Free returns

Let's hit up The New World on Mars some more. Chapter 3, on how to get there.

How To Live On Mars proferred two zero-energy transfers (plus the "nukey ride" - maybe NERVA, maybe the molten-salt flying Chernobyl, doesn't matter). The two transfers were: the "stinky cycler", and "riding the freight" that is, Hohmann. New World likewise doesn't care to shave traveltime with extra Starships much less nukes.

New World's "six-month" journey corresponds to the 180-plus days of InSight. That's the (semi)Hohmann; that's the freight train. This will return to Earth's 1 AU orbit, yes. But it does not return to Earth. Earth is going to be elsewhere. Once the freight is distributed, whatever is left (like shielding and spent Starships) is going to end up in some fifteenth of an Earth orbit. This route is, I vaguely recall, the VISIT trajectory.

Aldrin's free-return as actually shows up near Earth is not the six-month halfway Hohmann. Aldrin actually takes less time to (flyby) Mars: 146 days per Hop David so five months. Although, if an Apollo-13 is happening, it's quite a bit longer to get to its own aphelion and then all the way back to perihelion which is Earth(ish). Other "cyclers" are possible, some perhaps worthy of a permanent back-and-forth; Zubrin was possibly thinking of these in 2008.

Right now, Zubrin is confusing six-month halfHohmann, which is one-way freight; with the five-month Aldrin, which I deem best for passengers in case of disaster. Thus retarding his latest book a step behind where he was, in 2008; several steps - a giant leap, if you will - behind Gurrea in 2022. (I'm tempted to importune Zubrin for a free return... of his book. He's wrong on clothing as noted. On immigration too.)

In this spirit of 2008 reminder, recall that the five-month Aldrin as a subset of "cycler" requires more oomph to get started, and needs extra propellant - and shuttle - at the destination to inject those passengers into Martian orbit. Plus: once back at Earth, Earth needs some way to slow all the returned material so to catch it all. Zubrin needs maths on all these.

Alternatively: Zubrin needs infrastructure, like a base on Deimos as can do rescue and cargo-transfer. Frankly he needs this anyway. Asteroid and lunar bases are further upstream of necessary tech, before settling Mars. And once we have asteroid bases what do we still need Mars for? Prison?

The Martian dresscode

Last week (13-20 April) you could say I got Caught Up On My Reading. I was housebound and didn't have full access to my nonwork computer. Two of these books dealt with exploration: The Wager and The New World on Mars. (We also got Das Schloß and Palestine 1936 in there. And God's Equation.) So. Um. Back to Zubrin. The secondhand store has The Case for Space (2019); New World (2024) heads back to the base-in-exile for Zoob's Society. I skipped that earlier one; for this one, I paid full freight. I still own How To Live On Mars (2008). There's duplication across books; what's changed in sixteen years?

We'll start with - clothing.

Among the more-appalling misses in 2008, Zoob didn't offer a section on textiles, like nylon. He recommended... stealing parachutes. (I'm serious.) That book also didn't mention doing the laundry. The 2024 book gives us both - at last!

Although - I still don't know that Zoob has quite got his head around the concept. He suggests (now) hanging out the dirties to the Martian elements. The radiation (especially daylight), temperature-swings, and poor atmosphere together will break apart lipids, that is grease. It's a antibacterial cleaner, all-natural, no detergent nor even water. This will still leave stains, but in 2008 this author didn't care; just wear rusty reddish camo bro.

I gotta posit here that the chicks won't dig it. Later Chapter 8 concerns social-customs. "Mars needs women," as the chapter (correctly) puts it. No woman is going to put up with stained ruddy clothes; probably clean, technically, but also possibly full of that mildly-toxic dust. And stained. When we're working in the kitchen (I'm not just talking about women, readers; unjerk those knees please), or at the surgeon's or even in the lab, we want clean whites - so we see stains from that, only, not from elsewhere. And going out in social events will assuredly require a dress-code. Expect red at all to be a faux-pas on this planet, like blue jeans or khakis at an Earth tuxedo ball.

Airing out (or vacuuming out) the dirties in the Martian outdoors will be for work clothes only.

Better news, perhaps, is that when clothes are washed, the laundry might be able to use concentrated liquid carbon-dioxide (especially overnight), giving at least that means to save precious water.

Maya dendrochronology

Given that the Miyake event hit at AD 775ish, wouldn't that be visible in datable Maya ruins? And can we get wigglematching on wood in Maya structures? Like this Yucatec canoe.

I ask because it occurs to me that natural events disrupted constructions in Ilopango around AD 400s or 500s; and now we're hearing Teotihuacano earthquakes.

What's the holdup?

The Graecance language

One holdout of Marcion's tongue survives: the Romayka.

Sinope was founded by Ionic Milesians. Alexander brought the Attic variant of Ionian; this "correct" Greek became the koine (not koina). Then came Paul's Church. Finally the Byzantines brought a "correct" update to all the Greeks under its sway, including Miletus and Athens herself. The Spartans kept Doric which by then was so different from Koine, and so isolated, there was no correcting that.

We're learning here that although Sinope perhaps allowed a correction to Attic, and certainly to Church Koine; Byzantine Greek was one step too far. Romayka maintained, they point out, the infinitive construction. By Latin analogy, Romayka is a "Romance" based on Roman-era Greek. (The Spartan survival would fall somewhere between Sardinian and Irish. Think, if the Faliscan community found some valley or island as a refuge against Latin.)

Late-stage capitalism

I looked at Marx's foil "capitalism" and Rand's attempt to make something good of the term, almost four years ago. As Hudson has made clear, perhaps clearer than Marx himself: capitalism supports capital, and capital is just numbers-on-ledger. Let's look tonight at how capitalism works against... businesses.

A privately-owned company can be heroic; for good or ill (some might mention Musk; this is not the post to discuss Musk). A publicly-traded company must answer to a board. Some of the guys on the board might care; Boeing used to care. Other board members might be ideologues more interested in the Climate or in Equity. Those guys can, perhaps, get sued for not doing their duty. But what is a company's duty?

A critique lately being mooted is the Jerry Maguire critique. Yes, a company's ledger must balance first - but not last. A company is about representing athletes' interest, or about making aeroplanes - or about search engines. At some point a Jack Welch might get into the C-suite. Engineers no longer run Boeing; or, in Google's case, a bad engineer (but diverse!) gets into management, and promoted. I'm actually a little worried about Brave these days, putting ads on the new-page dashboard, or subtle DEI nudges (I swapped that out for blankpage: brave://settings/getStarted).

"Late-stage capitalism" gets misused. It begs at least one question, about whether this stage is a late-stage, or if we have further stages. Cloud Atlas' corpocracy might actually present itself as a cure to Finance / MBA overreach. But some questions I don't think the "LSC" meme begs, is the question about whether capitalism even exists, and that about whether it is good. It does exist, and I'm not seeing the good.

Interplanetary, interstellar

Besides the Clipper, past and prospective:

• Voyager-1 is reporting system health (if not yet science) again
• Venus is still beckoning
• for whatever-reason NASA has greenlit the Dragonfly instead
• New Horizons is like 58.75 AU so, maybe 2/3 to the heliosheath; having launched 2006, this must await at least another nine years
• OSIRIS-APEX is on its way to Apophis.

Constraints on icy ocean worlds

Europa Clipper's coming; but it's looking much like they won't find anything to send back. "Attempt no landing there" indeed.

The assumption was that Europa's mantle would be under similar squeezes as Io's. That would depend on how stiff those rocks are. We have a few constraints on those rocks nobody can see under so much water: the mass of the world overall, and the radius of the mantle. It turns out the mantle is likely under a lot of pressure, even given the low gravity on this moon's oceanfloor. Too much pressure to allow such cracks as we see under Earth's seafloors.

No ocean venting means no nutrients get added to the ocean. Europa has had boring 4.5 billions.

Clipper is still a good mission, despite my disputes with the trajectory. The mission stands to refine parameter-space. There may be hope in the three Laplacian moons shifting in and out of eccentricity; in peak times maybe Europa did get a little subsurface rumblings. Also, I dunno, maybe some life has figured out how to cling to the surface ice - close enough to ingest Io's nutrients, not close enough for the radiation.

Bit of a stretch mayhap.

Ucanal's lord-protector

One grisly spectacle in English history, and for that matter in Catholic history, is the Cadaver Trial. Formosus was exhumed and draped in the Papal regalia for the "horrendous synod"; Lord Cromwell's Parliament put Charles I's corpse on display and, of course, Charles' heir would return the favour for the departed Lord. So: Papmalil in K'anwitznal.

K'anwitznal was a kingdom of of late Classic Choltal, now in that big panhandle of Guatemala upstream of Belize. The site we care about is that now called "Ucanal".

Some faction, 773-881 CE by radiocarbon, burned the king's bones - but not the king they'd replaced. Nah: these men dug the bones out of some king's tomb - decades gone - and publicly burned these bones in a 800°C holocaust. I use that term because the king's treasures went with him.

One suspect is Papmalil. He seems not to be of the Choltal, and never called himself Ahau. He took instead a title meaning something like "lord from the west". The region speaks Kekchi now with a smattering of Yucatec (Itza, Mopan, maybe Lacandon). That looks more like southwest to me but hey.

I tend to agree that Papmalil is my prime suspect, as well. There are many analogies with Cromwell, who also melted down the old royal paraphenalia.

Cyrus the restorer... of Babylon

Kurush Teipsides the Great King was named after his grandfather, whose name was Elamite. He did not rule as a Farsi nationalist - contrast Darius and Xerxes. Vridar is reminding those of us needing such reminder of Amelia Kuhrt: that Cyrus in Babylon posed as the new Ashurbanipal. That is: Cyrus was there to restore cosmic-order to Babylon; in the name of Anshar lord of the universe, to be associated with Marduk. (The midwittery would have that Cyrus venerated Ahura Mazda, as would Darius. Like Hanania, this blog tends midwit.)

Vridar points to Cyrus' heir Kambuzha = Cambyses, in Sais. Cambyses promoted Neith thence and there. I'll note that Cambyses could associate himself with the Saites, a favourite régime of Hudson. To the extent either shah "set captives free", a Hudson might add: this just means he nullified debts owed to the previous régime and its temples. Cyrus, ousting Nabunaid (note: not "Marduknaid"), would have hit the temples of Nabu and Sin, sparing Marduk.

All this means we have a contemporary context for Cyrus' propaganda. This context is not the Bible. In their own terms, Cyrus' decrees are not explicit about shifting Diversity back to whence it came. Vridar instead brings Judaeans by the Waters of Babylon (2022) that Yehud was happy "by the rivers of Babylon" and had no pressing desire for Zion. Yeb/Elephantine hints that Yehud may well have run a temple at Babylon. Ezekiel wanted Babylonian-style Temples for his people, maybe at Bethel.

Now: given the proCyrus propaganda in 2 Isaiah, and the Babylon-to-Zion stuff in Ezekiel, I actually do suspect there was a Judaean move back to Madinat Yehud. But maybe it wasn't the literate class. Maybe it was soldiers, with 2 Isaiah's cantillations ringing in their ears.

Exterminatus devices are too big

Wrath of Khan stole the Death-Star blueprint and SF fans have been dealing with that ridiculous macguffin ever since, from Space Quest's Star Generator to... to Return of the Jedi (siiigh). Anyway here's Edontigney's Rinn's Run, skipping to chapter 36.

This device speeds up the evolution of a star along the main-sequence. But... how?

In a universe of FtL, where we're (somehow) preserving causality, at least better than these servants of Chaos have managed, I guess we can envelop a small star in a bubble as ages faster than the rest of us do. That would be the opposite of the environs of a black hole wherein, of course, time slows down. I don't know how far this scales but - hey, the baddies have had time to think it through, as far as to experiment on something like TRAPPIST-1. (Assume they slipped over to Mirrond's "Discord" station.)

My issue: the experimenters are getting the results of their experiments. This means: electromagnetic waves are radiating out of this bubble. This light is, relativistically, blueshifted. But not only that, but the waves should be piling up. Say we want to age our Sun to the point where, at the end, its HZ zone runs past Earth; I think that's 500 MaD ("meganni Domini"; why not). By 250 MaD, animal life on the Pangaea is mostly-screwed anyway; but right now we're talking aliens microwaving the Sun, only.

Edontigney's MaD-scientists doesn't have to age this star to six GaD over a few weeks just to watch it go redgiant. They don't even have to age it to 500 MaD. They could probably just age it, like, by one year over those few weeks.

Here's why: pushing a star to do energy output it would normally do in 52 weeks, over 4 weeks, means: the star is thirteen times as radiative over that time. By comparison, Venus gets 1.9 times as much as we get.

More: this is all blueshifted. We're not getting 13 times the infrared - if I'm correctly reading the "solar spectrum by wavelength" graphs we might be getting "only" six times that. Also the infrared is shifted to visible light, making that 13 times what used to be had from the infrared (oh and some of that gets absorbed by particles in the atmosphere and clouds, heating all that up). Again: maybe "only", like, eight times what used to be had from visible light. Here's the real problem: we are getting more - much more - than 13 times the usual ultraviolet. That's what used to be in the visible spectrum, which is what our sun concentrates on.

I ... don't think life on Earth or in any normal space-station is rated to take a UV spike of, I'm guessing, thirty times normal, in four weeks. If Lunar and Martian colonies are in lavatubes then, ehh, maybe; and aquatic species (and bases) should be fine. As far as ozone goes, that might depend on how far we blueshift (here's where my physics desert me), since past UV-B we get UV-C to build the ozone back up; but either way brute force 30 times the UV of any sort is not what a land animal wants.

That may be a problem I have with death rays overall: they're too big. If Lucas wants Exterminatus on Alderaan, it's enough that the Death Star has tractor-beams; big rocks will pummel Alderaan back into the early Palaeocene quite nicely (yes I know, "rocks aren't free" either). Or maybe the Death Star can spare some neutronium, which it obviously has to keep up its gravity, as to inject into Alderaan's mantle like that "red matter" from over in Abrams' other space dreck (you don't need the full black hole to ruin Alderaan's crustal stability).

Aging a star to billions of years is... overkill.

Ancient paratext

I was pondering lately, paratext. Take our Bible. It's a translation but never mind that for now. Even in translation it would be a difficult read, let's say. We put each "book" in this text in its own section. We also have chapter and verse numerations. We agree in which order to present these books. In Christendom these arrangements can get pretty involved - like those Marcionite and antiMarcionite prologues, or like the Eusebian apparatus. Judaism meanwhile has Chumash, wherein lections of Torah might get a Haftorah from elsewhere. Paratext, in short, is well on its way to commentary.

Start with the Psalter. Several psalms helpfully point to scenes in (say) David's life when that psalm was uttered, like Psalm 3 in MT, when David fled Absalom. Psalm 18 entered 2 Samuel/Reigns 22, but Psalm 3 stayed in the Psalter alone.

I've been getting the impression that cantillated haftorah has moved from lections, like (lately) the Chumash, into paratext, yea even unto text. We could cite here those songs of Moses in Exodus and Deuteronomy. Also Hannah's song and the Lament Of The Bow in the Samuel-Saul-David cycle - perhaps back when these books were Scripture, when "Torah" was not yet the Jews' first text (because its form and use were different).

Sometimes Israel had inherited a song that these authors simply couldn't fit anywhere. The song of Deborah (who was not of Judah!) was homeless in narrative and couldn't be used in early Psalters. in such cases, narratives were writ to provide the context. Thus: Judges 4, to introduce our Judges 5.

As prose goes I am also pondering introductory phrases. The obvious one is amara YHWH, usually translated "thus saith the LORD" but - to my overly-Arabic mind - 'mr connotates more "command" or at least "decree" than simple speech (wouldn't that be q'l? or נְאֻ֤ם?) Psalm 2 drops this on us in v. 7; Psalm 2 thereby becomes a prophetic oracle. For narratives, here-and-there I see אֵ֣לֶּה תֹּלְד֣וֹת in Genesis 37:2 and Numbers 3:1, "this is the account of -" Jacob and Aaron/Moses. For poems, the famous Psalm 110 נְאֻ֤ם יְהֹוָ֨ה לַֽאדֹנִ֗י.

Orthodoxy in the postEhrman world

My father held much respect for Daniel Dennett; and so - still - does Pixy Misa. Dennett has gone to whatever afterlife will have him. Various Christians are now dancing on his grave, anticipating the afterlife as will have them. Personally I couldn't finish Darwin's Dangerous Idea; nowadays the greatest satan is Bart Ehrman. I have read Ehrman... and I am Catholic. How do we request of an Ehrman reader that Catholicism is worth the, er, candle?

Christians have composed multitudinous apologetic against secular text-criticism; mostly it's silly Protestants on this beat, but not all. The smarter Catholics don't fall into the trap of citing Protestants - so some have mooted their own brand. In my day we had The Real Jesus; nowadays we got Brant Pitre.

These serve the purpose of affirming lay Catholics (or Christians generally) that it's been Handled, that Ehrman's been Refuted. Same as Darwin's been Handled, and Refuted ("epicycles"!). Just read this book bro'.

But the skeptic is not a lay Catholic anymore. He is examining the texts and the Tradition. What if he finds that Pitre skirts around the questions the skeptic has? (This isn't opinion - this is fact, that Pitre ducks and dodges.) Also: what if he decides that, yeah, Ehrman's got some problems here and there but that those problems are better solved by Carrier? and/or by Godfrey? This isn't a question about Ehrman, a brilliant man but just a man; it's a question about "2 Peter", whose author was a liar. And about all the dupes - or even poltroons, like Pitre, whom I suspect of knowing better, more quietly than I - who've continued to flout such Church Fathers as used to warn against "2 Peter".

What I'd say to the skeptic is that it's okay to harbour some misgivings about this canon. But: I affirm a greater canon, of saints, which saints include Ignatius and Clement.

As for Dennett, I get the feeling that those smirking about him being in Hell will be suffering a worse fate down there than is Dennett.

The Arma Christi and the Haggada

As Pesach approaches, TheTorah talks Arma-Christi. Davila has supplemented that - so, enough content for a brief post. I doubt the Haggadah as reacting to Christian hoodoo.

I do agree that Christianity assembled a list of Artifacts of the Crucifixion, like the crown of thorns and the cross itself, maybe that lance. These items were all indigenous to Christianity, before the Christendom made magick of them. The now-lost predecessor to John (vv. 3:14+12:34) had already associated the Cross with Moses' staff.

And no-one doubts an effort in Judaism to excise or at least neutralise prooftexts which Christians were using. In Haggadah, Davila notes Exodus 23:20-23 in which an angel of YHWH is at work. Another (failed!) attempt hit the Song of Moses and Miriam wherein YHWH is a "man of war" (protoSamaritan: "hero"). Infamously our "Hebrews" tractate cites Second Ode of Moses / Deuteronomy 32 from the Greek, which the rabbis have since undercut. Also note here if Bull El, son of [the] Most High ('alyun), had made an appearance earlier in that Ode now Deuteronomy 32.

My point is that Judaism also had a magickal tradition, already. Jews already remembered Artifacts - helloooo, the Ark, anyone? Several of these ancient D&D treasuretypes even got into Islamic apocalyptic. The need to nail down and promote a standard version against angel-veneration came with Enoch and Jubilees - long before him whom we name the Christ.

Solicitatio

The most-readable poster at Patheos debunks the trope of fundamental xes'abuse in the Latin Church. To Philip Jenkins, I'd ask why there Isn't A Story.

Now: just because Jenkins is the best of a bad batch doesn't make Jenkins all good. Jenkins calls the reformist Damien nasty names and compares him to QAnon. I say this reflects better on QAnon than it does on Jenkins. Still - Jenkins has a point that Damien is an outlier. "Solicitatio" as they called it tended at adult women, not at nonadult boys.

I've read or at least seen the telly series of three books perhaps-relevant to peccadilli of the Religious: Peter Jennings' Raptor, Kenneth Follett's Pillars of the Earth, and Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose. These three did their research, at least. These agree that the Religious were misfits. Misfits may well include predators; they certainly include the odd Countryman Of Lot. Follett thought the Church should be solicitous of such; Jennings disagreed, casting his net against all the Latin Church. Eco had his own, different problems with said Church. Jenkins would likely dislike Jennings. But - back to misfits.

I suspect the pool of misfits from which the Church could draw for its Religious was rather large in the medial age. The Closet-Cases were swamped by third-sons of villagers and barons, with lame and/or nearsighted people no good for the army (hey - another Jennings book!), with highly intelligent semi-autists. Some monasteries (and convents) might end up dens of Sin but at least those would be monasteries, not interfacing with the villages. The people interfacing with the villages would have been... people a lot more like the villagers.

And when they sinned, they'd be sinning with the villagers like any other villager would be tempted to do, that is with the women.

Not that we're condoning any of that over here in this blog, either. But hey - just resign the frock, sign up as a merchant's secretary, and maybe stick around to be a deacon if you really can't keep those robes shuttered.

I suspect that in a modern age of wide literacy where almost all the middle class is employed at an office, the Closet-Cases actually are too-high a proportion of the true misfits, and the leftover misfits are barely functional enough to resist the McCarricks. This is a recent phenomenon, not seen (nearly as much) in Late Antiquity.

That superhighway again

Late today ScienceDaily linked this knot-theory piece.

I'd thought we'd seen this back in 1997, from Ross and Lo (also pdf). Shane has ... come back. (One might say.) Anyway the old method was, I think, proposing solar-sails to shift one trajectory to the other. Sometimes the manifolds could find routes between us and Jupiter - which is useful for us, but also for the Comet Empire seeking to crash into us. The new "tube map" proposes to find optimal routes faster, using that knot theory. So: you're on a doomed mine on an asteroid and you need off it, to Ceres or wherever. Which is the best wherever, given fuel-reserves? The theory might work on a local computer, not requiring a supercomputer.

BACKDATE AND REWRITE 4/18 7:30 PM: Okay, I've read the thing, Danny Owen and Nicola Baresi. The press release is bad and its author should feel bad, as should ScienceDaily for not choosing a better summary.

We deal here with passageways between L1 and L2, the focal-points of (unstable) halo orbits balanced between bodies in mutual orbit. Their Jacobi Integral is similar. Once launched to that gravitational midpoint which is L1 - we should get to corresponding L2 with minimal thrust.

So: from the Earth, to (almost) the Moon which is "TLL1" - and beyond. TLL2, as the balance-point opposite the Moon from Earth, should be an easy route either to STL1 or STL2 - thence, to Venus (or maybe that 5:4 Laplacian); or just directly outward to anywhere. So the postJacobi question is: sussing out the L1 and L2 manifolds to eject from one and inject to th'other.

Owen-Baresi, I think, shouldn't have bothered with Jupiter/Ganymede on account I suspect its L1/L2 are under severe (periodic) pressure from Europa maybe also Io. Anyway: why Ganymede? Jupiter/Callisto which is not in that resonance should make for purer maths. And that orbit interfaces better with the rest of us; and Callisto itself isn't irradiated.

Of course this blog would want to talk Sol/Venus. For all the above that counterlunar orbit L3 needs some love, as well.

Stellar magnetic fields

Two newsbits came in last weekend: first, limb darkening - as a means to finetune the surrounding shape of a stellar disc. That's useful for ascertaining starspots and, of course, planetary transits. Also in the news is a measurement of stellar winds from 61 Cygni, 70 Ophiuchi, and epsilon Eridani. These are quite close to us. I think by 61 Cygni and 70 Ophiuchi, binaries both, they mean A.

61 Cygni's stars are both 6.1 Gy old, and about 70%/63% solar mass; 70 Oph at 1.9 Gy and 90%/70%. The stellar wind of each suggests that one or the other is losing mass an order of magnitude as our (stronger) Sun. I much doubt that any of these four be pregiant on the mainsequence. Epsilon Eridani on the other hand is new, like T Cha.

The stars share in common: magnetic field. Strong fields mean mass loss, and may explain 61 Cygni's severe case.

Does being in a binary "juvenate" a star, so it behaves like εEri?

Anyway if we can figure a field from either direct imaging or the wind, we can probably figure other parameters (starquakes are also good for this). Thus improving transit-measurements if any. Or, constraining if a star even has planets or water in HZ.

Carbon-cycle habitability

Master of Orion allowed besides "difficulty" a bounded playfield small / medium / large, which could take on multiple NPC alien-races. The sequel adds the age of the playfield. So, we guess, if it formed in the centre of our Milky Way or if it is a holdout from a dead patch of space like some of those low-gas galaxies. Relevant to all this, from 10 April: carbon-cycle. (Presented by Bristol, but not well.)

Lewis J. Alcott, Craig Walton, Noah J. Planavsky, Oliver Shorttle, and Benjamin J. W. Mills propose, on the assumption of (somehow) photosynthesis being introduced, how the atmosphere became oxygen-rich. They say: not just the spread of alga. During the Boring Billion before land plants, photosynthesis was both two-dimenstional, and limited to shallow pools and "brownwater" coast.

So we had oxygen in our early atmosphere - but not much. Plus photosynthesis requires CO₂. The paper, as I read it, proposes rock carbonates as a proxy for atmospheric carbon generally. If free carbon monoxide, say from a volcano, reacts with a silicate, some gets buried and we can dig it out and measure its isotopes. Or the dioxide can get taken by those plants, which eventually die and leave some carbon-nitrogen sludge.

Over time, like a boring billion years, carbon slowly becomes carbonate and also dead plants. More plants grow. The winner as carbon is cycled in and out is - oxygen.

What the paper doesn't constrain is Great Oxidation Event, measured elsewhere 2.4-2.2 Gya. They'd define that G.O.E. as the point at which "oxygen overwhelms [carbon] sinks". But again: not yet breathable to modern mammals, maybe not even to dino/birds. There's just enough O₂ to exist without it all burning.

Bethel as the New Babylon

Neil "Vridar" Godfrey last Friday quoted Israel Finkelstein at length on the literacy-culture of Judah/Samaria. There was one... and then there was not. Literacy had to return to the place. We're just arguing when and how, and to Vridar that's looking Hellenistic.

Our Bible has come to us in recensions drastic enough, between the Samaritans and the Masoretes, that we know that glosses happen. The Samaritans' deviations amount to a radically different text. Modern scholars can, also, "restore" radical texts and don't need to change nearly as much so to do. Here we're looking into Ernst Axel Knauf (2006), on the rôle of the site Bethel in postexilic protoJudaism.

Bethel was excavated and published; its various rubble was catalogued and stored in Pittsburgh. Finkelstein in 2009 returned to Pittsburgh, and found lacunae, scotching the Bethel publication.

Nadav Na’aman (2010a), 180-2 critiqued that "post-mortem" to note that Bethel's famous Temple was not among the initial excavations. Although he'll allow Finkelstein for Bethel's loss of a papyrus/ostracon class, that is what we'd call an educated middle class; we remain wanting for direct evidence of the parchment class. Knauf had suggested to take Nehemiah 7 seriously, that up to a sixth of the population overall was unproductive Temple personnel therefore subsidised from abroad. The locals would have been shut out of the libraries. Especially Bethel heathens from the Jerusalem library.

DOI bros should look up Na’aman (2014) - 10.1179/0334435514z.00000000032. Here he argues for Jacob's Stairway, or Ladder, as a ziggurat. This is a Babylonian import like Ezekiel's Temple (although of course Ezekiel wanted that for Zion). Such suggests - to Na’aman - that postExilic Jews seriously considered Bethel as the new Temple-City, what with Mizpah being inadequate and Zion being accursed. I mean: it's even in the name, "Beth-El" (in Aramaic construct).

Another Na’aman point is that he pronounces the Documentary Hypothesis' funeral, with Schmid as of 2010 hammering the final nails in its coffin. I dunno; I do sometimes see "J", "D", and "P" noted out-an'about, still. I concede, postKnohl/postCarmichael - "P" tends to split into "Holiness" and "P" sections with a lot of redactional futzing. Suffering worst is the "E" source, which is exactly associated with Bethel.

Na’aman in the stead of "E" would see northern tradition contributing to our "Deuteronomic" history. Some of this comes into the Jacob cycle (which is Bethel); some of it into the vignettes in Judges (which is not). Exodus is the most-important northern story, Moses being a northern hero unknown to - say - Isaiah. Isaiah 9:1-6 is aware of the Gideon/Midian story, also in a northern cycle; but Na’aman cites others that this be a hymn to Josiah therefore later than the northern kingdom's existence, and brought to Isaiah's work posthumously.

When cats are a pest

TheTorah offers a fine article about how Judaism considers the Libyan desert cat. It preyed upon small birds and rodents; both of these came to humans, so the cat followed them. (Another breed followed them in Asia; but we're talking the western Semites today.)

Egypt and old west Eurasia venerated the cat; they weren't wholly domestic, but did drive off the smaller rats - and pigeons, also arguably vermin. But then, some pre-Thai southwest Asians started cooping the junglefowl. Cats had the bad habit of hunting chickens too; and of course many islands to this day consider feral cats a menace. The Sasanians ruled that cats be vermin, no better than poisonous snakes.

Under Iranian rule in the Eraq, Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar permitted to raise kufri-dogs [hedgehogs], cats, monkeys, and stone-martens because they are likely to rid the house of vermin. The oriental stone-marten would stand in for domestic ferrets out West. Inasmuch as contemporary Hatrene Christians would hardly have a problem with kittycats, I think we're seeing a general urban Semitic resistance to more-rural Iranian rulings upon them.

Cooling the southern subtropics

A concern shared with the Loop and the Ring is that either will shade equatorial-to-tropical waters. This stands to weaken monsoons and other storms. A post dedicated to that, is in order. We'll start with the southern Indian Ocean.

I suspect that Indian-Ocean Loop to contribute, as would the Ring, to north-Malagasian, Australian, south-Asian aridity. On the plus side: Zanzibar, Timor, north Australian space sites won't have as many weather-warnings for whatever direct spaceflights they might want to do. As to the Loop, with fewer bad storms we're allowed to build it that bit closer to Madagascar - which should help Cape shipping.

The Loop boards... in the middle of the ocean, from a freighter. One pillar may be worth anchoring at Aldabra, where humans aren't supposed to live; run a set of birdnests up the shaft.

On to central Pacific: how would the Ring or Loops affect the Ninho?

Loop and/or Ring still look better for Mars than for Earth.

Where the Lofstrom Loop

About four years ago I mused about megastructures to space, which came to include the Lofstrom Loop. I figured it wasn't going to compete with the Starship in the long-term we're necessarily looking at. Last December, ToughSF took a look anyway. In light of the Baltimore bridge collapse... how's that looking now?

We have limited options for the Loop. A selling-point of the Loop as opposed to, say, Birch's ring is that we don't have to build it over inhabited areas. That means Loops can be built only over the oceans, blue-water. Those also need to be more-or-less equatorial, for best delta-V and ecliptic-aiming results; anyway too far north or south and we get into those hurricane-latitudes.

First problem: oceans aren't wholly devoid of human activity. We run shipping through them. Freighters are already large enough to take down a bridge in brown-water like Balto. Blue-water is getting massive; they might even get nuclear shipping. Imagine that monster knocking into a Lofstrom pillar. Leave aside if someone does this on purpose. How about on accident?

As I'm looking at the map, I'm calling that the Atlantic is offlimits. No Loop there. Just... don't. Indian and Pacific Oceans look better, though.

A South African ship (or any ship rounding that Cape) bound for India has two options of avoiding that east-west line. Luckily: that big Malagasy island already forces those choices. That landmass would appear to shield the Loop from the southwest; and, from all along the north, mission-planners can just plan ahead, we hope. We'd install this thing as far south as the storms let us; where the prevailing wind goes against our easterly trajectory, but maybe we can use ramjets (which we reuse) to assist.

On to westbound traffic running the Falkland gap, and basically all the Andes; in trade with western North America. There I suggest simply keeping such a Loop, or Loops, west of the line connecting southern Chile with California.

Latin across the Tyrrhenian Sea

The Latinists among us may be interested in two books from the last two years. It looks like we should read first Nicholas Zeir, on Orthographic traditions and the sub-elite in the Roman empire. Next would come a collection of essays Uniformity and regionalism in Latin writing culture of the first millennium C.E.. Subelite Latin would, out in the boonies, become local Vulgar Latin(s). Ultimately this glob of late-common-Latin alongside Church-Latin became Romance. Excepting maybe Sardinia.

Why "C.E." and not "A.D."? Because even the Christians weren't on the "A.D." system yet! I keep tellin' y'all this... sigh.

Rodney Ast talks (north-)Africa. Between Rome and Africa, Tino Licht notes the Visigothic script ... if we want to call it "Visigothic". The evidence is the Basilicanus D 182, mostly a collection of Saint Hilaire de Poitiers which codex you can look at online if you like. This made its way to Sardinia, where in Cagliari some African bishops corrected it 509/10. I don't know we should count this as Visigothic; Ostrogothic, maybe. Not-Vandal at least. Isabel Velázquez Soriano is writing from Spain so would appear to be better-situated to discuss Visigothic-era Iberian protoRomance.

I harp on Sardinia on account it held onto close-enough actual Latin. More to that point: Wolf Zöller contributes to the Papacy's use of Latin, on monuments. Who's to read those monuments? Coastal West Italians read those monuments, back when Sardinia and Latium weren't as mutually-distant as they became.

The song of Melito

Brent Nongbri announced late last week a codex of one Melito, a Jew baptised in Sardis and then its bishop. Melito composed a memra on the Pascha - in Greek. I hadn't yet looked at this one here; let's do that.

The codex, Crosby-Schøyen, is not Greek; it is a Sahidic Coptic translation of the Greek. This Coptic got edited - in 1990. Before that publication, one Stuart George Hall (a relative of my maternal grandfather's mother, I warrant) edited the Greek in 1979 with some help from the then-unedited MS. I assume this was helpful to the Coptic edition; I don't know if anyone has gone back to the Greek. Officially.

Unofficially Nongbri points to the public-access version from Rev. Alistair Stewart-Sykes (pdf). A second edition exists, but the translation remains the same; thus, how Nongbri can endorse the text.

I shall name him "Sykes" here so as not to confuse him with unrelated Stuart Hall.

Sykes adapts Hall's translation to make it read line-by-line, like the memra it is. I cannot help but think that this was cantillated. In Catholicism, the deacon cantillates the Pascha introduction at the start of the Vigil: this is the niiight.... Melito was a Quartodeciman, arba'-'ashari as it were, hosting the Feast on the very day of Jewish Pesach. I feel like cantillation was something he'd taken from his own Seder as a child. I done tol' you this was ancient.

As Sykes reads Hall: Melito's community was big on the Apostle John, as were many in Anatolia. Jesus heals the blind in all gospels, but only in the Fourth does He perform the semeion of a man blind from birth. Also there's that Passover thing, where John stands apart.

Melito need not have had his "Johannine" lore from John alone. Nails feature in Ignatius and Justin also. And in that Passion-Resurrection narrative we get in a "Gospel" narrated in Peter's name.

Sykes says that Peter was likewise Quartodeciman. Where John's Gospel wants to say that the Jews killed Christ, it slips later and admits of Romans hammering the actual nails (the nailmarks visible later still). Melito #76, imagining a Jew (like himself) wishing he had not sinned against the Saviour, has the Jew pray he had not hung up and nailed Him. The Jews should have been like Pilate, washing hands, maybe letting some Syrians and Arabs do it. Peter is where you go, for Jews taking over the SPQRs' carpentry.

For more harmonic notes, Melito #98 has an earthquake. John 19 (like Mark 15) has no such thing; this is Matthew 27:51>54, also - yes - Peter. Melito mixes the 19:19 vinegar with gall, as did the Psalmist. John 19:19 does not, and Peter doesn't name what else went into the "mixture"; we find the Psalm's recipe instead in Matthew 27:34. Being #104-5 seated at the Father's right hand is Psalm 110, as cited by Mark and Paul (Romans) and 1 Peter, later Barnabas and Hebrews and Ephesians... but also not John. Born of a virgin? Also Matthew, and Ignatius and Justin - not John.

Melito, I agree, used John and Peter, and I'll add Matthew. Perhaps not Mark anymore, a dying gospel at the time (it got better). I don't think he had Luke.

ANC-E

The eclipse allowed an extra day to ponder, hopefully free of bias, the Blackfoot paper. The important takeaway is the existence of a ANC-E.

This blog before June 2022 was aware of -A (red on the barchart) and -B (purple). No pure -B survived to Columbus, probably not even Erikson; pure -A by contrast own "Latin" America, aside from a few Melanesians in the Amazon (which is quite-another strange story). Anzick was mostly -A; likewise, I strongly suspect, Clovis. Ojibwe are near-50/50 A+B; that's not too far east of the Blackfoot headwater.

ANC-E (yellow) broke off before the A/B split. This is like the Sonora Ghost. That is: we have archaeology of ANC-E but had seen no descendents... yet.

Blackfoot are mostly that A+B mix too. Also some modern descendents are part white (blue on the chart, because of our big throbbing veins, I dunno). What is getting everyone excited is that they have that yellow portion still: ANC-E. Nobody else still has this.

Stonetoss should update his comic include a NSFW panel, just for the Blackfoot (and for his own people). Demic diffusions were not entirely violent.

Eclipse day

I already saw a totality in my lifetime so shall spare the roads my car, this day. Instead I'll clog up the blog: with chronology. Thiele's 1965 limmu-list remains canon for 891-648 BC; Illig, "Scott", and Guyénot notwithstanding. Its last generation may even be reinforced in light of that Miyake event 660 BC.

It gets uglier before 891 BC, when Chinese records get difficult (thanks loads, Qin); of course we have nothing from Europe, India, or the Americas here. All we have are Egyptian and Mesopotamian records, suffering a lengthy hiccup before which at least the later Hittites are helping us out.

The Catholic University of Argentina is hosting a Damqatum 18 (2022) paper as would shift the New Kingdom - and the Hittites with them - 243 years to the "future", toward us. It would illuminate the "Dark Age"... at the expense of darkening Anatolia further before the Hittites. We would really be hurting for any reference to Thera, semi-decently located early 1500s BC, as isn't pots.

I don't accept this paper any more than I accepted Illig, whom Miyake debunked; or Guyénot, who's barely on any radar. We own too much Aegean and Anatolian dendro' by now not least, this drought published 2023.

Still. We do need to know where the weaknesses in our sources. That the weaknesses allowed for a 2.43 century fuzzball, as late as 2022, should be... worrying. Also we need all the eclipses; UCA / Damqatum 18 make much of 31 May 957 BC, which should have been total over Thebes, if Egypt recorded any of that.

Interested parties

To me, pied-noir means Latins (mostly) who returned to uninhabitable regions of Algeria to make them agriculturally-viable again. They're more indigenous to such resettled parts of Algeria, than the Arabs and Berbers who had migrated there with their goats to denude the place. In America, "blackfeet" refer to a likewise not-quite-nomadic inhabitants of a region. Here too: how indigenous are they?

The /pol/ cartoonist Stonetoss, part Taino, has Opinions. Mostly focused on the Navajo, whom Hopi would consider "settlers"; one might also look to the transplanted Lakota and the imperial Comanche.

Geneticists could tell us. h/t Sareceni: Science.org is reporting on a partnership between geneticists and the Blackfoot. [UPDATE 4/9: here, the results.]

I see a conflict between impartial scientody and interested parties. We are assuming that the Blackfoot are virtuous and "belong" there. In rhetorical studies this is, I believe, known as Begging The Question.

Even if we weren't breaking the logical rules, suppose the fossil-fuel companies decided to bankroll their own studies.

On the marriage of 'Âisha

I went to the doctor Thursday and took a couple shots... to my immune system. I was sick as a dog that night and as dog-tired yesterday. I didn't see anything worth blogging, sufficient to surmount that rheumatism. (I may end up backdating some stuff back then anyway.) I am much better today... although a windstorm is raging outside and they're threatening to cut off my power. So: quickpoast, 'Âisha.

Jonathan A.C. Brown thinks the tradition of 'Âisha's marriage is authentic back to the Mother Of The Believers herself. Robert Spencer agrees; and why not, since if Dr. Brown did not exist, Spencer would have to invent him. Joshua J Little, not a Dr. Little at the time, argues against the 'Âisha tradition.

Little-as-Dr., having redefined Islam, now considers himself an "ex-islamophobe" and indeed an anti-islamophobe. Spencer won't permit Little to do that. Islam's motte is sura 4. If your hands possess it - and mâ is neuter - do what thou wilt.

From my experience of Spencer's attitude, if he doesn't like the man he won't approve the scholarship. And I doubt Spencer has spent much time with Little's 546 pages, any more that he's read Brown's own Canonization (which I have read, and recommend). BUT: Spencer has become (perhaps perforce) a decent judge of character. And Little has every motivation to slither around Islam's implications; why choose the life of a public 'phobe.

Back to the 'Âisha tradition, Little several years ago had written a thesis which argued for a Zubayrid origin. Whether or not 'Âisha consummated the marriage, her followers treated her as the Prophet's bride - and her allies at her peak included the patriarch Zubayr, whose sons will revive 'Umar's caliphate but from Mecca itself. That thesis earned for Little, his Master's. I had independently come to a similar conclusion, as of 2017; although of course not submitting it for peer-review. It was my position to blame 'Âisha as a politician; until 'Ali put paid to her adventure, and Mu'awiya made impossible future adventures, after which she was just an aging liar. My counter to objections that her minions made all this up would be simple: what quality of woman attracts dishonest (and violent) men. If this be impressionistic, and not remotely as scholarly as Little; as of 2017, I felt I had more important things to do.

Little's PhD thesis proposes, against Little, that the origin is not Zubayrid - but 'Iraqi. Her nine years of age may even owe something to Sasanian law, which (then) was hardly more enlightened than Islam.

It's... a thesis. It deserves taking seriously. That Little's mentor was Christopher Melchert should be enough for most of us.

Mirrond's Long War

I'm back on RoyalRoad, going through what Japanese would term lightnovels. I've found very few since last June as are remotely readable. But "Mirrond" seems to have a good one, in its second draught: Long War.

Browser-history tells me I started this on Tuesday, got to chapter 7 Wednesday, 12 Thursday when the autoimmune funtimes began and am "now" on 22. [As of poasting: 30.]

On its face it is an isekai-in-sci-fi, also with timeskip: like, Asimov's Pebble In The Sky. Here the MC, one Christopher Hall, has skipped onto a spaceship of exploration. The merrie men must navigate a spiral-arm controlled by Ideologies. Here we're dealing with Russel's The Great Explosion, except that Mirrond is (much) more cynical and almost-certainly hasn't read Russel.

Mirrond's prose isn't perfect, which he knows, so he's already planning a third whipthrough. His universe is vast, arguably too vast for the storyline - we'll see.

Mirrond likely would not object if you accused him of rewriting the series Andromeda, with a few anime touches and at least indirect exposure to Warhammer 40000. Yes there are catgirls. And space elves. There's in-universe reasons for their existence.

As to those BestGirls: Mirrond is not Snekguy. (Keeping in mind: Snekguy isn't always Snekguy; and anyway this post is no place to review that one's work.) Mirrond seems to be moderately Christian, or at least in Dawkins' congregation. The ideologies which Hall approves are two or three: the small-c catholics, a democratic alliance, and a social democracy. Hall prefers the latter two but is happy to cheer the catholics if they're up for Crusade on Lovecraft patsies, slavers, and/or NSDAP LARP.

I get the impression that if Mirrond hasn't read as much Sci-Fi as I have, he's read a good deal more political-theory and criticism thereof. I haven't read Bernard Crick since college, and never read Ayn Rand beyond some essays. Unfortunately writing science-fiction for Kennedy-era moderates marks one as "alt right" in the Biden-era, so Mirrond hasn't had the accolades he deserves, for even making the attempt.

OBVIOUS BACKDATE 4/6

The flamingo

On the first of this month, we got a bird alert. An archaic patch of DNA in a "neöäve" bird chromosome looks similar in dove/pigeons and in mirandornithes - mostly flamingoes. In 2014, that patch put those in the same group. Now, it's clearer that this is just a shared genetic fossil.

Mirandornithes are now even more mirandal. As to pigeons: they're now being clumped next to the cuckoo-bustard "otidimorphs".

You have to squint at the chart to see that Galloanserae - fowl and waterfowl - had already branched out so don't count here. That goes double for the Paleognaths, which include the ostrich, almost saurian throwbacks. If I'd stopped to think about it, I might have guessed the latter were Different. It was news to me that Galloanserae were so separate from other birds however. Honestly I'd have picked the flamingo first. I suppose that's why I'm not a biologist.

I dislike the name "neoave"; besides demanding too many umlauts it mixes Greek and Latin. Novavis or neornis wil work for me. I might just stick with novave. "Novornis" might invite back that migraine from Tuesday night. Nuevavo, senhor?

Anyway the branching between flamingo and the other NewBirds happened around 65-7 Mya which was... an interesting time. As you can imagine, there's a hunt on to see what, exactly, selected this strange genetic clot amongst these particular birds.

BACKDATE 4/7 since Thursday night I was in no shape to type anything.

Satellites are liable for dumping to Earth

That Outer Space Treaty is really showing its age, as is shown in this case.

NASA, which does most of the work on the ISS, had a bum battery. The Russians didn't want it; there weren't other customers in LEO. They can't just throw that out the airlock to contribute to Kessler. Blasting it to graveyard-orbit takes too much delta-V, let alone beyond. So they pitched it downward. To Alejandro Otero's house. And through it.

You'd think the American management of ISS would take the blame for it, but you're not thinking like a stinking lawyer. By treaty / international-law, Japan owns it. Say what? - you ask; because they'd launched it from this Earth, Zimmerman is (sort of) saying.

So goes the Literalism theory, anyway. It is hardly original-intent. Imagine if Honda be liable for a corroded part in a twelve-year-old car bought from a used-car lot... or Boeing liable for United's mechanics. Nah: the last launcher of this hottest of Sudamerican tuber was... us.

NASA are acting as if they know this reading of the Treaty won't fly in Japanese court. NASA - "we" - have been blowing Otero off.

Leaving Rome to rot

If you played Sid Meier's Civilization games, you'll recall the Black Arrows. That's "corruption" - civic trade as doesn't come to you, the player. Guy de la Bédoyère has a book out Populus (so I've been alerted), citing Julius Frontinus (perhaps a Narbonian by birth) who calculated how much water went to the commons versus being diverted to the gardens of the Honestiores.

These wealthy men were not altogether Honest. Roma had the corruption-index of 28%.

So: when Frontinus? Wiki says: AD 40s sometime to 103. He had a military career pleasing-enough to the Flavian Principate that he was appointed governor of Britannia until AD 77; he had a stint in Asia AD 86. Back at Rome sweet Rome, Nerva made him the curator aquarum in AD 97. De aquaeductu is the official report.

What Frontinus is observing is the Eternal ShittyCity under Domitian. Domitian was one who put his faith in provincial Army guys... like Frontinus. Domitian first despised, then hated, the Senatorial aristocracy. I'd have thought that an "anticorruption" push would have suited Domitian fine. Frontinus actually did the homework for us. It looks much as if Domitian was tolerant of corruption of rich men in Rome, if they weren't patricians. Domitian let Rome rot.

Well... in Late Antiquity, the Empire likely would allow such rot. But Nerva and Trajan were not yet willing to give up the City.

Rex Nebular

I do have a "proper" post lined up from last weekend - Saturday in fact - but I figured it can wait one more day, given the foolish day it is. So let's talk trivial matters: the first Rex Nebular from MicroProse (preOrion)... and the last.

I bought this one on the cheap, even "at the time". There was a vidjagaym store next to the Nan's on the 59, now the delightfully-named "I-69". (You'll want to go just slightly further downtown for that sort of thing.) They specialised in stuff that was popular years before. As other purchases there go I bought Star Control 2, late in 1994, for not-much ($20 I think). The machine in question was a Tandy running Windows 3.10/.11. Rex would be one of several I got for the thing; I recall playing it not at the dorm, but at home, so probably summer '95.

I don't recall playing it much however. Spoilers ensue for anyone reading who cares.

Rex offers sex comedy in space, sticking between Sierra's and Infocom's extremes; like, PG-13. It is, basically, an attempt at Space Quest X without Wilco's (janitorial) lore. Those were the scenes in the time-travel caper of Sierra's (actual) SQ-IV back in 1991. MicroProse put this one out the following year. They thought that they could pad out "SQ-X"'s graphical Leather Goddesses homage/adaptation to a full game, and that a market existed for something like that.

For backstory the titular character is hired to pick up a macguffin at an uncharted planet; the planet's current rulers like it uncharted, so shoot down said character's ship. That planet's secret is a civil war between the sexes, not all that long back (maybe a generation ago) which the females won.

Etc etc etc, wildlife tries to kill Our Hero, two fortresses need infiltrating, Roger needs the macguffin - a vase.

When I played this back in 1995, or '94 or '96 (I don't even know) I viewed it inferior to the Andromeda Guys' effort, like a not-very-funny joke stretched too long. I remember that xes scene early on (there is one - just one); and I am pretty sure I got as far as the vehicle in the City Of Man (I won't spoil its name). Since then I'd forgotten how to solve what puzzles I'd solved, which turns out handy for replay. Honestly I forgot the very name of the game until finding it again.

Saturday evening before the vigil Mass (I know: not my holiest moment, mea-culpa), I went with the medium difficulty (why three levels?). 24 hours later I got one of the happier endings. Probably the best ending. The only ending I'll bother with. So: other observations? Um.

MicroProse, in horning in on Sierra turf with a touch of Kyrandia, seem not to have succeeded. Nobody over there (or anywhere else) mooted a sequel. Later will come a couple more games, fantasy Dragonsphere being perhaps the best-received (GOG were giving this away in the early 2010s). Very little else emitted from that side of MicroProse. The ScummVM team do allow Rex - but not Dragonsphere; it's a tossup if they will ever bother.

As to the universe-building: this is a human universe, perhaps on the H Beam Piper model of survivors from a commonwealth-collapse, if so certainly filtered through Infocom's Planetfall. The planet is not quarantined; it has quarantined itself. Everyone else has... let this happen. Maybe because future-we are to fear cooties.

The game holds that men and women are different yet not inferior/superior; the societies each side cooked up for themselves, absent each other, became dystopic. The women own tech to change sex at the genetic level; the women, here, are expert biologists, clearly too expert for their erstwhile men. The way the game handles this process is fantasy but hey, lightspeed, amirite. As Current Year goes, the game offends chiefly by asserting that even if someone could bend the genders, the transmogrified person remains that which s/he was Assigned At Birth. (Oh and there's a drag queen. He's Bruce. He doesn't pretend to be anything else. He doesn't count.)

Proofreading is poor. Graphics are... 1992; games of this time, of which we must call out SQ4 and SQ5, hit the unhappiest valley between pixelly early-Space-Quest and the cartooning of that last SQ game (yaaayyy pixelhunting). Code quality is decent, not notably buggier than a Sierra. The most player-disastrous bug is when saving the game on meeting the sea monster; so, ensure a save slightly before.

MicroProse claimed/boasted they designed away from needing to RESTORE except toward the end when multiple endings open up. To quote Dragonsphere, 'tis the thought that counts. You'll find yourself needing to remember/write numerics and if you don't, you'll be using RESTORE.

Honestly I wondered if the "good" ending was all that good. To progress, I had to allow a massacre of women, if not exactly innocent women. And then I had to destroy the mens' city. The game made me hit each where, I venture, it hurts the most. A darker slate of authors might have gone Spec Ops on me.

We'll likely not see much more in this genre which is played out. We'll likely not see much more in this universe or with this character, either. Even if someone wanted it (noone wants it) there's that horrible 2018 "Blurred Lines" decision to get through.