The priests of Shu

From the land of the undomesticated kittycats, Archaeology is summarising the Shu, at now Sanxingdui. I blame allergies.

Anyway, these were contemporaries with the Shang state. The Shang spoke and wrote Chinese. I always say "pots ain't people - they're language". The Shu, in a valley somewhat separate from the Shang with the tech at the time, did not use the same pots. They liked anthropomorphic designs if stylised, rather like the Maya; the Shang didn't go for that. Also the Shang used bone to cast oracles - luckily for us readers - of which, we've no evidence for the Shu. The two cultures differed, in short, probably not even speaking the same language. But it seems they may have agreed upon similar notions on the State.

When I talk about "Shang" I use the state's own name for itself - because they told us that name, in their inscriptions. Later Chinese recalled the state as "Yin", from their family name (the Zhou let them keep a duchy at Song). We have "Shu" from a "Chronicles of Huayang" of which I hadn't heard. Anyway it too is a later source. So, I use "Shu" for want of any better.

In Mesoamerica, Tlaxcala had a republic and the Aztecs had an amir. The Aztec amir was in-process of making a caliph of himself when the Spaniard showed up. What we're now calling "China", in Shang times, seems more like the Bronze Age over in Mesopotamia. Mitanni and Hatti were not the same, but their mutual treaties could agree upon what a "king" was and what a "temple" was. Likewise, it seems, the Shang and the Shu agreed upon the correct duties of a king and of a priesthood.

The Shang's holy kingship failed its test in 1046 BC, when the Zhou mounted a revolution. Anyang - last city of the Shang - was abandoned, left to modern Chinese to dig back out. The Zhou would rule with more thought to local concerns, and left to others the glory of the gods. Likewise it seems that the Shu faced a contemporary test: priests and nobles alike vanished from Sanxingdui, after which the nobles reappear at Jinsha - without the priests. Before the nobles left Sanxingdui they buried a lot of bronzes - not recast them, just buried them. There never was much of an "iron age" in China, so the archaeologists judge this burial as a simple waste of money. It must have been done for ideology.

I am somewhat reminded of how the priesthood of the Incas gathered wealth unto itself; or maybe the nobles of the Maya.

Unfortunately the Shu didn't leave any writing - like the early Shang and Erlitou didn't leave writing. More likely is that they did have writing but we're not lucky enough to own (say) oracle-bones... because the Shu didn't use bone for oracles. If I had to guess I'd pin the Shu for a Tanggut/Tibetan lot.

The Columbus Day hangover

The Judio-Theory always smelled wrong to me on account of how apocalyptically tradcath the Admiral ended up. For those still paying attention, last weekend we got a flurry of silly on muh genetics. What we have here is failure to replicate... again.

Off to the next shiny thing I suppose.

Hats off to SpaceX

Just a short note that, although I woke up too late to see the launch and stage-separation - both boring at this point - I did catch (heh) the retrieval of the SuperHeavy. I was not expecting it all to be so precise.

Of course Musk and Shotwell (heh heh) have had a lot of time to plot out contingencies by now. Musk in particular has had nothing better to do than to appoint himself as Troll Lord on X. That's our runaway government's fault more than it is, Musk's.

Interesting fire at the end of the booster-catch; there shouldn't really be all that much fuel for a fire, when the booster done boosted and done ... done. But that's why we test. Nobody should be expecting a big bang; the fear was a crash and broken equipment. Since they have everything else intact they'll know what to reinforce for next-time.

Zim is calling 100%. I can't argue with that. Shame on FAA and on all the other clowns for trying to stop this.

Hydrothermal

Last month I missed a speculation on K2-18's planet: that it might be hydrothermal. That is: it indeed has a water layer below the clouds (sulfur/carbon dominant); in a supercritical state. Like the carbon-dioxide defining Venus' "sea level".

LEO to GEO

Tom Mueller's been busy since losing his job with the Raptors (although he's kept that on his resume). ToughSf points to Helios.

This is a nonnuclear solution for tugging cargo from LEO (halfway-to-anywhere) to Beyond. They're going with five tons - I assume nonmetric - for LEO>GEO in 24 hours. Metricbros can point to the 67 kN spec. For the SF auteurs amongst us: here's our baseline.

One assumption is that multitonne widgets will be had in LEO for pushing off past the Van Allens. This is the SuperHeavy future; Mueller seems to be aiming at Starship-without-Raptor. Hey why not; Starship's job is to get back to Earth, not to muck around in orbit.

Jizya is not a Persian term

The "head tax" is a Persian concept, applied upon the various Aramaeans whom the Sasanians ruled. On the word they used for it: Mustafa Akyol, whose Mutazilite Islamic Moses book I've just read, really needs to quit citing Ziauddin Ahmad on some Persian etymology for "Kizyat" or whatever.

Several circumstantial problems attracted my suspicions.

For one, where both later Semitic and Iranian languages have an -ah suffix, Semitic tends to reveal that theirs came from -at. Mediaeval Iranian feminines go more to the -ag, -aj, -ak, and -aq. So I'd not expect a "kizyat" in Middle-Persian, only in mediaeval postIslamic Farsi... or in later Arabic anachronisms like in Tabari then Bal'ami.

Also, where we catch late-Antique Aramaeans mentioning the Iranian-imposed head tax, as Goldblatt cites the local Talmud: it is krg'. Take off the emphatic suffix, do some aspiration and out comes the kharaj about which we (also) hear so much under the later Umayyads. (Jews were the suckers who had to pay the thing.) Note meanwhile that -j.

Add to all this that I don't see jizya or gzitho applied to tribute (westSyriac mdatto) until, what, the Maronite Chronicle and then Theodotus of Âmid(a).

Akyol is correct on the concept but is clearly a better philosophical-historian than he is a philologist, so should be more careful when dabbling into the latter.

The nonfiery car battery

Living in one of North America's xeric provinces - we shouldn't dignify this one-party votefarm with the title of "state" - we are subject to fires. One cause of fires is the electric vehicle, especially large ones like cars. Apparently burned-down pine forests are greener.

Which is not to knock the technology - when it gets there. This safety leap counts as getting there. Like nonmeat food is getting there.

Carbon-chondrite roundup

In last-week news I didn't quite get to, Ceres is muddy and Ryugu is CI chrondritic. I'd thought Ryugu was Cg and baked closer - so, no real retractions needed here. Seems like that middle-road between "Cereslike" and "Pallaslike".

Bennu at least can be mined for food. Ceres may well earn her name as the Demeter of our system. Pace the Expanse, she won't run out.

Weather control and mitigation

Technology exists for altering hurricane strength. The tech has been touted all my life for Cloud Seeding - which precipitates out moisture, lessening the water damage (if not wind). Apparently there exist more options, found by patent. After all, Einstein was a patent clerk, in 1910s Suisse; government employees in America ought to be twice as wise and thrice as diligent. Especially those versed in American corporate law.

Or mayyybe the US suffers a known "patent troll" problem permitted by... overbroad, vague, and frivolous patents.

As to the usual "global warming" culprit: greenery in the Antar'tic outskirts is happening, and perhaps those Sahara monsoons. Those shouldn't concern us. But the cost may be more-severe warming at the Gulf of Mexico as the same time as the eastern Atlantic. As more people move to affected coasts, like the Florida coasts, they should prepare accordingly. DeSantis as governor has been preparing accordingly, at least for Helene last week.

As to Milton: its track looks like the 1848 track. That is not a common track - note the year - but it has happened, and when it happens it is Bad. Please stay safe out there. And stay sane.

Altering asteroid spin

ToughSf points to Robert Hoyt et al., "WRANGLER: Capture and De-Spin of Asteroids & Space Debris" (pdf). Up to a megaton of spinning material can be tethered and despun.

The "N" in WRANGLER stands for "net", so those rubble-piles should be despinnable too. Or, for colonists: made to spin faster. Newton is Newton.

The god walking among us

Chesterton, followed by Bloom, pointed out that Mark presents Jesus not as a mere man, but as a god walking among us. Contrast, say, Last Temptation. What other gods be like that?

Vridar a while back noted that where the Jews had "El" this just means "God". ("Baal" isn't so different.) The actual god would be Hadad the sky god. When in Genesis "God calls fire from God in Heaven", this means a god on Earth was calling for Hadad.

Gods walking on Earth in human implies something more like a demigod. That wouldn't be Hadad.

Jesus would be more like Dionysius - oft-cited in the scholarship. Another possibility is Heracles. The Gauls had Ogmios; although the Celts envisioned him as an older man, Greek visitors worked to harmonise Ogmios' legendarium with the Twelve Labours. The Greeks figured that Ogmios is how Heracles behaved later in life.

Ochre Pottery on wheels

Uttar Pradesh has yielded some impressive news: Late Bronze chariots. Contemporaneous with the Mitanni.

I'd thought Mitanni-like Aryans - "sintashta" if you don't like that word - didn't get across the Indus until the civilisation over there (who near-certainly did not speak Indic) had collapsed.

As to what the culture had, besides Ochre Pottery and QuicKarts - they also had symbolic burials, of animals. Like dogs and birds. Not horses? Among the human ("primary") burials is one decorated with double-horned helmets and sacred fig leaves. (LOLvikings.) Apparently that fig remains important in Hindu culture today.

'Tis possible that the chariot was such a killer-app that paraMitanni took over northern India without changing the language... yet. With the fall of the already-weak IVC, the locals may have been so impoverished they had no choice but to accept now-Vedic overlords. See also Hungary.

Third time lucky

Barnard's Star! - I can hear the groans from here. No seriously, Barnard's; or Proxima Ophiuchi which Gliese catalogued 699. The ESPRESSO "VLT" 'scope found this one.

As a radial nontransit this reading has a minimum mass: 0.37 M_⊕ sin i. If it were a transit it would sit three times Mars' mass and half Venus'.

The orbit is 3.1533 ±0.0006 days so 0.023 AU. Zero eccentricity and no moon at this distance, so we should all safely assume no rotation. This late in the system's age we can disregard tectonics.

They are talking other signals: 3.15, 4.12, 2.34, and 6.74 days. The furthest would be 0.17 AU, the closest - which skates very close to the confirmed planet - 0.019 AU. The outer one would get incident-flux 2.4 S_⊕ and the inner, 10.1, all more than Venus gets. I'd rather they'd calculated the irradiance of the planet they tell us they'd confirmed, before asserting a "temperature". Overall flux looks upward of Mercury's 6.674.

Add all this up: Barnard b has no air. They're guessing a sunfacing albedo of rock, 0.3; for 400 K. Back of the place should retain some ice tho'.

Abiotic natural gas!

... in Mars, h/t Reynolds. That'd be pretty awesome for colonists if they had oxygen, which will still need breaking down from concentrated CO₂ and water.

Still: nice that it doesn't need to be drained from oxygen and water - and hydrocarbons - which colonists will jealously need. Just dig it out!

Assembling planet 2.5

Unlike Hollister David's permashuttles, the 13:10:8 station doesn't skim a major planet. How do we build it?

A station needs: protection from radiation, air to breathe, and water to drink. This being nowhere at first, we import metallic canisters full of volatiles, and keep the canisters. The canisters should possibly be designed to be easily split lengthwise.

Just to fire the engines and let them cool down, will require radiators; and the station itself needs to reflect and otherwise-handle 1.35 flux. The station can import radiators too.

One bit of good news is that also had here, is hydrogen. It'll be rushing past with much energy. This could be used to reduce oxygen off of imported rocks, and of rusts as happen inside the station. This industry should happen on the sun-facing shield protecting the livable parts of the station; the water drains toward the station which catches the water.

The solar-wind will push us outside this orbital position. To mitigate that, we chose this position for its resonance. Maybe (somehow) we can shift angles, not to get pushed out, when Venus sails into place to pull us back in. And as a rule we should prefer to radiate heat away from the Sun and not toward it.

How do we slow an incoming craft? I don't know that we want to be losing volatiles - or even tungsten. Consider: an Orion as doesn't eject a tungsten plate, but ejects ceramic plates. They handle the heat better than any metal; besides, metals are heat-conductors which we'll want for the radiators.

The postHezb Levant

"Vox Day" Beale thinks that the Lebanese parastate Hizb-Allâhi, which has as many Latin spellings as the Devil has names, can outlast the present festivities. He argues leadership doesn't matter when the people are united. Richard Hanania points out meanwhile that expertise and interpersonal connexions are difficult to replace; especially if your paymasters don't natively speak a Semitic language.

The glory of being a parastate is that you are Resistance. You can claim to be fighting the zionist occupation even if you are not yourself being occupied, as Gaza was not occupied until last October. Hezb were rather the gaolers of Lebanon, and the bullies of Syria and Iraq.

One issue with the presence of a parastate is that they cow the legal state to keep a lighter hand - as in Mexico today. Not entirely unwelcome.

Overall, though; Levantine Sunnis seem not entirely unhappy with the present lack of Shi'a leadership.

A few months back Redmayne-Titley splurted "Hizbullah is Lebanon!". I believe this thesis can be tested. It's more likely that Hezb was just Iran as seen by the fireworks last night.

Beale was more fact-based yesterday on what Israel's next step is. It makes sense that Israel might set up a buffer in the south to push the Hezb remnant back, leaving the more-intact Lebanese army to reassert its lost sovereignty. But today Beale got stupid again.

Banned books week

The annual American Library Association's lovefest is on, to celebrate the new Seleucid year of 2336 I guess.

The public library is run by the same postmenopausal Presbyterians as run the public school. The neglectful and/or Munchausen parents who dump their failed abortions on the school don't care enough to keep them from the (similarly-run) library. "Banned" from the school means endorsed for the library. It is a shell game.

If "public" means anything it means "alternative to corporate".

Therefore any public library has a conflict-of-interest when it comes to books that are banned from schools.

If the public library was honest, it should showcase books banned from Amazon. Books like Jared Taylor's White Identity. Books like Ibn Warraq's The Islam in Islamic Terrorism.