The Bacchae

Angelo Plume and Joey Jo Jo Cochran would like to quell some of the Christian outrage over the Olympics. Bedfellows indeed; not so strange however, inasmuch as Counter-Currents and Patheos agree on Gaza and on "the JQ" generally.

Joey Jo Jo would pretend that this outrage is "evangelical", not knowing or (more likely) erasing the bishops' response in France. Following a common trope over on Patheos, it's not the story that's the story; it's how icky proles react to the story. See also, the child slave trade; Augustine, for Patheos, had expended his last years in vain.

If someone complains about the content without visual proof, that someone would - rightly - be suspected as making stuff up. But if proof is provided, this is "voyeuristic". Joey Jo Jo won't address that this blasphemy was intended as a "New Gay Testament".

Not our first coup

Kamala Harris is Acting President; ousting out the old triumvirate of Joe, Hunter, and Jill. There was no Constitutional process for this. There's talk this coup was permitted because the 25th Amendment was raised; which as Ace notes means everyone in the chain-of-command knew that it should be raised.

But we are all going along with Acting President Harris, anyway. Hollywood wills, Hollywood's will be done. I recall Harris posters in science-fiction from maybe ten years ago. Hollywood has willed Harris for some time now.

It may pain my readers to read this, but Harris' coup enjoys some precedent. "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!" became "you're getting John Tyler" scant weeks into the Tippecanoe Presidency. There was no succession-mechanic in William Henry Harrison's Constitution; Tyler just slipped in, gave orders, and dared anyone to say different. Neither South Carolina nor Massachusetts said different.

Tyler's regime had more legitimacy than Edith Wilson did, anyway.

Ultima Hawaiki

One interesting point (of many) in Thompson's book, is the term "Hawaiki". This is the homeland of all the Polynesian peoples, who all remember they were not from wherever Europeans found them.

This implies that the state we call "Hawaii" should probably be considered New Hawaiki or East Hawaiki. Best, Ultima Hawaiki.

Although the people could still be called "Hawayicans" - after their origin. Thompson herself has been witness to a "brother" discount provided by Hawaiians to her husband a Maori.

BACKDATE 31 July

Europeans as indigenous islanders

This weekend I picked up Christina Thompson, Sea People. Which has the alt-title "Puzzle of Polynesia". Before I finish this, I take issue with the Polynesians as the last people to settle lands outside their own.

We would be dismissing Barbados and the Azores as found by people who then lost those lands - Arawaks and Vikings respectively - alongside all those uncounted Pacific atolls. Fine. We are still left with the Gálapagos, São Tomé, Bermuda, Saint-Helena, the Falklands, Kerguelen... actually pretty much all the islands south of Tasman's, and one whole continent (if a chilly continent).

I think that Europeans should count also as "people".

BACKDATE end-o'July.

Constraining Gliese 1002 b

I stumbled onto Kosmo's youtube on K-452, which we've met last year as a possible photosynthetic. This particular vlog didn't offer anything new so - to fill opportunity for youtube ads I guess - burbled a bit on... GJ 1002, which we've also met, the year before that. Kosmo claimed estimates on mass and even on volume. I found that of interest because last I looked, we had only a minimum mass and no volume. This isn't a transit or some εIndi which we can actually look at. The best I could do was Hill Spheres, for masses.

As of this month I would, myself, impose some constraints on composition as well.

GJ 1002, although like GJ 12 not terribly flarey, has a wide Alfvén. Unless we're looking at these planets face-on so dealing with a superearth or two, b has no air - so no surface liquid. It's a barren rock. I figured it as a "huronian" so it could pile up some nice glaciers 'round the back but nobody's living on this thing.

Same goes for Wolf 1069.

The better Bruno

TheTorah.com has a fine article by Mordechai Cohen on Bruno and Solomon "Rashi" ben Meir, saint-scholars each in our traditions.

By the eleventh century A.D., it appears that the "Antiochene School" had more-or-less died in the West as long before in Egypt. Ephrem survived here only in name, via pseudepigraphs; the (relative) moderate Nestorius was condemned. Bruno revived the plain sense of scripture, which Syrians would call peshitta. (Jews had a similar word, pishut, whether cognate or loan.)

Bruno is mostly forgotten today - I literally needed a Jew to teach me. But that seems mostly because he's been overshadowed, by students like Thomas Aquinas then Duns Scotus (Cohen brings Nicholas of Lyra). Bruno was certainly widely-read at the time. One might consider Salieri's influence on Beethoven and Liszt. Now Rav/Prof Cohen would add Rashi to Bruno's students, if backhanded.

Maghrebi/Andalusi and Byzantine Jews existed and had been composing their own commentaries, preceding Rashi. But Rashi did not read Arabic nor Greek, so used none of these. Rashi didn't have Latin either... exactly. He did have Old French however, which wasn't yet as far from Vulgar Latin as it is now. I see that Rashi says פשוטו של מקרא rather than construct-state. The man has to be reading this like a Frenchman or Aramaean would, peshuto de miqra.

Cohen further claims that Latin Christians held to the Psalter more than to Torah. I don't know if that is true but it is assuredly possible; the Psalter was clearly the prime influence of the poetic memra genre among the Syrians, together arguably preceding actual-Bible to the Late Antique Araby. Either way, Bruno took more interest in the Psalter, composing a painstaking commentary upon that.

You already tested in prod

NASA still can't bring the boys home. Well, so they say; they know the Dragon Capsule will work. But apparently they want to use the Starliner. Boeing think they know what went wrong but then they'd have to figure out how to fix it before breaking something else.

In Boeing's defence the Starliner technically worked. It just didn't work very well. So it looks like they're in a poor parameter space where they don't know if it will work going-forward.

Ah Boeing, the Crowdstrike of space.

It is not the healthy who ask for a doctor

In 2017, civil-rights advocacy site American Renaissance reviewed JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. Vance at the time was a Randian and #NeverTrump. Vance subsequently crossed the Tiber. Now Anxious Bench is crossposting Daniel Williams on that case.

This trajectory makes a sight more sense than the Vox Day / Charles C Johnson / Etsy narrative that Vance is a closeted homosexual. It may be fair to say that Vance gave up on American and generally Western women. The 2021 "cat lady" clip would be of a piece with that. Vance simply went and found a nonWestern woman. I don't think that makes him gay.

Now, whether Vance be a gamma - that bears more scrutiny. Hillbilly Elegy notes that when a boy is alone in what Americans laughably call a school system, he's prey - or at least he feels like prey all the time. This causes havoc with hormones, especially adrenaline. You ever watch Grandma's Boy? The senior programmer there is a gamma parody. He is still a twelve year old bullied boy with all those instincts.

Vance tried to overcome his "factory settings". He served in the Marine Corps and got out honorably. Mind you, not reverting to gamma will always be a struggle.

A couple points follow. How Vance can appeal to the same American women who treated him like dirt when he was growing up, now grown into peak voting-age, remains a problem for his ticket's chances. Which is why the media is playing this up.

I'm more interested in how Catholicism can fix the gamma. It cannot hurt to affirm, as the secret king, Saint Mark's Christ - and not you. Intellectually, Vance had reached to Rene Girard, who's not a bad place to start (I'd suggest further the creeds' move toward dyotheletism). More worrying - to me - Vance seems to envy and distrust "elites" in a way I really don't. Although there are some elite-supported policies which are terrible and Vance is correct both to oppose those policies and to confront their supporters.

NERVA update

"Jay" at BehindTheBlack reports on another dossier-generator, this time on NERVA. Although the Ars Technica article is a fine one.

They've dug back into the old NTP documents, found where they had problems, and are fixing those problems. Also they're considering HALEU so bypass some of the nuclear-proliferation worries they'd had.

The article blames Nixon, who concentrated on low-Earth-orbit for American interests, leaving deep-space probes for robots. I actually think Nixon was... correct. We needed cheaper kilograms-per-dollar. NASA and Big Space weren't getting us that - still aren't.

With Starship, if the lawyers will let it happen, we are looking at serious construction in the Terra-Luna jacobi <3 region; far enough up, NERVA starts making sense again.

Abiotic oxygen

A few days ago I pondered oxygen being formed from irradiation. In an ocean, oxygen can also be formed by metal balls, little nodules on the seafloor.

Anyway once those nodules are on the floor, they electrolyze the water so that animal and fungal life can breathe. Even without chloroplasts.

I have to ask what happens to the hydrogen gassed out from an oxygenated ocean. Hydrogen doesn't dissolve well. Would it create peroxides? Once loosed into an atmosphere it'll probably react with some other gas. Cyanides, hydrazine, ammonia, organic compounds... the surface probably wouldn't be a nice place to live.

How those nodules form, in the presence of oxygen which they create, is another question. What "reduces" metals? Methane and carbon monoxide, from methanogenic bacteria, would do it. But for how long before the oxygen poisons the bacteria?

BACKDATE 7/24

Alfvén systems

I got in my time-machine and am posting on stellar magnetic recombination, today 26 July. Rice publishes this "tomorrow".

Of the exoplanetary systems we know, 1053 stars have a calculable Rossby ratio, of stellar rotation rate to convective turnover time. Thence they calculate Alfvén radius: past which, stellar wind breaks free of the magnetic field. The paper proper uses per-planet "ASHC", Alfvén surface habitability criterion, hoping for greater than 1. TRAPPIST-1 e is here, at around 1.08; "superterran" LHS-1140 b is 1.036.

Thus 84 exoplanets in our sample have orbits which lie inside the CHZ and that also lie outside the star's Alfvén surface: 34 of these have been classified as terran (11) or superterran (23) planets. For those interested here's raw data (text).

Most dwarf planets of stars as have been spotted are transits of M dwarfs. They trend inside Alfvén so they lose atmo. Proxima Centauri b was always deemed a blasted wasteland; it is inside the Alfvén sphere too. Ross-128 b is another one ruled-out; UPDATE 7/27 as are both GJ 1002 planets especially the inner one. And this blog has never taken TRAPPIST-1 b,c,d seriously.

Just because some planet is free of ASHC=1 doesn't mean we can pack our bags. TRAPPIST-1 e is argued in a 2019 paper as not sufficing in magnetic-moment. Escaping all the nets are only two: K2-3 d and Kepler-186 f; I am unsure why we're not talking K-452 b and the other potential photosynthetics. As to ice worlds as can ignore sunlight, I don't know that such be possible beneath ASHC although LHS-1140 c comes close.

I must repeat: our sample is weighted heavily toward transits (so too close) and obviously-uninhabitable giants. Earthlikes at 0.8 AU from K stars, or 1 AU from G like us, might not be possible to spot from here.

The clowns threw down their tools

I am not in IT so, unlike IT, I do not have to spend this weekend opening Bitlocker machines and manually swapping out .sys files. Microsoft trusting American kernel software has proven unwiser than trusting, oh, Kaspersky. Russia's doing fine spasibo.

The offending software was "Falcon", by CrowdStrike (I keep wanting to say cloudstrike). They got into the news in 2016 being blamed for the hack on the DNC; Peter Woit among other educated partisan fakers believed them, rather pretended to believe them. CrowdStrike later admitted they made it up, claiming the Maddow Defence that this was "opinion" (no, Alex Jones doesn't get to use that defence, silly). CrowdStrike are big in DEI as you can see in their "we got this" ad, get it on youtube while ya can.

King Kunta on Reddit noted that Falcon was a security timebomb and called a "put" on r/wallstreetbets... like an hour before the bomb dropped. Yeeeaaahhh... I'd not try getting through to his phone anytime soon, he should probably get a lawyer.

How did CrowdStrike get here? They had hired some new people last March. I like to assume they were good people. It seems they had some problems in the chain from dev to QA before doing a push first thing on Friday morning.

Project and agenda

MAGA has an agenda - and it is not Heritage's "Project 2025". It is "Agenda 47". Don't confuse the two.

After a week of media pummelling P25, the Left has so far succeeded in tying it to Vance and in getting weedy Republicans to sway with the wind.

Project 2025 is hardly "dystopian". To the extent it is "anti-science" it is anti-gnostic. Those who have actually read the thousand-page wishlist, or "cafeteria", don't find it extreme in the least.

Which is the point; to drive a wedge in the base and to make Republican candidates look like not all that different from Democrats in rhetoric. I suppose every hour the media-Democrat-deepstate complex waste on a platform MAGA doesn't even endorse is an hour not expended on what MAGA intends, and in not hustling the Democrats' flawed candidates, so... that's something, if you're MAGA.

About last week

I was up in the hills last Saturday, about the last chance I got to do that before the storms came in, when I heard the President had been shot. Several theories have cropped up since then.

About a third of Democrats believe that this was staged, that the presumptive shooter - one Mr Crooks - took a wounding shot, or (per Michael Steele) aimed for a nearby glass screen. To do that requires coöpting the Secret Service and/or the local cops, who let it happen (I'll get to this) so, effectively, this is a subset of QAnon, that the DeepState belongs to Trump at heart.

Against that, the "Intelligence Community" is still doing what it is doing, blaming Russia for Trump being in the race. Which means the I.C. are antiTrump. QAnon is stupid and so is Steele.

We also have the theory that the DeepState intended to hit the target but missed. The Republican Senators are not getting many straight answers from Kim Cheatle, who scampered away when they met a few nights back.

Ann Althouse has proposed a list from 1-4, 1 being "derrrp" and 4 being "it was a hit, simple as". In between is what Vox Day would call a "Green Flag".

"Green Flag" is an outgrowth of the (tiresome) "False Flag" meme. The "Green Flag" is where somebody knows the enemy, and deliberately weakens the defence where the enemy should strike. Vox Day applied this to Israel's feckless leadup to 7 October. Vox Day and Bibi Netanyahu assumed that Gazans are wild beasts with no agency, who - given the opportunity - would strike. They wouldn't be able to stop themselves. One might also consider how the prison in American History X put an ancient near-retiree to guard the shower when, you know. I am no fan of Netanyahu so will leave 7 October aside.

As to 13 July, this does look a lot like Cheatle - who is a friend of Jill Biden - drew down. I agree that she did not know what would happen; at the same time, I am certain she did not and does not want to know what might happen. She doesn't respect Republicanism; it wasn't Republicans who hired her in the first place. That is why she has no answer to the Republican Senators, nor to any Republicans.

BACKDATE 7/20 ehhh

Gaia's last DR

It had a good run - in fact, running past its mission parameters - but the Gaia might be gone. It got hit by a micrometeor in its STL2 halo. The recent solar storms haven't helped either (STL2 is shaded by Earth, but the halo isn't).

The L2 halo needs course-correction, so Gaia's mission ends when they turn off its power - or run out of propellant, but propellant seems a nonfactor at this point.

A new Gaia should aim at more precision, in which case maybe they can use this vibration-damper. With the usual caveats about the hype-curve (ht. Sabine for batteries).

The Homoean

I think we can comfortably sketch out Ephrem's theology. Yes he had one. This theology descends from the physicality of man, which descends from the image of Christ as "like" - but not - God. We are not faffing about with the Platonic "real" of our Catholic theologians; Ephrem meant matter and flesh.

It is because Jesus was intrinsically flesh, Christ came to Sheol - as all flesh must. Christ was there, in flesh, to enflesh the bones of the dead. The enfleshed dead ascended and the righteous dead of the future will ascend the mountain of Paradise. This mountain is nonmetaphorically rooted in this here Earth. Man had come down from this mountain, after sinning therein, to this - flat - Earth.

(Incidentally the mountain breaks the Firmament so also alone was not subject to the Flood; I don't know if Noah's ship parked on it, or saw it; but it existed. Alexander may have visited it.)

Since man has physicality in physical Paradise, man is permitted food and wine up there... and "pure embraces". Meanwhile also the Rapture can happen, of physical bodies.

Since Christ is, although a man, God-like: he and he alone is the intercessor before the Father, seated at His right. No other saint is necessary; starting with his mother Mary, who was fully his mother, like any other woman.

This is the mature and final expression of Constantine's Imperial dogma as of the AD 359-60 councils (now rejected). Ephrem was a "doctor of the Church" to Chrysostom and Lactantius and others. Nestorius - perhaps the first dyothelete - might have backed off the worst of it; certainly Augustine did, from the standpoint of a Revelation which Ephrem rejected. As of 1920 I find that the Roman Church has elevated Ephrem. Unfortunately.

BACKDATE 7/21

Harrow

Another of Ephrem's little comments was that he supported the Harrowing of Hell. I didn't know, since the book I'd read on the Harrowing - Crossans' Resurrecting Easter - didn't cite him.

One Richard Edward McCarron by then (2000!) had written up a dissertation "The Appropriation of the Theme of Christ’s Descent to Hell in the Early Syriac Liturgical Tradition". Aphrahat and Ephrem, as contributors to Isho'Yahb's famous liturgy, had - let us say - an interest in the events of the Holy Weekend. Aphrahat lived, I think, outside the Constantines' frontier, and prior to the AD 410 Mahozë Synod; so was not a Nicaean. Ephrem from Nisibin and Edessa-Callirhoë at the time dwelt under the Byzantine Imperium.

The Crossans focus more on the Byzantine and Latin littoral. Perhaps the Greater West didn't care about "Aphraates" so much; but we absolutely did care about Ephrem. Western scholars have been negligent of the Ephrem corpus - still are. Although in the Crossans' case the omission goes against interest. Because their whole aim was to introduce us to the Oriental tradition, at least to the Middle Orient's.

McCarron, 97f argued that the Harrowing was a Homoean trope, canonised in three Imperial-driven councils AD 359-60, before it became Catholic(ish). For this faction, Christ was like the Father. Ephrem's Diatesseron read that Christ descended into "the home of the dead" rather than just "death", and broke its "bars" besides just its "gates". The more-Nicaean (rather, post-Theodosian) creed of the AD 410 Mahozë will skip all that (and has, for the Sarcogenesis > Incarnatio, that Christ "put on a body").

I propose that the Homoeans, by contrast with Eunomians like Philostorgius and early Constantius II, engaged in a limited-hangout. Ephrem praised Jesus the Christ in all ways without allowing he be actually God. I am reminded of how Nestorius, and Chrysostom and maybe even Jerome, praised Mary in all ways except that she be Deipara. Jesus, for the Homoean, had to prove he was the next-best-thing to God. That he could do in the underworld.

I do not find the Harrowing in the Quran nor in Islamic text generally, excepting maybe some poetic flourishes about what Hell looks like. Sura 4 exists in part to deny exactly that Jesus has yet got near the place. God had him ascend from the Cross directly; by tradition he is the only living man in Paradise. He's supposed to come back later, to enact the promise of his title as "Christ" - that is, to rule. Then he shall taste death. Maybe Jesus will do something down there in future - the Hadith is a great ocean - but he hasn't yet, because God hasn't allowed it yet.

But if the Harrowing would pose a controversy to Muslims; I don't know to what extent it could offend Christians, any more than Jerome's veneration of Mary ever offended the Greeks or Copts or west-Syrians. I still think that the very veneration of saints who weren't Christ would have been more a problem swirling around Ephrem.

BACKDATE 7/20. Needed some time on this one.

Porphyry in Syriac

Last I looked last May, from Arzhanov (2019): Plato himself had not made it into Syriac (nor Arabic). Subsequently John W. Watt wrote "The Syriac Heirs of Neoplatonism" for the book Later Platonists, which got published in 2023 with Watt's contribution in its chapter 13. Jonas Christensen has reviewed the book although not much touching on what Watt did. Some can be had from Google Books.

Per Arzhanov, Syrian Platonists were all Neo-. Many preferred Aristotle. For Plato himself, most Syrians used Eusebius and Justin, and commentaries especially Ammonius’. I don't know that Watt's chapter gets us much more than what Arzhanov got us.

This seems to have changed. This month we learn that Porphyry's commentary on Timaeus has been found in Syriac. And we have a paper trail - pope Timothy in the 'Iraq.

Now: Porphyry's is still just another commentary. The Syrians still were uninterested in a collection of basal Plato for its own sake. As Christians under a succession of nonChristian empires they had little use for, say, The Republic (so far...). Although, with the sheer bulk of Timaeus commentary they had, I am pretty sure they had a fair handle on at least that much.

Palut to Ephrem, Ephrem to Muhammad

End of last month, Philip Jenkins mooted that Anxious-Bench are "Palutians", just like how other Christians called the Syrian Ephraim (sic). Today, rereading Gabriel Reynolds' The Quran and the Bible, I find that Ephrem denied the intercession of saints before sura 53 had denied it.

Ephrem was already questionably-orthodox in my eyes. He did his work under a Eunomian empire UPDATE 7/20 and christologised accordingly. He also proffered some straaAAange notions on what Paradise should look like. On cosmology too: his Eden is a mountain breaching the Firmament, so I surmise he was a flat-Earther like Theodore. "Oh it's just poetry." Hmmm.

We Catholics and Orthodox cannot approach "Mar" Ephrem for intercession. We are not in communion with Ephrem when we pray Saint Gertrude's rosary; Greeks cannot (or should not) display icons of Ephrem. If Palut is "us" to Jenkins, he's speaking only for the Anxious-Bench.

It might not, then, have been gnostics who pinned the "Palutian" label on Ephrem's protoIslamic sect. Ephrem was a fine poet but he might not have been an innovator.

When and how did life get here?

I call shens on our first common ancestor. The claim is that all purple archaea, thence all life on Earth, sprung from this one 4.2Gya. That's like 300My after Theia.

No stromatolites, no magnets... no hydro cycle. We're practically in Hades.

As to how we "fix" this: "dark comet"? (Apparently the definition is "it has or had a coma", thus allowing for 67/B.) Specifically maybe life originated on an asteroid or on Newfoundworld, before arriving here. Which arrival postdated 4.2Gya.

Or that molecular clock needs recalibrating as has needed doing for carbon-14 in antiquity.

Could be both or either or neither, but I need much convincing of what we're being asked to accept as our first choice, that life of any sort had a chance in Earth at this point.

The thirteenth century in Maghrebi thought

ISIS were hardly the first muwahhidûn. Javier Albarrán submits "The Almohads and the "Qur'anization" of War Narrative and Ritual". When I think "Quran" and "Maghreb" in these decades, I naturally must think of Qurtubi - so, let's introduce that topic.

These Andalusi Muwahhids came from a classic Moroccan Berber family, of one Muhammad bin Tumart. They proposed a Jihad State. They would be like Umayyads but better. Albarrán (certainly of Moorish ancestry himself) notes the "Almohad" propaganda, set down in caliphal epistles and in poetry just like in the Good Ol' Days of the Salaf. They took over Spain's crumbling taifas in our AD 1130. They did less well against the local Christians. They certainly started badly: in AD 1147 they lost Lisbon. In AD 1236 they lost Cordoba; in AD 1269 they officially failed.

Meanwhile a Quranic student of Imam Malik's party skipped out of beleaguered Cordoba to settle in Cairo. This Qurtubi over the middle 1200s composed a tafsir. It is considered the tafsir for those Malikites left in Africa and Granada; Aisha Bewley has translated juz' 1-4 and 7 to English covering suwar 1-3, 6, 7 and bits of 4 (Bewley never does anything in sequence).

Albarrán in the Appendix compares Almohad output with Qurtubi's interpretations. I think this Appendix belongs to the wrong paper.

Qurtubi postdated Zamakhshari and Razi but I doubt Qurtubi would have cared for either. Baydawi should have been aware of Qurtubi's tafsir but apparently bypassed it; Abu Hayyan as a Zamakhsharist absolutely would not have loved it. In between Qurtubi and Ibn Kathir would have considered each other as rivals. I am unfamiliar with Qurtubi's sources if not from the Mutazila. The tafsir might look something like Baghawi's even Tha'labi's, as a throwback to the age of Tabari.

I get the impression that the Almohad relationship with Malik is about that of ISIS' to Ibn Hanbal. Albarrán notes of Q. 3:195 that Qurtubi didn't want to relate it to the Jihad. So I don't know that Qurtubi was nearly as extreme in his approach.

So I suggest to read Albarrán's Appendix so to consider Qurtubi's commentary in part as a commentary on the Almohads. Qurtubi is asked how Malikis should read the bellicose verses of the Quran; which so many, West and East, have been using as prooftexts. Qurtubi could read Ibn Kathir and Ibn Taymiya, and respond to them - we know what you're doing, we've been trying it, look where I have to live now, it's not working.

For Albarrán's purpose, he must treat this Appendix as a brevarium on Maliki juristic ijma' on Quranic usage during the Almohad century.

Don't pack your bags

LHS 1140 b has been mooted as potentially habitable over on ScienceDaily. If it has nitrogen, the researchers moot an iceworld with a 4000 km diameter "eyeball" sea facing the star. I don't think this is habitable.

First up, no oxygen has been detected. At 10-20% water composition and at overall mass, I'm thinking the ocean is too deep and dense to allow for nonbacterial life. Certainly there are no tectonics. Also superterrans from 2.5+ might not have cores.

I actually think that oxygen is being formed from this waterworld. The star is M4.5 on mainseq a little longer than our Sun; surface temperature in the 3100s K. But unlike boring ol' Gliese 12, LHS 1140 might still be flaring. Proxima is a little smaller in mass and more Sol-ar in age, temperature a little less: for "M5.5Ve". Have we been watching LHS 1140 long-enough to rule out flares? A good flare will ionize the hydrogen from the oxygen. Oxygen and even ozone gasses will result. Ozone will react with the nitrogen for nitrous oxides. Oxygen too eventually, I think.

I think we're looking at an atmosphere of nitrogen... and of laughing gas, hydrogen-cyanide, carbon-dioxide, and trace carbon-monoxide. The ocean will in turn have the composition of soda water.

LHS 1140

LHS 1140 is an exoplanetary system in Cetus 12-13 parsecs away which I hadn't deemed worth blogging. It bears two planets, c and b; remember, we enumerate these things in order-of-discovery. Today we learn outer planet b is not a Neptune. It is too dense for that thick atmosphere assumed of heavy, temperate-zone, set-in-place planets.

LHS 1140 as a system is indeed nonresonant. If we avoid NASA's catalog, which we should because they never update it just insert to it, the EU has a c which orbits 3.78 days, against b's 24.7. So a superEarth, perhaps, should have been expected even of outer b.

It seems that Webb offers director's discretionary time for targeted observations over short periods, if the researcher knows when and where precisely to look.

1.7 Earth radius and 5.6 mass mean less density than Earth but, still, nonNeptunian. It could be a waterworld or Hycean; but more likely the former, with nitrogen atmosphere. The researchers think they can detect CO₂ with more Webb time.

Revisiting the Neṣḥānā

The Alexander Neṣḥānā is a composition in Edessene Syriac, assuming the flat earth of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Kevin van Bladel in 2007 famously noted its parallels with the latter part of sura 18. Taha Soomro in 2020 contested this.

A reread of these texts is more than welcome. I wish I'd read this critique at the time. As for Soomro, he's associated with a "Yaqeen Institute" and had a BA as of 2020 (same degree I got in 2024). Anyway I am unaware that any peer-review has been done upon this particular essay... so I arrogate to myself the position of "peer", for this purpose.

The world of Neṣḥānestān is encircled by Oceanus, with the one heaven supported above somehow. Van Bladel has read this world's Alexander as a predecessor to the very-real Heraclius, that Iran-humbling hero of the AG 940s (our 630s). Alexander, as world-conqueror, had done the sign of the Cross over all the civilised world, leaving Gog and Magog behind the Darband which Alexander built first. Heraclius might not boast to be that good - but he's got some years left in him, and may rank himself at least the peer d-Alexander. (If I may.)

Soomro reads Alexander's journey differently. Where Heraclius visits "Alexandria", Soomro - correctly - understands that a Syrian might not have Egypt's Alexandria in mind. The real Alexander, as he went on, had planted several of these cities. One such existed at Issus. Soomro cites Dumper (2007), 175 that Issus' Alexandria was still vital in the tenth century AG. Also Alexander must go toward the India for the Oceanus (as in history). That is implicit-at-best in the Neṣḥānā itself although is clearer in its less-famous poetic (memrā?) sequel. Given that, says Soomro:

To assign cardinal directions to the Legend’s journey,
Alexander goes south to Mt. Sinai,
then slightly west to Egypt,
then vaguely east to the Fetid Sea,
and then west or northwest to Armenia,
and then finally west once more to his home.

This isn't cruciform.

On van Bladel's behalf, I would say that the ambiguity of direction comes from the motive to make Alexander, son of Zeus, into a forerunner of the Christian King. The author knows how the real Alexander traversed the world. But the author is himself a believer in Ezekiel, maybe even in the Revelation. The author wants you to interpret otherwise than what happened. The sequel will refuse so to interpret, intending to humble Heraclius some; so is free to specify that Ocean lieth east. But does sura 18 so interpret?

Also problematic, at best, is to assume that sura 18 rested on the full Qurān, or at least on the full Qurānic intent, at its own time of composition. Muslims themselves know that more suwar are on their way, some of which may well abrogate sura 18. Soomro is aware of sura 13's invisible pillars, which he works around, so he might at least suspect 18>13 as I suspect. But he cites Tabataba’i and Mirsadri adducing suras 31 and 51. I personally think 18 precedes these too, and I don't see where Tabataba’i and Mirsadri made real arguments otherwise. They probably appealed to Islamic tradition - but nonMuslims can't assume that, and Soomro is writing to a skeptical audience himself. (Soomro himself can hardly take the Qurān's flat earth at face value.)

As nitpick - creation-encompassing waters are not in fact absent from our Qurān, which contains sura 11, which plants Allāh's throne atop them. For sure, 18 could >11 too. Even so, sura 18 assumes a world journey for its Qurān-worthy protagonist Dhū'l-Qarnayn. If the spring of ḥāmiya be noncosmic, why is it sharing a term with sura 101's hell?

BACKDATE 7/10

Kingdom of the Cults

If you have spent much time in the northern Front Range, you're probably headed to the mountains, at some point. Our mountains host among its cabins and ranches, little compounds for various religions for "retreats". Mine own religion has Ascension between the Estes- and Allens- Parks. And then there was "Twelve Tribes" which shouldered much of the blame for the Marshall Fire.

Last week I ran into one "Be" Scofield. Scofield is a journalist of cults; we're talking outfits like NXIVM. There's a webpage... and an antiwebpage. So far, so over-target.

I have avoided pronouns. Scofield has a preference. That preference is that we lie... about him. I refuse that. So, here's the para wherein I lay out my marker.

People with mental illnesses and delusions (like transgenders) tend to be drawn to others who affirm their delusion, hence why those in Scofield's party demand of others we bow to the Pronoun. This explains cults also. Such promise to the vulnerable that they can join a team where they will be accepted, loved even. In the process the cultist loses everything. Often the cultist does, in his/her old life, have those who care - not least family. The cult promises better. A vulnerable person might not wholly be able to tell the real from the predatory.

I am not picking on leftists, here. There thrives plenty of cult on the Right - QAnon, infamously. This, before we get into religion.

They say it takes a thief to catch a thief, a hacker to catch a hacker; psychologists often join that profession because of their own demons. It seems it takes a delusionary to take down cults.

Toarcian

The Jurassic started around 200 Mya, after Hettangian volcanic pulses. Earlier this week Reynolds linked the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, which may even define "Toarcian": 183 Mya.

The claim is that a South African volcano roared to life for 300 millennia. Which is... a lot. That's about what we're looking forward to as our tectonic plates grind to a halt. 20,500 GT of CO₂ were emitted. Apparently that depleted oxygen in the oceans. Anoxic waters don't rust metals, meanwhile. The article talks uranium: uranium rust dissolves, pure uranium sinks.

CO₂ diminishing O₂ would be the step I don't grok. CO₂ and oxygen are mutually inert. If anything, the existence of plants should cause excess CO₂ to lead to more oxygen.

Unlike 17 My earlier, these volcanoes seem unpoisonous. It may be that atmospheric carbon - and phosphorous! - fed plants... too well. And 17 My into the Triassic, maybe there weren't the landplants to soak it up. That leaves algae. The atmosphere is nicely oxygenated; but the shores and lakes get stuck with the rotting greenery.

The centrifuge works

We don't have much going-on at work today so - early poast: centrifugal mitigation of microgravity. It works on mice!

Mice are small and have a brain around the same level as the rest of the body. Not so much, for us bipedals in trucker-cabins. But in proper habitats we should be using wide-radius dumbbells and wheel-pairs. Such won't sweat Coriolis-differences from head-to-toe. Also when lying down, particularly in longterm shuttles meant for hibernation, Coriolis is likely not to be a thing at all.

Overall very little of this study surprises me.

Different "Thing", then, for those of us hibernating: how does rotation, especially swift rotation along a wide axis, affect body fluids in a corpus at rest for long periods under low blood circulation? Commenter "Doubting Thomas" brings up the ear; "pzatchok" talks spinal-fluid.

As "pawn" notes, we're in need of that trucker-cabin rated for humans, at rest or otherwise.

The historians of iron and rust

Bryn Mawr have a review of a Cassius Dio study. The study compares him with Herodian. These authors wrote in Greek. Traditionally we in the west tend toward the Latin works of Tacitus and Suetonius; as a result, schoolkids don't much get into the Severans.

The review faults the study for not noting beyond Herodian. I was of the notion that there simply wasn't that much; even the review points to work as isn't strictly historical. Syriac won't kick in until the Christian emperors. I wonder if the reviewer has in mind such later "minor historians" as Eutropius and Aurelius Victor, maybe Eustathius. It doesn't look like Historia Augusta is used.

Cassius Dio is here revealed as a Senator like Tacitus but a monarchist, where Tacitus was cynical toward even Augustus. Dio figures the Severans as the dynasty it was, but a false dynasty - born in iron, doomed to rust. The Severans may well have felt insecure, themselves; they renamed young Bassian "Antoninus". (Hence that "Constitutio", beside which we'd just call him Caracalla.) The HA on the other hand will promote Severus Alexander if only as foil to Elagabalus. Keeping in mind HA already untrustworthy doesn't even seem to own direct sources past Elagabalus.

Leggett-Garg

As we're all beating our heads against various theories on galaxy-rotation, hoping to prove Newton wrong; the quantum field has also been taking on alternative theories, to prove Einstein right. Looks like Einstein is still... not right, at least not about quanta.

Here they have neutrons being beamed distant from each other. At some point, Einsteinists were hoping they'd disassociate from quantum "spooky action" and behave like they "should". This would be the "inequality" which Anthony James Leggett and Anupam Garg mooted 1985. But no; this inequality isn't a thing. So they won't be getting the Nobel which Bell got for his own inequality-theorem.

At least it was testable. At least quantum mechanics has proven testable (like Einstein's better theoremata).

Restoring iron from rust

The Supreme Court made quite a few Decisions this week, of which at least two came in support of Trump's ... controversial ... decisions back in January 2021. For current Right dissidence, I give you: Bob Zimmerman on the Presidency's powers, and David Cole\Stein on the meaning of obstruction. This post will start with the latter.

On that, that Sarbanes-Oxley law of the Enron Age aimed to criminalise obstruction of corporate proceedings. For Cole, 18 U.S. Code § 1512 (c) applies to the US government also, as (by nature) a sovereign corporation. Cole implicitly observes that the Roberts-Jackson decision has assumed this as well. The dispute then moves to (c)(2), otherwise... obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceedings, or attempts to do so.

Personally I never did like SOX. It stuck a lot of unnecessary paperwork upon corporations. And here, what if someone honestly if partially (still not corruptly) believed that an official proceeding was rigged. Like: what if Trump disagrees with that Manhattan railroad which Bragg and Merchan just conducted. Can he not... say, as much? That would be an "attempt" to "influence".

Trump's lawyers should concentrate instead on corruptly. That, I take it, brings us to the former case, on whether the President be king. Nixon denied he was a crook; in SOX terms, he didn't involve himself in Watergate... "corruptly". (Contrast Agnew.) He did however exert his power to aid friends after-the-fact, which most in the 1973-4 Congress deemed impeachable. (The upcoming 1974 elections would ratify that decision.)

Whether or not Nixon was impeachable, now SCotUS is saying he wasn't criminally-liable. So the Executive is now (in theory) where FDR was at up to 1945. Which should make Moldbug happy, as a political-scientist. Whether any of us lot will be happier under a Severan Presidency will depend on the competence and charisma of the Severan. Do we trust the Biden family? Should we trust Trump?

BACKDATE 7/4

When the miracle fails

I missed this one in 2021 - Kumail Rajani, on ʿUbaydullāh b. ʿAlī al-Ḥalabī. This is a Shīʿ author ascribed with a hadith-collection, lost now except in quotations by the famed Kulaynī and others. Rajani is here to check up on Modarressi, Tradition and Survival.

If Ḥalabī was cited in independent transmissions, then he was widely-cited. Problem: why wasn't he copied in his own line-of-transmission, after Kulaynī et al.? Rajani would go further still: Kulaynī used nawādir works which had used Ḥalabī's book, not this book itself.

It may be we're dealing with the crises of the Shīʿa itself. This Islamic subreligion bore an inherent fragility: it relied on an unbroken chain of a'imma. The Imām of Ḥalabī's time was Jaʿfar called the Sādiq. It was said that Jaʿfar himself caught wind of Ḥalabī's work, found a copy, and endorsed it personally. But eventually the line of a'imma stuttered; one was a minor when his father died, and sectarians split from the mainline (Rajani takes advantage of the Ismailite tradition, with Ḥalabī as a point of sectarian agreement). For Twelvers like Kulaynī, in the end came the Occultation, sealing that line.

Twelver dogma first had to explain-away a toddler "Imām" in no position to lead any prayers; it now must explain the difference between an imām of the state and religion, like Khomeini, who - as an Iranian! - can hardly be Qurāshī, let alone ʿAlid. Ismailites have their own baggage.

Alongside this we have that ancient Shīʿite relation with the Qurān text, that text now associated with ʿUthmān. As time marches on, the canon's text hardens; rivals grow increasingly vulnerable as protoSunnites tout their text as unchanging, even coëternal. Under a true Imāmate, Shīʿites can argue for their text robustly. Under a minority Imām, or under bickering rival A'imma, or - as now - under an occulted Imām: it became more tempting to slip into accepting the Sunnite version, pivoting to "but y'all the REAL racistscorrupters!". They could use some of the monarchist suwar, like 27 and 38, to support the ahl al-bayt just as easily as the Umayyads had used them centuries earlier.

I am guessing that Ḥalabī's work was rife with potential anachronism of this sort, hailing the Imāmate as miraculous by dint of always presenting a mature and wise Imām for the Prophet's people. Students like Kulaynī, given the choice between processing nawādir and copying Ḥalabī, can perhaps be forgiven for taking the route of safety.

BACKDATE 7/4