft circumference to be, like, under half the wheel circumference. On assumption of a 400m-long trough (parabolic or not): let it be a fifth. That's a 2000m total circumference. This makes for a radius of, round up, 320m. That's a minimum, that my 400m might take up less than a fifth.

SpinCalc is still up! People out in spacesuits can moonwalk atop my rubble 320m 'neath the nexus, if I spin it ω=0.68 rpm.

Which is less than 1 rpm. No-one is throwing up in their suits unless, I guess, they look out at the wheeling stars. Under the soil they're golden - so far. As the settlers extend their circumference aftward, we loosen the rope to keep the fraction under a fifth; this only adds to the gravity and lowers their Coriolis.

The weight of our world

Once I've spun this rubblepile, I need maths for what is going on downbelow / outside. I hadn't done that yet; so I'll sketch it, here. The rock pushes down with... its density, multiplied by the equation of centrifugal force, integrated (sigh) over height, here radius-of-spin.

[REPLACEMENT 9/6: As a maximum force on the bottom, I'll just go with how much tonnage is on it, from Bennu's 1190 kg/m³ which is then 1190 kg/m upon a square meter. If there's 300 m, that's 357 T/m² of sheer mass. So if 3.14 m/s²: 1122 kN/m². That's a maximum, for sanity-checking. I'll have to reverse-engineer the real equation from SpinCalc on account my calculus-fu failed me Tuesday.]

To limit that difference of h against r₀, if we are keeping SOME constant distance between them for colonists to live, and allowing for expansion in the other two dimensions... requires a flattened curve. Like the parabola.

FIXED IT 9/8: ρ * ω * ω * r * (r-h) = 1190 * 0.0712 * 0.0712 * 620 * (620 - 320) = 1122k. I reckon I did better here.

The parabolic dumbbell colony

Earlier we discussed how to start a counterweight for a dumbbell station, starting with Janhunen's dumbbell as requiring the least starting mass. Suppose Janhunen has shuttled this off to some larger rock, for settlement.

Janhunen assumes both weights are spheres. I, for one, do not wish to live in a sphere-in-rotation. First up, it concentrates the pressure on a point, the bottom "pole" if you will [UPDATE 9/5: Maths!]. Also if humans are here, in the bottom, they have to take the stairs to go up and meet anyone. Gravity fluctutes from level-to-level, as well. So does Coriolis.

Instead I am thinking, a trough. The port-starboard width at fore - "fore" is the direction of rotation - is the same back to aft. As for the bottom curvature port/starboard: sure, there is curvature, can hardly avoid it. Basically we've stumbled into the torus-section as against the classical torus.

But does this have to be a true torus-section i.e., circle - does it even have to be a semicircle, or any section of a circle? How about a parabola?

As we start, I am afraid the trough of dirt is still going to be blockey. But we'll work with that after we move in.

I can get an ugly block with 400m × 400m × 200m (height) for 3.2e7 cubic meters. I reserve the side-to-side 400m. Right now I am reserving also fore/aft 400m - right now this is an authorial fiction. Now let us handle the dimensions of the 80000m² cross-section specifically, height.

The parabola equation is a-bx²=0, flying above the barycentre. So integrate a-bx² dx, side-to-side, for final 80000. Units are in meters; a is the height at the centre. As a symmetry, we can integrate this from 0 to the starboard (or port) side, for 40000 m.

Now: a-bx² = 0 where x = +/- the half-width. x boundaries: +/-root[a/b]. The integral from zero to either edge is ax - bx³/3 = 40000. eek! Tritic equation!! Luckily,

ax - (a/x2) x3/3 = 40000
a(x-x/3)=40000

For height a to fill out half of 80000, the halfwidth x = 40000 * 1.5 / a. If width is 400m, central / maximum height be 300m.

To return to the curvature of the fore-aft axis: if it's negligible, we just multiply that 80000 crosssection by 400m for total volume. In practice I expect the circumference of that "400m" to end up more than 400m at the bottom; less at the top. More so at the beginning when they're not spinning the wheel as hard; shorter radius of spin.

And they'll start at the top. 300m is a lot of height for the initial colonists to support over their heads. This can be ameliorated by settling the upper parts. There they'll suffer low-gravity and high-Coriolis.

Eventually they're working toward 150m central height, 800m fore/aft length.

The shattered S-type for a colony

C-types like Bennu and Ryugu are rubbly and soft. Even if we see them here, their origin is the grey zone; once Earth-trojan or Cruithne, their orbits are inclined and eccentric, making for a delta-V headache. At the 1 AU range where actually reachable, our main options are stony.

The Atíra class is difficult to see from Earth as they run close to daylight, like Venus; if stony, as many are, they might reflect light, but unless of Atira's massive volume, we don't see much more than a bright dot. So, I'll use higher-AU S-types for proxy. Like Didymus, which we've sent missions at.

Didymus is unrepresentative in one other way as helps us. Didymus is an oblate spheroid. That means it is composed like a fluid - and as not a differentiated body, it is made of rubble. Hence also why it's got a moon, from ejecta. Contrast solid and irregular Apophis: Didymus looks porous at 2400 ±300. And it is spinning already; we could spin it more.

Didymus has major radius 425m × minor 310m. This volume is ~2.34e8 m³, subRyugu. Let's start smaller. Posit a rock the physical size and shape of Bennu, but stony: 2023 EL, maybe. The size is 6.15e7 but density is 2400 for 1.5e11 kg.

The usable material in Bennu

David Jensen's mechanical math, in "Autonomous Restructuring of Asteroids into Rotating Space Stations", wasn't great. On looking into Jensen a bit more, I noticed Figure 2-1 using the same formula to deduce the "material" from the volume: divide by 4. So how's his material math?

Scrolling down, I saw Table 2-4 had Ryugu with type Cg; Atira of course being S. Table 3-6, though, has Ryugu as S; and Bennu also as S. Table 3-6 also has wildly different "packed" material than Figure 2-1; more like dividing by 1.95. What's up with that?

Absent a sample from Bennu direct, we know the densities of various carbonaceous chondrite. They have a range: 2.42 to 5.66 g/cm³; Mathilde at 1.3 ±0.2(!). Basically we know that the overall asteroid is rubble therefore porous; this "1.19" density is covering for at least half of the asteroid being empty space between rocks. And, for C's, the rocks are porous too.

To sum up, to get the usable material from Bennu begs the question. What needs doing is to get a sample. We're getting that in a few weeks. Jensen's "what-the-hell, divide by four" attitude might actually... work, as rule-of-thumb, if Bennu's rocks prove as porous as Bennu overall.

Now, if Bennu were instead S-type; that's different. Stony chondrites rarely get as porous as carbonaceous chondrites. Divide-by-four can work for Ryugu and Bennu; but not for Atira.

Sift

As we're looking at asteroid-colonies, Janhunen might start with pure regolith from our Moon. At some point even he must approach a free-floating asteroid. C-type (and some S-type) asteroids are rubble. Not all rubble is equal.

For our purpose, we're starting as light and as simple as possible. Janhunen finds a 90kT floating jumble for a colony. Miklavčič comes along with a bag to throw over it; then Jensen orders some robots to spin the bag (bro). Er. Where's the counterweight?

Miklavčič says, what counterweight. Big torus-section, evenly-distributed mass, it'll never get unbalanced to suddenly shift rotation at the wrong axis. LOL chaos isn't real. Although I am told that he can fix this by spinning a second big torus-section, of the same mass, in the opposite direction.

To the extent Miklavčič be justified (I'm a skeptic) I deem his design to apply only to the high-Jensen volumes. Given how little space-infrastructure we now own, we must start with Janhunen and low-Jensen volumes. Once we have that (small) colony, we don't want to share it with fifty-tonne hard silicates ("enstatite chondrites" as Earthers call 'em). You can't chip homes into them so easily; and they might not be great for mining straightway compared to the anhydrous glass which David Jensen liked. Much less, those valuable volatiles locked into the sooty bits.

I think Janhunen should like to sift the bag as it spins. The outer bag is, yes, some nanofibre as holds in the dirt and doesn't let too much regolith out. I suggest he cast additionally - internally - a net, with a good deal of tensile strength, designed to keep the biggest boulders apart from the rest.

Some of the larger rocks might be big useful chunks of hydrated coal, or platinum. If they exist - great! these can be plucked out from the rest of the larger rocks, by hand.

Once the thing is spinning good-enough that a good haul of large rocks have come up, those large rocks get dragged outside the others, and the rest of the rubble gets spun against that net of rocks.

It follows by the way that Janhunen's dumbbell is a very late stage of colonisation, if it be a stage at all. I'll have more to say on that.

American Avignon

This blog hasn't had cause to look into Scott Hahn since November 2020, when I was reading Politicizing the Bible. I am of mixed-mind on his wing of Catholic apologetic generally - and there is a wing, as the wider world is finding out. When word got out to my church that I am a sometime Semite, I got assigned to read Hahn's books on the Eucharist. I thought those were... good. PtB on the other hand was cowritten with Ben Wiker the intelligent-design dude.

Hahn is now in trouble for announcing his support for something the Texan bishop Joseph Strickland said (pdf). This bishop was warning his flock of the upcoming synod, which might run against historic Church teachings. Strickland is in that In Sinu Jesu wing with Viganò; which wing, Michael Lewis and I consider harmful. It happens that another bishop, more Italian-based, has a history of bizarre statements concerning the human family. As of 28 August Viganò will not address "Bergoglio" by his Papal name, and holds his Papacy as nominal. Smells like sedeprivatio-theory.

Lewis has asserted Hahn as being within this mire; upon receiving some slings-and-arrows, Lewis is now displaying himself like a pudgier Saint Sebastian. Which is not to say that Hahn's supporters are covering themselves in gloria, either.

I'll lay out my cards here: where the French-Enlightenment ran up against the thought of Hahn (and Wiker), three years ago my blog declared fraternité with the former. Hahn wrote as if, should the Pope preach that 2+2=5, those saying 2+2=4 are suspect with the ulterior motive of supporting a local tyrant against him. I haven't seen reason to change that assessment. Sean Swain Martin would appear to agree in his book, The American Pope. [UPDATE 9/6: I read the thesis it's based on. It's not good.]

I admit I do hold out hope for an Erasmian streak in Hahn. He is a former Protestant, and a man with deep intellectual curiosity; I feel he would prefer to strike a path more-independent than his publishers demand of him.

I hold out little similar hope for Lewis. I find his self-presentation to be a case of Crying Out As He Strikes You. I find it to be gamma.

I have to wonder about Brant Pitre and bishop Barron and others, where/when they'll enter this dispute.

STRICKLAND 11/11/23: He's done. Everyone needs to look to when their number comes up.

Jesus' stump-speech

The usual-suspects a couple days ago linked, by the usual-removes, to Eric Lyons, concerning how there exists no contradiction between Luke and Matthew about the Sermon on the Plain-or-Mount. Most of us wouldn't waste our time but, well. Maybe it was aliens?

The core is, as so-often, the Synoptic Problem - in this case a fairly-major agreement between Matthew and Luke, against Mark. The speech-variants and nearly all their content is/are absent from Mark. One question is whether Mark knew of a specific speech. I think... Mark did. But it wasn't the Sermon on the Mount (or plain).

The one fact we must base ourselves upon is that Luke was aware of earlier apostolic-memoirs - because Luke had told us so, in his first chapter. We can further deduce that at least one of these memoirs looked a lot like Mark. Another looked like Matthew. Farrer and lately Goodacre are fairly well-regarded by now.

So: Mark. Mark concentrates Jesus upon preaching the imminent kingdom of God; first by himself (1:14-15), later delegated to the apostles-in-training. If people wanted to hear what Jesus had to teach, those people went to the synagogues - at least at first (1:21f). Mark was more concerned to rush on to the Passion than to list every word and deed Jesus said/did, sure. Later Mark is rife with scenes in which the people gather around Jesus; he's got two (Mark 6:30f, 8:1f) in which Jesus must somehow feed them. For Mark that crowd is often there for miracles, usually healing; Mark doesn't tell much of what Jesus preached to a crowd outside bet-midrash. Mark knew that Jesus had teachings, and Mark respected those teachings; so it is of interest that Mark doesn't have his Jesus delivering a summary thereof to a general audience.

- unless Mark was saving it up for later. At the end he'll issue the famous chapter 13, an apocalypse. Mark prepends this sermon to the Passion chs. 14-15, in Jerusalem. Mark 13 is, for that Evangelist, that News which Jesus came to deliver. (Recall Papias/Pierius warning that Mark doesn't arrange the events in the correct sequence.)

Matthew, updating Mark, has an update to Mark 13 in his own chs. 24-5. But Matthew by contrast also offers what Jesus said to the crowds, before all that. This sermon from the mountain is entirely not Mark 13 / Matt 24-5. This (for Matthew) would be the capstone manifesto of Jesus-ism (if you will). Matthew figured Jesus for the latter-day Moses, not an Elisha or a Joel or whatever. Luke was more concerned with the Spirit itself, which can come through Jesus, but can also come upon and through the Apostles as at Pentecost - although, here Luke had other motives (which I'll get to).

One argument is that the Sermon On The [?] was a stumpspeech which he shopped around the various villages. Luke got wind of one version; Matthew of another. In effect a hellenophone stenographer of Christ Himself would be "Q".

Against this, Luke and Matthew aren't acting like tradents of "Q". I would bring the sociology of Matthew versus that of Luke. For Matthew, is a hierarchy: G-d above, Christ, then Saint Peter and finally the camp of the sainted people. Matthew's Jesus blesses the poor... in spirit. Luke's Jesus, on the same (altitudinal) level as the people, blesses the poor. Matthew's Jesus forgives sins; Luke's Jesus forgives debts. If we allow that these two speeches are in two different places, then Jesus was a first-century Yassir Arafat: preaching hierarchy to group A (in Greek?) and socialism to B (in Aramaic?).

On the one hand, yeah; these were not the same speech. But they are relayed by not-the-same tradents. I do not think so little of Christ's ethical mindset as, apparently, Christian fundamentalists think.

Matthew acts like one steeped in Torah. Luke for his part acts like he knew Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, disliked it, but had to relate something like it. (Luke will do similar with Pentecost.) Luke figured that if there existed such a nonapocalyptic speech, it must sketch the socialist Assembly as Acts will portray it.

The historian must default to Crossan's dictum. To whit, we are not here to explain(-away) what could have happened, but to figure what most-likely did happen. What happened here is that Matthew concocted a Mosaic speech, in all senses of "mosaic". Luke smelled a rat and, why not, since Matthew is doing it, why not me.

Overall Mark, once more, is the most-likely right. Jesus did have a stumpspeech. That speech was Mark 13.

MEANWHILE 9/10: POxy 5575 presents another synopsis for Matthew. The Evangelical Textual Critics, in a supreme irony, announced this whilst my poast here was in (gradual) composition. I think this relays Matthew's source (and Thomas' of course).

TOI-4600

The transiting-scope TESS is still at it. Ismael Mireles et al. have reported in on the object-of-interest 4600.

Gaia meanwhile has data on this star as well, out at parallax 4.620 ±0.011, which is sadly single-digit (216.45 parsecs). And it's a dim one, a K slightly over 2/5 our own Sun's luminosity. Age isn't well-constrained: 700-5100 My. They do think they've constrained its mass at 0.89 ±0.05 M_⊙. This wasn't done by Kepler on account there's no radial-velocity constraint on the planets.

Right: that's a plural. Two of the things are transiting the star. However much they weigh, they're big: 6.80 ±0.3 and 9.42 ±0.4 Earths. Both are Saturn-size.

Metallicity of the star is 0.16 ±0.08 Fe/H. Usually hot-Jupiters form at 0.25; our Sun's is a, er, hot topic but is typically considered 0.012 or less. One reason why the paper figured this star for a later-generation star therefore young. I would guess that at least the inner planet is high-mass with a thick gaseous envelope, not as Saturnlike as its volume suggests.

Neither of these two are in the habitable zone. The inner one 0.35ish AU gets a little more warmth than Earth and that'll be in the infrared, so its moons (if any) are venuslikes. The outer one 1.1-1.2 AU (it's only been caught transiting twice, so there's less constraint) is just plain cold. They think cold as Ceres, based on similar sources as John Cougar Mellencamp's statistics (just give us the stellar flux, guys).

Anyway the outer one could run elliptic. Again, little constraint, beyond that it shouldn't be mixing Hills with the inner one. At least we know the planets aren't resonant (29:5? lol). It could be that they were 6:1 in the past, though; that might contribute to present eccentricity.

Could there be an earth-habitable planet, in between? High metals imply that planets in the habitable zone, if they have oxygen, won't have ozone. And I'm concerned that the inner planet is a heavy-hitter with a wide Hill.

800k BC

Between 900-800kBC was a bottleneck. Although, since no humans survived excepting the ancestors of Neanders and of us, this is a difficult call if it were a true wipeout of those other early hominids.

Our ancestors came out of a tribe of 1280 fertiles. Sharing chromosome-2, they think. These - in Africa - went to stem-1/stem-2, with the Neanders leaving Africa by the 600kBCs. Although protoNeanders may have branched off at the end of the cursed 800ks.

I vaguely remember some talk about Homo-antecessor in Europe, which was at first thought to be Erectus. And yeah: 700kBC, this coalmine, in southern Greece. These remains are considered not-Neander. How was their chromo-2? Honestly I have to suspect they are actual early Neanders.