Athanasius' manifesto

Athanasius' 39th Festal Letter is famous among Bible-believers, as a seminal text for their support of the present canon. It stands with the "Muratorian Fragment" here. Unfortunately like that fragment, our letter is also a fragment.

In 2015, David Brakke presented the [Sahidic] Coptic to fill in one of the missing pieces. He also published all he could find of the whole thing. More context is thereby provided. Brakke further takes time to revisit an earlier dispute against Alberto Camplani.

Athanasius' opponents are the small-g gnostics. These aren't necessarily the mystics of future Nag Hammadi. These are anyone who thought it groovy to add to the canon apocryphal - as in, supposedly secret but nonetheless true - traditions. This has been a bad habit among the Jews in particular (see here) but Christians too had inherited (among others) the Dream Visions in 1 Enoch, all 1 Enoch 1-36, and some version of Jubilees. Clement of Alexandria knew "Thomas" didn't deserve to be in the Four but cited it anyway. As late as Severus of Antioch we'll be seeing Christians draw from this well. Don't get me started on Cave of Treasures.

Athanasius raises the devastating point that the forgers knew just as well as we know that if (say) 1 Enoch 22 existed at the time of Moses, Moses would have quoted it and mandated it as a rule from the aeons. That is why the forgers have to claim apocryphism: that everyone kept this a secret. But why wouldn't the Levites want the best law for the people at the time?

For Brakke, Athanasius might boast of his clerical standing, but not of his intellectual standing. Someone like Arius or, worse, Melitius might. If their erudition comes from heaps of Oxyrhynchite garbage, that erudition is of equal value.

It's not that Athanasius was anti-intellectual. Syrians could call him malpana with the best of the Fathers. I would go further than Brakke however. Athanasius might have inspired modern Biblical (and Quranic) fundamentalists (we may assume he was a creationist himself) but I don't see that he was closing down "debate" as such. I don't see Athanasius talking up flat-earth like, oh, Lactantius. It's that Athanasius drew a thick line between real sciences (what Beale calls "scientody"), and snowing everybody with obscure hokum (see Beale for further examples).

Suppressing Chalcedon

Under weak Zeno, the Empire made its bid to smooth over the rufflings of Chalcedon AD 451. The Henotikon takes the novel course of not mentioning it. As if it were one of those councils nobody anymore remembers like Serdica.

Philip M Forness has uploaded his thesis to academia.edu; this will become his 2018 book Preaching Christology. The Aramaic script used here is Estrangel...ó. There exists a colon to title each version. The key to the thesis is Jacob/James of Serug. Pronounced "Serugh".

Jacob is a saint of longstanding with the Maronites, presently Catholic. It is through early-modern Maronites that we have most Jacob's work, and - more importantly - how Jacob's legacy got advertised to Latin Christendom as small-o orthodox, ensuring it got copied and translated out here. But in Late Antiquity, the Maronites really weren't Catholic. They sort-of affirmed Chalcedon but more-enthusiastically affirmed the Monotheletism under Heraclius. Forness stands to explain, why they jumped onto Heraclius' project.

Like other authors of dubious orthodoxy, lookin' atchyoo Ephrem, Jacob had a ready talent for the memra' form. He was able to take Zeno's Christology and translate it for a popular audience. This ensured a party, not yet a schism, of Ephesian fanatics. Of course after AD 496 under next emperor Anastasius they were simply the only recognised Roman church.

Others in this party included Zachariah of Mytilene (not yet the Pseudo- continuator, of which Forness is aware) and Symeon of Bet-Arsham. Forness brings them to illustrate how these authors used Henotic (if I may) jargon as a marker for their acceptance of Zeno's full text. Jacob used the same tropes.

At first that party also counted Philoxenos of Mabbug (Arabic Manbij). This one confronted patriarch Flavian II of Antioch, AD 509 (or AG 820), demanding miaphysitism and acceptance of the Henotikon. Two years later, Philoxenos went further than just dismissing Chalcedon; the Antiochenes would have to denounce it (one suspects, by Imperial command), and denounce pope Leo's "Tome". His ally Severus behaved similarly.

Come AD 518, Justin the Illyrian would succeed Anastasius. Justin appointed one Paul, perhaps a convert from Judaism, to be Antioch's Patriarch - under orders to reënforce Chalcedon in Syria. Their decisions led to Severus removing his bishops out of communion with Constantinople as well as just the city Rome.

Barḥadbeshabba (inconsistently-spelled, here) will claim that Narsai wrote his homilies to rival Jacob's out east. Although Forness doesn't bring Narsai himself for this.

The new covenant became Torah

For Jews, MT Jeremiah 31:31-4 promises a new covenant. The Messiah will come to rule justly and install it. In a world where "sin" as we know it simply has no meaning, this Dispensationalism must apply.

The various "documentary hypotheses" problematise this notion.

We argue for the rearrangement of the Jewish Scriptures - plural - into the five books "of Moses", the epilogue to Deuteronomy (which Moses didn't write) and the book Joshua. Anchoring it all is Leviticus 19-25. This happened after the return from exile - after Jeremiah. Might Jeremiah have been laying out a programme for this, our Torah...?

Jeremiah as an oral preacher might not have intended any written law at all. (I am fairly sure of similar for Ezek 36:26-8.) One problem here, as ever for Jeremiah, is that the Greek differs. Joachim Krause (pdf) has pointed especially to v. 33. Here, is it "my torah" (Hebrew, singular) or "my nomoi" (Greek, plural)? The former implies God is going to abandon the One Torah which, in modern Judaeo-Christian agreement, equals the Masoretic edition of the Five Books (thereby assumed known to Jeremiah). The latter implies laws in these scriptures. Krause notes that the translator was loose with singular/plural elsewhere such that it might translate the singular in the basis.

I suggest that the translator, here, understood how his (yes, male) contemporaries understood tôrati here. He would have been reading this alongside Ezekiel 20:25 and Jeremiah 7:22. The former has God dismiss his own laws (explicitly plural); the latter denies that He ever sent anything during the desert wanderings (which wanderings, by Jewish consensus, did happen).

In that light, where to find these new Prophetic laws which weren't in the scribal schools? For Krause, Jeremiah is saying to trash all that stuff as to stick with Prophecy.

Long-term, that didn't happen. Maybe it couldn't. Baruch came along as Jeremiah's scribe and delivered the only version of his work we got. (And then later Jews botched the transmission but never mind all that.) And the Holiness Code scribes arranged the Hexateuch and following books into near-exactly what we got today. They could, somewhat honestly, tell us all that this is the New Covenant. It certainly has turned out to differ from the old Deuteronomic- or Priestly- content. Jeremiah had refuted the former and Ezekiel, the latter.

Jews sometimes interpret things, as I've noted, in whatever language. They sometimes say that by "new", Jeremiah meant "renewed". I'll let others answer that. I'll concede that as a rule, interpretations may be early.

I suspect some Jews continued to chafe against that their now-rewritten Bible was much improvement upon the earlier stuff but, unfortunately, we no longer have any of that earlier stuff in its own form. Thus, Paul. Thus, Muhammad.

q_rsqrt comes to the Jerk Store

Almost four years ago, I asked: how come q_rsqrt didn't force ufloat or udouble or whatever in her input. The Quake games never used this func for a negative input; this might raise a nasty native CPU error. Why not - I asked - force the positive input and crash gracefully?

Today I was watching some video on Youtube - I won't link it, it was AI - about the Year 2038 Bug. That's when the 31 bits, counting from the new year 1970, overflow. It's not 32 bits because it's a signed integer and they wanted to allow negative years, back to some time in 1901. I'm told December. Most people they cared about were born after then.

Another issue is that ye olde compilers from the earliest years of C, Ada, and Pascal were "type safe". If you had a big uint, they didn't like it when you made it an int. There was a chance you'd lop off the highest bit and make the whole thing meaningless. The compiler is your friend!

No really, he was written to be your friend. Programmers need to work with the compiler, not against him. Leave aside 2038. What could the Id Software doodz have done in the 1990s?

I'm thinking that before calling q_rsqrt, they could have sent their vectors into another function: which takes a float and squares it. "Pffft they probably did that already, x^2 or, better, x*x." Yeah, sure. And the base multiplication left the float as a float. We need a function that knows when x^[even uint] happens it sends back an unsigned value.

The problem is with the type of x. IEEE 754 didn't bother with "ufloat". There was no such thing in the 1990s. Why not? Because what "floats" is where the "point" is at, and sign is just one bit. They'd have to decide whether to add that bit to the top, or to the decimals. For the purpose of normalisation, which be taking the sum of three squares (so could be large), let's say we agreed to put it on the topside.

Now that we've decided to monkey with the structure of a hardwired type, which we can't do in software; we go to Intel HQ and we ring the doorbell with our proposal to alter their processor. It's 1994; maybe 1985 (Elite). Who's got space for that? And why does it matter so bad in, you know, a shmup game.

Blah blah blah, not worth the bother, never has been worth the bother. You know it, I (now) know it... everyone knows it (except apparently me). So why write alla'that. It's because here:

long i  = * ( long * ) &y;

This type could be unsigned. (It also happens that "long" then meant 32-bit.) I just ran this by Google AI and...

uint32_t i;
memcpy(&i, &y, sizeof(i));
i = 0x5f3759df - (i >> 1);
memcpy(&y, &i, sizeof(y));

Chew on that, Kasper Nielsen!

Early writings of Jacob in Edessa

Paul Ulishney a couple years ago got Correspondence of Jacob of Edessa and Eustathius of Dara into print. Jacob, per Ulishney, was then a forty-something monk esteemed as a theologian and an interpreter of Greek work.

Complicating matters, many of these names have other names. Jacob is (in English) sometimes called James. Edessa was usually Callirhoë in those days, which somewhat has a memory today as "Şanlı'Urfa". And Eustathius seems to have been in charge of saecular affairs in Dara to Ruha's east. Because, per Ulishney, Jacob addressed him as "the petty lord (kyriosuna)". But affectionately!

Also complicating is that little Jimmy whilst in Edessa veered off-and-on between being a monk and full bishop. We do know he wrote one of our letters at the age of 42 (bald, by then) but that one ain't dated and lacks any other real markers so, maddeningly, we still don't know when our man was born.

Wikipedia still thinks AD 672 was a possible year for Jacob's installation as bishop. Ulishney's rearrangement and interpretation agrees more with (early-)684 / 995. Such is the majority view since Omert J Shrier 1991 and is so assumed in Hoyland 1997-8. Ulishney doesn't defend Best O.J. against freakin' Wiki since, why should he condescend. So I'll do it.

In the earlier 680s - AG 990s to nonbarbarians - a small schism broke out cutting the "east" from the Antioch-Edessa mainline. These will be the now-historic sees of Tikrit, Singara, and mount Alpap. The patriarch Severus wanted to be a Syrian pope like his contemporary in Egypt acted as pope, appointing bishops or at least demanding a veto. (Investiture was always a problem for churches.) Severus enlisted Jacob as secretary. Ulishney reasonably assumes they'd not force this upon a bishop, but the bishops may well call in the smartest monk in the area. And Jacob, much as it pains us dyotheletes, was a genius. His contemporary Athanasius of Balad agreed; as Athanasius II he'll get Jacob that episcopacy as one of his first acts in office. I don't hear that anyone in Edessa complained... at the time. (Read on.)

All this stuff is in the British Library, still in manuscript: "Add. 12,172". Still unedited. On the other hand, now that Ulishney has organised it better, maybe we'll get to read it soon. Put Alison Salvesen on it. Is there some Copt who can send a grant?

Eustathius will enjoy a career after these letters, as well. He was the Nicodemus of the north Christian Arabs, founding a martyrion for Muʿâdh of the Taghlib. Michael the Syrian will post that to AG 1020 which we call 708-9 (against some "Muhammad" but assuredly under al-Walîd's command), I assume based on that church's records and plaques.

In these letters Jacob also dealt with the Romans and the Nestorians, as well a Syrian Miaphysite might. Jacob as an intellectual was no enemy to Greeks as such; but he might have grown disenchanted with the imperial Romans, Latin-speaking or otherwise. Constantine IV was asserting his primacy in Constantinople (681/993-on), and preparing to throw off the Monotheletism which his father had tolerated. As for the Nestorians: Jacob and Athanasius would have to worry their rivals might be eager to embrace their wayward brethren. There's also the issue that Jacob knew the earth was round unlike some idiots over there.

Jacob will outlast his pope, but not long outlast him. Athanasius was known in his (meagre) correspondence to be a stickler for, basically, Christian halakha. For instance he forbade to consume halal (Holger Zellentin has a good book on this). The next patriarch Julian - contemporary with Justinian II - proved more lax in such ordinances. By then and for this, the Edessenes preferred Julian over their own neoRabboula. Jacob resigned in a huff and retvrned to monk-ing. And to writing manifesti.

Per Salvesen's translation, Jacob's frustrations spilled into the scholion on the edition of 1 Kings / 3 Reigns 14 he was compiling there. Also extant is a "Testamentum Domini" from this circle which may well be by Jacob himself. Dunno about that Pseudo-Methodius tho', that Sinjari seems more oecumenical.

Hot shot, part deuce

So I kinda/sorta trusted VAERS when deciding on the booster in fall 2021. I rolled those dice having taken Pfizer's original schedule that spring and then catching some yuck in June. Stayed un-boosted.

That RS means it is a reporting system for the V.A. Events. That database accumulated a lot of such reportage. Less from Pfizer than from Moderna I think, but the second jab I took had some statistical problems. And people were freaking out over - all of them, as the same "Clot Shot". Which might skew the results, like all those geezers and morons freaked out over sudden acceleration in the late-1980s Audi.

There could have been some signal-to-noise correction in how various agencies read the VAEs from the RS. The British Medical Journal est. 1840 must report on what happened.

This journal is not some Slay News fly-by-night; they are generally pro-vax, like for shingles.

The journal notes that by mid-2021 the FDA knew there was a noise problem in VAERS. It further uncovers a letter which, in September 2022, then-CDC-director Rochelle Walensky sent: Walensky was worried that it was all getting stupid over at the FDA. The FDA meanwhile was muzzling the people raising the concerns the prior year.

By noise, BMJ means the FDA simply ignored myocarditis, pericarditis, or tinnitus as not-counting as a real vaccine adverse event. The "-card-" root means cardio - the heart.

The FDA honcho during this time was Peter Marks. He'd been a big force in "Operation Warp Speed" in May 2020. Robert Kennedy demanded Marks' resignation 28 March 2025. You can now find Marks at Eli Lilly in DC.

Starshot v Starfire: the race to Sedna

Given the ongoing investments into sunsail and Direct Fusion, outer system missions are coming into view. In one case, the outer system is coming to us: Sedna. We have until 2075 when this visitor from the Oort gets into perihelion (76 AU). Last year, Elena Ancona, Roman Ya. Kezerashvili, Savino Longo compared the two methods.

Other methods had earlier been mooted such as VASIMR (perhaps-foremost), but these run in the timeframes of decades. Democracies don't build cathedrals.

Other important constraints include that the mission requires a power source that isn't solar, that far away. It also needs communication with Earth. These techs were last refined in New Horizons - a flyby.

This DFD, which is assumed Princeton's Starfire, would be running 1.6 MW under its own power. This is to extend the lifetime of the superconductor over ten years; the ceiling would be thirteen.

With as much time as they have, either could (and should) borrow Jupiter for gravity-assist, probably Venus too. Dunno about outer planets. The DFD would further be able to flip-n'-burn and inject into the planetoid's orbit. That would however add some years onto the trip.

One-way sunsail would get out there in seven years; the Starfire in ten. There is no reason that exploration-agencies cannot do both, given that a sunsail might be cheaper. Especially given that other missions will be bidding against Princeton for its 300g of He-3.

On-board variable propulsion

Ion drives like VASIMR, and adjustable NERVA like the shockwave rotor, can squeeze more efficiency from their drives by feeding in energy and/or adjusting the exhaust throat. It occurs to me that this means recalculating the rocket equation in real time. As in: on the rocket, not outsourced to orbital data. That drinks more energy for compute, which then must be controlled somehow; probably by radiating out.

These are exponent and logarithm equations. If we were using a TSR-80 extended BASIC processor, welcome to Taylor series.

Needless to say, that is some bull-tish. Don't we have some tricks to turn a float into a 32?bit long(ish)int? Just shift the integer over bro. *(long*), subtract some magic number, then <<= bro. Like when the exponent was -1/2.

That'd be great if the ratios were all integers. They... probably aren't. Because they aren't, this method requires to poll the ratio until it reaches an integer and then run the calc.

We'd hope to force integers on all four values of the Tsiolkovsky to some cromulent unit-length, like millimeters and grams. We'll see. Instead of exp(dv/ve) it's exp(dv) × root-ve(e). One multiplication operation. Gotta be better than Taylor(8). Ln(m0/mf) meanwhile is [lb(m0) - lb(mf)] × ln(2). Now we have to ponder overflow: 32-bit integers go only to 2³¹. So, no; these are going to be km/s maybe even Mm/s which we have to rescale after the calc.

Depending on the unit-lengths I might even consider storing the exponent-powers and the e-roots in tables. Data got corrupted on Voyager but I suspect our triage is better today; so's our shielding. On arrival at the destination our need to punch the engine shouldn't be as dire, so the memory used in the tables can be wiped, for reüse in the actual mission.

This was imprecise for q_rsqrt and will be imprecise now. Those 1990s gamers applied Newton's method upon that approx "y", thus: y * ( 1.5F - ( x * 0.5F * y * y ) ). Lotsa multiplications, here. And that's second-order because this was just a square. And, to remind: we're talking about high exponents and high roots. May as well devolve to Taylor.

Kasper Nielsen's cheat-sheet of "float tricks" may offer an out. We have NVIDIA's "piecewise linear approximation" which shouldn't overflow. Ian Stephenson does one better for Pow2 which "approximates the error with a quadratic".

There are other unsafe-code solutions in the roster, some just straight assembler with no overflow checks. Good news: I doubt we need 'em for the floating fractions. The mass ratio as wet/dry[-er] even at some Apolloesque 96 isn't going to have ln(x) all that high (4.6ish here), and this is going down as we drive. The velocity ratio working with inner-system delta-V and as-good exhaust as they'll allow us (like, 14 km/s) should also be low, enough for exp[x] anyway.

MEMORY COPY 9/19: If you know we're on positives.

Types... deletes... and stuff

Sydney Sweeney should not be supporting gambling in sports. This support is a failure of character on her part.

I recall when Instapundit lambasted Busey for appearing in the Turkish film Valley of the Wolves. I recall he called Busey a "whore". Euphoria, I propose, was just as disgusting a project. So it is not like Sweeney hasn't already telegraphed that she, like Busey, was willing to appear in whatever paid.

If you think I am being cheap: some of the shots which Insta is levelling at her detractors are cheap. (And if we must Go There, the lady northwest would probably look about as good as 30-year-old Sweeney sans makeup and airbrush. I've personally dated northeast.)

I might further ask, from the support of Instapundit and others, to what degree they have been bought off too.

So you want 70 tonnes in Venus-Earth Hohmann

The Superheavy has pushed a 75 tonne load into LEO; maybe some krauts have pushed 70 t. This load is headed for Venus. v_inf, for that, is 2.5 km/s. Leviathan expect to pay Elon Musk MONEY to send it all in a 160 tonne Starship; and MO' MONEY, for the fuel top-up in LEO. Presently the paper hasn't stated how much fuel they need but Google has told me, 400 t (megagrams). In this poast, I compete for that blank cheque. We are all about branching paths here.

An interplanetary Hohmann operates by regular launch windows, Earth/Venus on that pentagram synod of 583.92 days. In this case we're not sending any time-sensitive cargo (like monkeys): Leviathan is supposed to work for a year, so what's a coupla'more months. This means I don't have to blast immediately after getting to LEO and topping up. I can afford to wait; to adjust my cargo's trajectory from LEO to something better nudged into.

We start by renting the Tamil Tether. This yanks my cargo into HEO, here standing for high eccentric orbit. Apogee 200-300 megameters well over GEO. Weee!

That is delta-v 2.83 km/s; if I'm shifting only 75t, momentum 2.1e8 kgm/s. This can be spread over a minute or two so most tether materials would work. The 2.3 terajoules of total energy will, however, lower the tether's altitude. Raja's tax must be paid.

From this apogee, I'm in range of a possible second tether which promises up to 100 t - although here the tether material must be ... stiff. In this case I must spend the remnant 25 t budget on a dedicated Venus-entry vessel because I'll not fit a full Starship on that poor thing. Copilot didn't even suggest the idea.

Instead Copilot adds solar-electric tugs operating for several weeks in that 200-300 Mm domain. I could even have a near-empty spare 160 t Starship hanging around up there (which is why we discussed only the 75 t above). We don't need to park them on the spaceline although that will be nice too.

Above all (heh) the tugs can push my 235 tonnes into a Molniya trajectory, that almost hits Earth. It is at perigee, the velocity is highest, yay Kepler, at 10.8-11 km/s. At the right moment, we do the Crazy Hermann off to Hohmann. This delta-V is 248 m/s. For this push, propellant mass runs just 16.1 metric tons. With 16.5 MN thrust allowed by six Raptors, it is burned in 3.65 s.

Leviathan conceded a multiple-launch mission, the moment they mooted refueling. My mission architecture reduces the launches to two. One sends the load, which competitors can bid for; tethers hurl this into HEO. The other sends a whole Starship (under)laden, which... tethers hurl into HEO. The 16.1 t (plus) of fuel is probably in the latter, for simplicity. The load and the 'ship, they dock (because Leviathan assumes docking is possible) in HEO. At some point, I send my mission via Oberth with much less fuel than that for which SpaceX will charge them. I do assume infrastructure, but that infrastructure is available for future missions. Like for that Sunbird > Saturn mission.

I might add that Elon could use something like this architecture to get his 'ships back. Could be he's loaded enough propellant for a cycler-trajectory, to drop off the cargo and keep goin', so Earth gets it back... whenever. 3-0-2-9 promises 4.8 sidereal years; Hop David's scheme awaits the whole eight year metonic. Maybe Elon doesn't want to let his 'ship rot in the Solar well for years so sends over propellant, to load onto the 'ship, which waits in high Venus ellipse-orbit for the next direct Hohmann.

Either way there's likely to be additional burn, for 3-0-2-9 probably on its next return at Venus, to adjust the angle as to intersect Earth. I say likely because over eight years, cap'n Hop David might be able to trim thar sails.

Coxon was an op

I don't desire to speak much on the topic of AI dangers, so I'll just flag a few people not to heed. Not ever.

First up is the oh-so-principled Coxon whose resignation was coördinated with news announcements all over the Google-approved outlets. All this doomerism is being Dustin Moskovitz funded. It is all an op.

It turns out that the whole "Hugging Face" hack was, likewise, an op; driven by nefarious (human) agents. For those who still think "effective altruists" are human.

Anthropic, we learn elsewhere, may be trying to get AI nationalised, or - more likely - attain a state-ordered monopoly. The latter has an ideology and the ideology has a name. It is not such a name as online fora much allow to use.

So I'll keep watching my slop kthxbai.

The Median myth

Two decades ago Karen Radner floated a key thesis about the "Medes" - Madayë in Aramaic - down to the late 600s BC. The Assyrians never quite could tell that the hillfolk were coalescing into some "Median Empire". Skip ahead a few centuries and Herodotus has all manner of lore to relate about these "great kings". Most of these Medes overlap the Babylonians, starting with breakaway king Nabopolassar. But the Babylonians say much less of these hillmen than will the Greeks. They do know some latter leaders: Kashtariti, Umakištar, finally Ištumegu.

Theories of "secondary state formation" may apply here. Alongside the Romans, "tribal confederations" along the Rhine and Danube limes start taking on the character of kingdoms; we may say the same for the later Arabs between Iran and the Rhomania. I'm thinking here especially of the Libyans who enlisted "Sea Peoples" against the house of Ptah at Memphis. Nabopolassar, here, struck a deal with "Medes". These weren't his granddaddy's dirty hill bandits anymore. Copilot leans toward a real kingdom at Ecbatana/Hamadan.

We last hear from these Iranian plateaux in the "Nabonidus chronicle", recording a war between an "Ištumegu" (Iranic v->m in this script) and a Cyrus. Cyrus won, so got to relay his genealogy, that he was the grandson of a man with an Elamite name - which name he also took. Cyrus' ancestral lands were important, but not the heartland of the Medes. So who was *R̥štivaigah? - apart from a man perhaps more Iranian than the Cyruses.

The Greeks record elsewhere that "Astyages" also came from a dynasty of sorts. His father Cyaxares fought the Lydians until "the eclipse of Thales" today marked 28 May 585 BC (usually). This name is widely distributed, showing up even in Phrygian, albeit a common name for Medes. Nabopolassar commanded his Medes under their headman "Umakištar" who must correspond to Herodotus' Cyaxares.

Later Darius must contend with the family of Cyaxares, rebelling against him from the east. One was Fravartish "Phraortes" the Mede, who took the name Khshathrita when he got crowned; this regal name is known in Babylon ("Kashtariti") where, interestingly, Herodotus' Fravartish is not. Another pretended Cyaxarid was one Tritantaechmes of Sagartia; we should take him less seriously.

Herodotus got his data from Darius' successors, mainly Artaxerxes Longhand. Of course these successors were steeped in Darius' lore; Artaxerxes is going to be succeeded by Ochus who'll call himself the new Darius.

I propose here that Fravartish remembered that Cyrus had posed as the Assyrians' heir. Fravartish invented a legendary past around Kashtariti and Cyaxares, those great liberators of the Medes therefrom. Darius, reconquering his usurping lying ass, left-alone that particular fib. Darius would give them the Cyrus they deserved, putting down this upstart neoAstyages "this time as farce". Meanwhile the Persians as a whole could inherit the glory of the Medes, again; which Fravartish had lately made more glorious.

As evidence for Herodotus taking his Median lore from this filter, I bring his name for Cyaxares' father. He relates nothing like "Kastrites" but instead delivers "Phraortes" - close the truename of the late Kashtariti usurper, but a false name for the history-book.

Hand, shown

Beale:

Intelligent Genetic Manipulation. We have no idea by whom. But I suspect all the recent alien disclosure stuff is because it is fairly obvious that the genetic record is going to prove that the human species, at the very least, was constructed. With a few more advancements in genetic science, we may even be able to figure out more or less when it happened.

I've unbolded the silly. We've more-or-less been over this. But in light of new findings let's return to this vomit:

When humans emerged from Africa, and for that matter when contemporary humans in Africa emerged into other African environments, the environment hit us but hard. We couldn't control how to handle the coronavirus, nor the malarial parasite. So it was, until came the Late Glacial Maximum, or "Mesolithic", or whatever you call the slip from the general suck of the Pleistocene into 24kBC's full-on Ice Age. Selection was natural. Over hundreds of thousands of years, sometimes supplemented by distant relatives who had been out there for millions.

By that point humans of all sorts still hadn't domesticated any of our neighbouring animals. Well okay: so Alpha (2018). That movie hasn't much been deboonked. Maybe some coëxistence happened with scavenging wolves in the 30skBC. Don't care.

It's in the Neolithic we start seeing goats, sheep, oxen, donkeys, llamas. Again: this isn't the poast to pick apart millennia. Just to point out that, after the Ice Age, a slew of animals got selected - by intelligence. Our intelligence.

It would be a surprise if we hadn't intelligently designed ourselves as well. We had the smarts to pick friendly sheep; why not friendly farmers. To a Sumerian king, a farmer is just another beast of burden.

Or, for Beale... a Cahokian or Chaco Canyon king.

Ebrahimi progress

A subset of the VASIMR process is the Ebrahimi, alfvén recombination. This is being evaluated in the lab. I'd not say "tested" yet.

They can get 10-20 km/s upstream. This scales with the strength of the magnetic field, for which they got good tests up to 9 kV. Thrust in turn correlates with plasma density which their equipment kept low, 1-3e-6 kg/m³; and with the velocity-squared of the exhaust; and with the area of the plasma column cross section. It has so far transpired that their speedy upstream velocities suffer interference, and that they want a bigger lab but they would say that.

Keep in mind the very physics are still young and may involve Navier-Stokes.

VASIMR update

As long as we are looking in on orbital manoeuvres for low-mass craft, and/or entheppy drives: let's check in on VASIMR. Especially if we are getting space actuators.

The main practical uses thus-far have been high-isp high-efficiency trips. That's the outer system. Like far out: Eris, for one. This blog was considering gradual spin-up of space stations before humans set foot in them; heaven knows we all have time before they get there. Teased was (elsewhere) a human Martian visit in 39 days, which demands 200 MW[e] (if they want that cargo, I'd add: several roggets). I don't think such missions rate high on the priority-lists, given that what I'd linked came out 2011.

The company testing VASIMR is Ad Astra. Looking around the news, reporters are aware of Ad Astra's existence to itself and to the space community at large. Because the power they need is high, they need nukes. If we go back to 2024 they had a deal with SpaceNukes. At higher voltages in megawatt realms, Ebrahimi will surely follow. I think at that point, a thruster-customer may as well use fusion. Although, if either's customers stick to stationkeeping Venus in the hectawatt range, they might all get by with solar.

From Ad Astra I smell the scent of Howe. Company going quiet 2025-6.

VASIMR is clearly not a bad tech. I suspect it might have been a premature tech.

Leviathan evaluation

Some people earlier this decade assembled to propose Leviathan to NASA: Venus Aerobot for Low-altitude and Surface Explorations. Surprised they didn't call it the "valasé"; "vaflasé" might have sounded too Welsh. 22 pages, 50+ appendices.

They've figured that the tech mostly already existed 2021-5, excepting the one-way Starship for chassis. The stats on th'ship matter, so they've had to leave those parameters blank. SpaceX has had a working model of the one-way since late last July (with heat shield!), so Leviathan might want to run one more pass through the text.

This is wholly different from the Landis-Colozza statites, although those might tag along for the ride.

The aerobot alone is 30 tonnes. They want also 17 tonnes of methane and a 20 t drop-tank. With the other material, all rounds up to 75 t. For propulsion purposes, Leviathan adds the standard Starship fuel tank, all six Raptor 3 Vacs, and all the other equipment once in orbit. Google AI estimates 120-160 tonnes here. I've told it to use the high end because Venus needs heat shields.

The Levvies expect refueling in LEO. Google thinks 400 t should do it; if so, that means four additional Starship there-and-backs. SpaceX hasn't yet offered that service. As long as we are dreaming of nice-to-have space infrastructure: someone else can compete here. The delta-V to get into a Venus Hohmann is the expensive part of the trip, because Venus can aerobrake. Starship, remember, comes with excellent heat-shield.

Over our sister planet the aerobot floats between "-2 km and 4 km". The -2, I think, means they can dip over the plains and not just over Alpha / Beta Regiones. Dunno about Maxwell, which rises, what, 10 km; nor even "continent" Aphrodite. So they're swimming through not just hot high-pressure CO₂ but supercritical.

As to how it floats, they've picked Project Loon's architecture with an internal titanium-foil "bladder". Methane is the lifting gas.

They need 6-7 kWe power, so are requesting a 10 kWe reactor. For that they're begging NASA - and not, say, SpaceNukes. Mostly because this has been a focus of NASA research over the five years the Leviathan project wrote the paper. If they won't let explorers raise a reactor into LEO, I'd hook a wind farm to the lee side of Maxwell, to charge any surface missions thence. And charge the Leviathan... to use it. Heh heh heh.

Two other essential pieces of tech: a lander, also NASA which in this case it may have to be; and Ingenium's refrigerator.

Unlike LEO or our moon, or asteroids, or even maybe Deimos: we cannot expect this planet to return treasures for investors. This project is for exploration. So they want a grant: NIAC-1. They justify it by comparison with the Martian rovers and Ingenuity-soon-Skyfall. Nerds tune in to watch this stuff, they say.

It should be permitted to say that Charlie Kirk sucked

This blog has never argued for the assassination of Charles Kirk, and certainly not for celebrating the "Kirkversary". The culprit - and Tyler Robinson's trial is I think pointing to the correct culprit - deserves justice. Those online pundits muddying the waters deserve... banning (Beale is right about one thing, that "free speech" is unworkable; I'd ban him too). I will further remind that I left the Catholic Church over their preference for Gaza over Kirk.

This is where readers can smell a "but" incoming. I don't want to say "but". So, I'll say - "that said":

I didn't ever think much of the man. I thought TPUSA was malign from the start, like Campus Crusade back in the day. I pegged Kirk as a Quaker Nationalist, which half-baked ideology (which it is - both) I disapprove. If you pressed 2009ish Yarvin on it, he'd disapprove too. Mencius Moldbug would dig him out and hang him, with ... Locke, to paraphrase; Cromwell on the rope next-over.

As to Kirk in life, Richard Hanania has lately poasted a dossier of various stances he'd took, which, he Considers, Harmful - to the body politic. As is well known, you cannot cancel Herr Hoste. So they're trying to cancel Sohrab Ahmari, for agreeing with Hanania.

I cannot read all of Hanani-Hoste's paywalled article like Ahmari can. Here and there one can read the odd snippet. Like that Kirk supported Carlson past the point Carlson was worthy of this (which is how Carlson got to speak at the funeral, which funeral I virtually-attended instead of Communion With Gaza). Or like that Kirk supported "Stop the Steal". This blog did not support StS. I thought some states were stole, in fact, but not such as would have made the difference, and that Team Trump had lost the room by the end of the week.

Because I haven't (because: can't) read Hanania, I can't judge all he wrote. I can judge only what I can read, which here range from "true" to "honest arguments can be brought". There also exist Kirk's vaccine comments.

So whatever. Ahmari can say what he wants, and shouldn't apologise. As to "Captive Dreamer", Yarvin, whoever else: if you want us to treat Kirk as some icon like Steinem or King, then I'll start mocking Kirk like I've mocked those eminently mockable American Saints.

Some opinions on early Islam

Joel Hayward, who had joined the jund, in 2022 put his book Warrior Prophet through "Claritas" Press. For some reason Catholic-coded institutions seem to love supporting apostates. Anyway I haven't read it; it isn't apologetic like Esposito's, it seems more honest like the works of Juan Cole and Jonathan Rape-Rape Brown. In 2021 I'd poasted a roundup of modern consensus around the maghazi; maybe some of that is in Hayward's book.

From late 2023 as you know I'd moved more toward the preMuhammadan era of Near Eastern Araby. So I might not get to Hayward's work anytime soon. That much isn't a reflection of my views on Hayward, who for all I know has good reason for embracing the faith of the surat al-anfal and of its supposed author. He can try convincing me later.

For more evenhanded takes, rather than "Hellz ya he kilt 'em Khaibar JAHOODS!": Razib is recommending Kyle Orton who runs a 'stack of his own. Adomnán's hadith from Arculf, the Islamic understanding of religio... basic Ibn Warraq stuff from circa 2000 before the towering day.

Relevant to this blog might be the milieu of Late Antiquity. That would track more with IQSA 2015. I was writing Tidings of Flame around the time of Orton's poast.

PS. Happy New Year.

Passive shielding

This isn't really the magnet blog, so I'll relay Space Startup News who knows better. He's talking radiation-shields. To replace his overview, here is one from 2025.

What appears to have inspired our boy is Zenno. They announced a few weeks ago they'd loaded Supertorquer on "Starburst-1". The latter is Portal Space, which rideshares Transporter-18. Present plan: Falcon-9 next month. Portal are trying to shift sats between MEO and GEO, which engine they grandiosely term "Supernova".

Zenno's Supertorquer in this, confusingly termed a "flagship", is the actuator for this ship. It's a superconductor: a passive magnet at 3,500 A·m. Contrast, the usual passive shielding of lithium-hydrates which then add to the dry mass. SSN points out that superconductors are now a commodity, made more-or-less cheaply. (This is because of the work done in the fusion field. If those customers go away, as they well might, this application will keep superconductors in business.)

Although the Zenno magnet be passive it must be kept below 100 K or so. The mission is going to use power (by solar), if nothing else for the "TRL11" diagnostics also on board. It is in fact sun-sync so will be in daylight for a full year. Basic thermodynamics will heat up the chassis, and that heat is not going to be blowing propellant all the time. One assumes radiators will be brought.

Portal's aim is to use Earth's magnetic field for control authority. That's the "torque" part, to turn itself about. This leaves, for propellant, only shifting orbits. I imagine it also simplifies the design as the engine(s) shouldn't need gimbals (the solar and radiators get their own torque). In a future when sats might use the spicy-meatball for higher I_sp, any improvement on shifting cargo about is good.

Naturally the torque part works only over planets with dynamo. Such include the four big'uns, plus Mercury and Ganymede-why-not. We gotta start somewhere so, Earth it is.

This mission already-excellent hasn't even got to SSN's stake in it. Zenno want to test how well this magnet, which again is passive so always-on, keeps out the radiation. We can start by shielding solar cells from electromagnetic radiation, leaving them to handle only the photons. Solar sails can be so augmented as well. That can help scale to such human-rated habitats as can't bury themselves under regolith. Thinking here not so much of longterm space-stations outside Van Allen (Jensen imports regolith - and hydrates), as the shuttles to/from those stations or, perhaps, the stations-under-construction. Meanwhile all those LEO stations are likely going to stay lightweight (so micrograv) so will need the shields too. So much for those BVDs!

Cheaper syngas

Syngas is a mix of carbon-monoxide and hydrogen. I expect Martians can get the hydro' from ice; Venerians must scoop the acid clouds. I hadn't really checked how the chem would work, I'll probably ask Copilot. Where carbon and hydrogen can't be had, or they can't just loot an errant comet for its methanol, I've suggested breaking plastics. Waste Not Want Not.

Some planets by contrast are awash in methane. This study, mostly Chinese, proposes an alumina-based catalyst. This is just bauxite sent through the Bayer process (or, hell, pulverised soda cans) and should be cheap. A little pure nickel is added, like 0.8%, which at that concentration can't be expensive either.

Why the Samaritans didn't want our Joshua

Bible-believers as with Jeremiah and others contend, further, with two Joshuas - or, perhaps, four. For the JudaeoChristian community the main two are the MT (> Vulgate and near everyone else) and the Greek (> Old Latin). The Dead Sea is less helpful than you'd think - or hope: it has a MT (with a few variants) and "4Q Joshua a". The latter might be a retelling, like the Samaritans have their own "Joshua"; albeit, here, perhaps based on an earlier Joshua edition. This topic is colossally complex, but it seems not complicate.

Ernst Knauf, generally-respected at this blog, is respected enough on better fora to be allowed there a summary (pdf).

The story (of the story) begins with a Joshua 6 and 9-10. This, per Knauf page 359-60 #1-3, is what arrived in Achaemenid Jerusalem 500-450 BC with chapter 11 as supplement. Also arriving was the Holiness redaction of Leviticus, which got notorious enough that Ezekiel will read it. The Deuteronomic History from 1 Reigns/Samuel 9+ also by-then was extant. This is where Knauf #4 kicks in, assigning the bulk of Joshua 1-21 as the Greeks will know it.

Copilot is telling me that Holiness has infused Joshua chapters 3, 5, and 7 (also 24 but everyone agrees it's late). Knauf doesn't cite what Copilot is citing, nor say much of these earlier chapters at all; but they independently come to the same conclusion that these chapters be postexilic and [Holiness-]priestly. For Knauf, Joshua 1:6-21:45 was entwined with the prior five "Mosaic" books in a Hexateuch.

Recently one Erasmus Gass has posted "The Land Distribution in Joshua 13-19". This stands to fine-tune #4. Trickling through the Temple circles was a census of cities and, also, of Tribes. The Tribes numbered... seven (18:9). These were Judah, Ephraim, Benjamin, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali. Gass can understand the absences of outliers Simeon, Dan, Reuben (and Machir although nobody asked him). He cannot so understand Manasseh's absence. Gass posits that our Joshua 18:1-10a, then lacking MT v. 4 (as Greek lacks it), omitted Manasseh at the time of composition. Manasseh was Samaritan territory. The "document" had excommunicated this tribe.

Now as we all know, the Samaritans came to find all manner of ways to harmonise Numbers with Deuteronomy. So did the Greeks, even unto Joshua 5:6. Gass is arguing the same process for the Jews. This antiSamaritan document now in our Joshua 18 was accreted, with reference to ... Numbers and Deuteronomy. These were never the same book, as the Samaritans knew, so the accretions were done in different stages. First was another "Priestly" (sic) redaction, to enholify the Tribes. Gass thinks Joshua 18 here got repurposed, to introduce 15-17 also 19:1-48. This chunk was to follow Numbers 34:2-12. Gass argues for the same "ideolect" of Hebrew in these pericopae. Copilot, incidentally, is telling me that Numbers 34:2-12 if not quoting Holiness Code shares Holiness ideology. I expect that serving this ideology, Numbers 14:6-9,38 inject Joshua (and Caleb) to that episode of the Scouts.

Then Joshua 15-19 got reassembled, between 14:1-5 and 19:49f as "frame". From here out, I'll let to others. I'll just note that Gass doesn't see Ezekiel as influencing the assemblage or redaction of Joshua in any way.

Overall, I'll note that the Holiness Code was a Jerusalem project and that Joshua 18:1-10a may, indeed, have been structurally antiSamaritan. The Samaritans accepted Numbers 34 on their own terms, with a lot of redaction. They simply refused the Jewish Joshua; incidentally adding some small evidence toward the lateness of this project. Maybe the men of Gerizim could have accepted Joshua 6 and 9-11 (and 1 Samuel 1-8 la-de-da), but the first scroll proffered to them had the accursed chapter 18 therein. Knauf and Gass ponder if the Jews had attempted to soften Joshua for the north. The north chose instead to write their own "Joshua".

Meanwhile the Jews shrugged; they broke their own holy Joshua into its own book, offset from Torah. Thus Joshua 1:1-5 were born. And the stuff which connects Joshua to Judges and beyond, which the Jews were also assembling.

TL cyclers

ToughSF has linked muh cuz S. D. Ross, along with his minion Michael Roberts-Tsoukkas, on prograde Earth-Moon cycler orbits. Prograde means we can inject sats into there more easily.

The key as ever is the Jacobi. First you have to raise that sat. This altitude - potential-energy - is high, in order to shift toward the Moon easily. It also meanwhile has to be kicked to an orbital cycler trajectory.

Once done, a class of TL cyclers opens up. Among them: (1,1) and (2,1) and (3,1). Last is thrice about Tellus here; once, Luna there. 45, 84, 64 days period respectively. The (3,1) cuts closest Earth and Moon; also doesn't skim the direct Earth-Moon line. Former two intersect close to L1, so will need diverted from any spaceline. Third one looks pentagrammy, skating the far edges of L4 and L5 haloes. Ross with Abdullah Braik lately suspect (2,1) as hard-access. (1,1) retains the lowest flight time so prioritises small journeys toward the Moon and back, like Aldrin to/from Mars.

The team might be settling upon (3,2) although this does clip the spaceline.

As for their use, I expect that's for what Mike Collins was doing in 1969, picking up and dropping off, in a safely-shielded capsule. Maybe big enough to be shielded and have spin'grav.

To test, that's standard Falcon-9 injection into orbit followed by space-tuggery; we're doing a lot of similar Lunar orbitals. For the cyclers proper, would require something more. Like the SLS, but I don't really like that. An assemblage in some HEO shipyard would be better.

1/137

I haven't poasted on the Fine Structure Constant, which approximates 1/137. So, let's.

It's a ratio; no units are here. By convention we denote 1/137 by "α", confusingly since we also use that miniscule hellenism for other ratios like thrust/weight, but this one may deserve that pride-of-place. DEEP2 was observing it back in time (meaning: space) and in 2005 revealed that it hadn't changed in seven billion years. To put another way, the laws of physics had not changed in the whole saga of the formation of our solar system, probably from some nebula expelled by supernovae of stars preceding it by maybe millions of years. Inasmuch as creationists had put into question the antiquity of physical laws, this was one of several findings which let the air out of the movement in Dover that year.

This blog is a post 2019 project so hasn't cared to revisit DEEP2. Two decades later, we should consider other findings to suss out the validity of modern physics before all that.

Google AI points to quasar absorption-lines and (naturally) the Cosmic Microwave Background. This has a recent validation here, within 1%; the observable physical laws constrain what scalar dark matter can be, in terms of mass. Like neutrinos have mass but we can measure only the upper bound per particle.

We - not I - should use this paper in discussions with the Catholics of July 2023. Dr Rudolf Hilfer notes Pius XII positing the universe at five billion years ago, holding that to ridicule, which is a mite unfair to that late-1940s bishop, inasmuch as he (prophetically?) marked a time before what we know of our formation, if not DEEP2-before. Hilfer in fact cedes past even DEEP2, to the Cosmic Microwave Background. He (implicitly) allows that the laws of physics apply throughout pretty much everything Milky Way. I counter: before all that, we can at least constrain what went on.

Now, this is not a cosmology blog. Those exist; we can bring Turtle Island and Woit and Triton Station. Which I do against-interest. On one hand I know that Turtle hates me, that Woit counts me as a supporter of a fascist dictator, and that Triton counts me as a racist. On the other hand I know that Dr Hilfer is commanded to love me. And Hilfer can in fact prove that he loves me, by conceding that alternate theories exist against the Λ-CDM consensus. He can even agree that I'm a fascist racist worthy of hate by others, some not even pagans.

Calling Big Bang a "narrative" in the context of terms like "pagan cosmology" implies dishonesty driven by animus. And what do pagans deserve, Herr Doktor...? Let us just say, Hilfer shows his own animus thereby. And if not dishonesty; a certain disingenuosity.

Falcon Heavy + Sunbird: evaluated

Starfire and I assume Sunbird promise high-alpha thrusts, such that they could push their own engines into orbit and beyond. Their problems are twofold: they use expensive helium-3; and their thrust isn't all that high, in the teens of newton. The Merlin series, which the Falcon rockets use, each runs 845 kN at sea level. Falcon 9 therefore must use several rockets - nine Merlins. The Falcon Heavy uses two sets of Falcon 9s and a bigger one in the middle. The US military sometimes uses the latter and buys the discardation of the boosters for extra thrust.

SpaceX has earmarked Falcon Heavy for retirement once the Starship is ready. And when they can do one Starship a week, the whole Falcon series is done. But what if...?

Today I pondered firing the FH triple blast except to swap out the colossal core rocket. Instead we are lifting the fusion rocket. The Falcons on either side can possibly use methalox or even hydrolox for more boost and les soot. These rockets can be retrieved as per usual. Fusion rocket doesn't need as much thrust after those detach - we'll put a button on this.

If hydrolox, I call in the Germans. Their RLV-C5 as boosters are rated 1972 kN. Although not as mighty as the 2700 kN Raptor-3; RLV-C5 uses ten apiece. Both my boosters would, then, glide to pickup allowing more efficiency.

We are here buying horizontality over verticality. These should be safer and cheaper to assemble on the ground. Buys some international goodwill also. As a direct small-load mission, we here RETVRN to Gajeri's 2010 thesis to Saturn or whith'rever other 5+ AU destination.

So: let's run this by Copilot. Even at LEO, the fusion rocket still has to blow out extra fuel and must take many days to get to escape-vel. I must also add that running the system over 2 MW hot is liable to kill the superconductor. Layla Mohsen, sorry to pick on her but she's tagged her name to the mission rather than to the engine, assumes a space infrastructure fit to assemble interplanetary manned craft in that LEO and, we must assume, push it outward. I don't know that we have that. Will we have that in 2030? Will any of the proposed stations want to do that?

If our mission is for a light cargo, and if we're assuming orbital infrastructure: a better investment be to hoist that Tamil Tether. The orbital station maintains tether, at most (which scales better than being a direct shipyard). Tether catches our fusion mission and drags it higher. Fusion lights the fuse. Which is a moderate fuse fit for leisurely trips to Saturn.

Starfire

Princeton haven't abandoned Sam Cohen's direct-fusion project. All they did was rename it: Starfire. They got new hire Layla Mohsen to deliver the youtube, covering much of what Marco Gajeri's old Turin thesis did (pdf).

The design is for D+³He, output ⁴He and a proton - ionic plasmata. A little secondary happens, where D+D passes a neutron making H+T, or just fuses into He-3... and a neutron. The former tritium can fuse too and give off more neutrons. These secondary reactions are well-studied and deemed nonproblematic for this design (the tritium is exiting the back door in time).

The earlier mission-architecture was for Saturn [UPDATE 1:11 PM for which I have mine own ideas]. Princeton are now promoting a Martian landing and takeoff. I'm going to LARP Zack Moussaoui and not care about any of that. Let's just order them to dock with Deimos or otherwise stick in high Mars orbit.

This design, they say, doesn't have to turn off. If they snap the exhaust-pipe shut, and replace the radiators with a Brayton cycle, they have a modest fusion electrical generator. And yeah, they're getting helium in that exhaust they've bottled; tritium too but this won't be in position to be fusing anymore. Maybe they burn the hydrogens in oxygen (oxygen is common in any planet's regolith). So it's kind of a ⲛⲑⲉⲡ.

Tritium extracted will beta-decay halflife 12.3y. This means electrons. I hear they are low-energy, so low-energy magnets can keep them at bay. Also, the byproduct is He-3 which is half our fuel. That helium is what you'll want to save, for the trip back home.

That assumes they haven't already guzzled all this propellant/fuel to get here. Along with 70% helium of whatever isotope, they want 30% xenon. The xenon must be imported, or added to the manifest; and so must additional helium, because the helium waste isn't nearly the amount they need. Good news is that in high orbit, the video itself assumes supply with nonfragile cargo from all manner of Earth low-speed (Hohmann) runs. This includes canisters of liquid volatiles, solar cells, extra radiators, solid foods. At Mars in perfect daylight, you can also use 43% of the Sun's radiation. You don't even need a fusion reactor.

They have two options for cargo and for crew. The crew might use the onboard rocket to crank it the rest of the way out our well. That would be a high-thrust option which I expect to slash I_sp. They promise 5-10 N/MW powered by 1-10 MW.

This may sound like weak newtons, and I warn that many typoes clutter this presentation. This may not be one of them. Back in 2019, Cohen (pdf) was promising 10ks (or more!) and 35-55N if he ran it 10 MW hot. This setting can't run for years on end, so that I_sp should be disregarded for interplanetary missions, but Mohsen is just getting him to Mars for which I_sp saves on He-3. To compare: for 2 MW Sunbird's 2xDFD aims 10 N (up to 101) and here Gajeri had projected 8 N. Gajeri's thrust-to-weight α (you know, the N/N stuff you don't see in I_sp) ran 0.75. This compares with Ebrahimi's wild 2021 VASIMRlike which, of course, drinks its power from outside.

Cargo... might not need any fusion engine at all. That can take a whole year which sounds, basically, chemical.

Specific-impulse blows past any of those dangerous fission NΘP we've seen. One chart has exhaust velocity up to 25000 km/s - which is silly, and should be ignored. Gajeri - aiming to Saturn on a fairly lowthrust vector - expected 9.6ks. Matthew Chu Cheong follows Gajeri in using Rognlien's UEDGE: more like 88 km/s calculating 8.6-9.2ks, about half a Sunbird let alone θ-pinch. That exhaust can rise to 300 km/s. Mohsen also boasts α>1 (prosaically, 0.5-2) which - technically - can get you offa Earth (if we had cheap He-3). The lower I_sp bounds - they claim - deliver in 67 days to Mars which compares well with the fission Shockwave Exhaust (afterburner). Sunbird might not be fit for orbital test in 2027, note.

For Mars, contrast Saturn, needs assemble the whole ship in orbit. Princeton want three "SLS-class" launches. One of these launches would store the Starfire engines (I expect plural, for thrust) each-which is only 2m diameter; the other launches take up whatever cargo is to be delivered, including the propellants. I suspect they can get more launches off of Starships for cheaper. On assembly I see no radioactives on board; but fast exhaust, neutrons, and some tritiums will happen in the exhaust. Not much of a worry in the upper Earth thermosphere which we're sideswiping (toward lower atmo, pretty sure cosmic rays would swamp this) but a worry for all those LEO sats. I'd let them do it maybe 700 km. Absent skyhooks Copilot is saying 3.5-3.7 km/s for delta-V to intercept Mars on Hohmann.

For Mars-system-injection, fun part is that Copilot recommends an elliptic orbit for additional 1.3-1.6 km/s (this may depend on adjusting inclination to equatorial). Thence I can transfer-burn to Deimos 150-250 m/s, that's meters lads. (As noted here, some mission-archies prefer Phobos, but we don't.) 5.3 km/s total would have mass-ratio, by Tsiolkovsky (or Moore, for Brits) and lowball 8000s: 1.07. 7% of my rogget would be propellant. That's like an epstein drive. (And as noted, Earth would be sending supplies, for the trip home.)

Princeton are presently testing the power-source mode. They'd be building the models 2028-35 which I assume includes testing at 700 km (Starship should be online 'round then). Production happens 2035-8 (Princeton's plan includes a large share of the mission, which itself makes Assumptions, on what we'll be able to do in orbit) and then they go to Mars in '40. If we assume Sunbird is on the level, 2028-35 seems like about when they'd be building models as well.

What was edited, and not edited

Earlier I wanted to get out-there a few more examples of diachronic Hebrew. Here's the payload: Juha Pakkala. Orthodox corruption, not language shift.

This comes under two headings. One is where the Greeks and/or the Samaritans took a problem text and edited the Hebrew, which Hebrew is now better preserved in MT. The other is the reverse.

There exists rather a lot of the former, famously, particularly in what we Occidentals call "the LXX" - this is the Greek Torah. Take the several places after the Exodus where all Israel is to come and see what Raiders has insisted we must never see. We are unsurprised to find in Exodus 23:17 (Covenant Code, 20:22-23:19) ἐναντίον Κυρίου τοῦ Θεοῦ σου, which mucks with Exodus' grammar here. The Samaritans were clumsier: to summon all Israel to the Ark of YHWH, presumably shut tight and safe. The Ark is supposed to host, exactly, the Covenant Code which would neither, then, have existed nor been commanded outright. (Gotcha!) Pakkala brings further post-Code 24:10-11, where indeed the assembly sees at (which means... "at") Israel's elohîm, which the Greeks change to "the place of Israel's God". And, yanno... ish/gabur again.

The Jews have been more reluctant to change the rasm. For Exodus' parallel Deuteronomy 16:16 see the face (pny) of YHWH they revocalise "appear before" this "face", the "face" then being dismissible as a fossil grammatical term. Smells like Qere u-Kethib to me, but in the Masorah; one might also consider "bosheth"'s vowels appearing in "Ashtoreth" (sic).

Although even in MT rasm-mucking can happen. MT Exodus 23:17 sneakily swaps at from under the Deuteronomist's nose, for al. Exodus' people do not gaze "at" the Face but instead must, per the rasm, appear "before it", so al Him.

The Masoretes seem more free in other parts of the Tanakh. Like, Judges - especially if we expand it to 1 Samuel/Reigns which remains prekaige - knew of a temple at Shiloh. The MT has deleted this from its 1 Samuel 1:9-14. Booo

Pakkala brings "Lucian" to 2 Samuel/Reigns 15:8, that Absalom asked David to see YHWH in Hebron. This implies a Temple there in King David's own lifetime. Pakkala could well have brought 4Q51 too. Its overall "Absalom cycle" is considered subject to the kaige revision, Thackeray-Barthélemy "βγ"; 2 Sam 1-8 are considered not so adulterated. Yea even at the time of the revision, which may have been postTemple but wasn't Lucian's (postOrigen) work. So Lucian didn't translate the "βγ" part; he inherited a Jewish text that still had it well into Herodian times if not later. As to why to delete Hebron; arguably it was unnecessary. Waddn't Absalom the baddie?

Where dealing with baddies, the Jews seem to restrained themelves to mere qere on the kitab. 3 Reigns 16:32 is in γγ so later still than kaige. Here, in Greek, is Jewish alteration which had not been done back in βγ. Per MT, Ahab visits a temple of Baal. Again, Lucian is unlikely to have cared that a bad king is visiting the wrong god. Everyone knew which god it was. Jews - by then - didn't want so much as to utter this boshethic name. More exactly abominable: τῶν βδελυγμάτων is also in the Greek Daniel.

Fossil names in the diachronic context

Last week TheTorah posted a few interesting articles, in between bravely telling its mostly-secular-Jewish readers how sorry they were for not being liberal enough. Catnip for me is when they support an old-fashioned position like admitting Moses was a Semite after all. Thomas Schneider has posted this one.

"Phinehas" remains Egyptian. The p- prefix is a tell, before everything got all Aramaic. It would mean "the dark one", something like "Krishna"; in its Torah context the man may have been "Kushi". tꜣ-nḥsj would be the dark-person's land, which William Paul Coates stuck upon his kid because daddy was ign'int. (I don't find where Egypt used this construction.) Back to Torah: "Phinehas" would, I think, count as a fossil of a (foreign) name brought into Hebrew which origin the Torah's Ptolemaic-era transmitters and translators might no longer have remembered. Canaani in that ABH age of the Song of Miriam might not even have had its own (há-) prefix.

"Moses" rather represents that fossil "ABH" Hebrew. We've looked at a few examples, like Yoel Elitzur's elón preserved only in placenames. Schneider points at the yiph'al names like Isaac and mah ancestor Yakub.

Elitzur here brought ḌḤK as a basic Semitism. This is ṢḤQ for Genesis, which needs to explain the name יצחק; the root is also in Exodus (thus Ezekiel) and once in Judges. Alternative Hebrew is ŚḤQ from... Judges again, and Jeremiah and 1-2 Reigns/Samuel, and the Psalter and Proverbs. By the way Psalm 105, Jeremiah, and Amos(!) agree that Isaac's name is with S not Ṣ. The majority principle leads to ŚḤQ for the actual Hebrew. 'Tis a little harder to figure in Arabic because I cannot find it in Safaitic. Once it gets into the postNabati script it could just as easily be ḌḤK - or ṢḤK.

In yi'phal, Isaac meant "he scoffs". Schneider ponders an earlier stage where the tribal hero was the man who scoffs at his enemies. The man we know as Jacob/James is more problematic, but Schneider goes with old Amurru where it would mean "he protects" (*Yi'qab?). Either name can be made to imply that God is the ish/gabur who protects His people and laughs off their enemies. The Bible would represent a still-later phase at least for Isaac, as the Lord scoffs back: at... Sarah, who had scoffed at His angels (or avatars). Isaac is not "Tisaac" after all. By the way, as two fossils, bumbling through tribal formulae as they did, here are two more names which Elitzur cannot use to place the whole Torah into the Bronze Age as he'd like.

Jan Joosten has brought a couple more examples. The Exodus employs a term for midnight. Joosten takes it literally: halfway-the-night; Westerners would think, "stroke of-". LBH in Psalm 119 and Job instead imply something more general, middle-of-the-night. This posed a problem for contemporary Exodus-inheritors who, reasonably, asked why The Knower Of All had played so loose with times at such an important event. Clearly Joosten has solved that little problem for us all: the Lord was telling Israel - in Egypt - exactly what time it was, and it's not His fault the language changed after the Exile.

A more touchy subject is the military use of psṭ. Aramaic owns its own psṭ which means "spread out", like classical (Najd?) Arabic basīṭ. But unlike, oh, CBH gly ("scour", I've argued, alongside Safa'-Arabic); here Joosten sees Hebrew going its own way, earlier. psṭ would have intended "raid" and such that Chronicler guff about "spread out after winning the war" would be an Aramaism, brought in after the invasions. Heck as far as I know, this sense might have entered Edomite and/or Nabaṭite as well.

Starshot's speed limit

Centauri Dreams exists to tout the near-C mission to Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately this didn't get a dedicate team at the time, which was, what, the late 1990s such that we'd be getting data now. In 2016, Breakthrough Starshot aimed 0.1-0.2C; that seems to-what everyone has rallied. The fact of it taking decades on decades tends to keep Congress (and any republocratic system) from greenlighting such a thing, like those Uranian missions we don't got (Voyager was politically-feasible only because it promised to relay data from Jupiter and Saturn en-route).

The one bit of tech that did get some work was the solar sail itself, having some local applications as it does. IKAROS went to Venus in 2010; ACS3 is in operation in NEO now. This blog has recommended solar-sails for 50ish AU targets, like Eris. Tech for it is an active field.

Suppose we could iterate that tech toward something faster. 0.75C (... like Passengers) means 5.66 years (Einstein & Copilot say 3.75y on-board). Senators - in particular - might be talked into that one, especially new Senators.

Engineering issues abound: for instance, light gets redshifted as the sail vanishes away, but we might fix that with a fleet of boosters, which expend their last enthalpic battery pulses punching out one last laser. Up to Jupiter, these expendable boosters can be "3U Plasma Magnets". UPDATE 9/10: improvement is coming.

There's also dust. I expect that's more a worry at Oort and not interstellar (at present).

The real issue is a background photonic speed limit. We've discussed that here for cosmic rays and, uh. Something like it applies to Starshot too.

Assuming complete unobtainium and space-magic for everything short of warp, the sail is only getting to 0.75C. At that point diffuse scattering begins acting as drag. That's cutting it thin for our Senate.

Shuttle shenanigans, III

And here I was thinking that Sierra had forgotten about the Dream Chaser. Turns out, they've scaled it. If you have grams you've created in orbit, here's how to get them back. At "1.5 g" which I take to refer to accelerational pseudograv 14.7 m/s². (I'd hate for g to refer to grams here.)

In other spaceplane news, there's Dawn, filling in for the "New Shepard" - which (by contrast) Bezos has forgotten. That's testing Astral Materials' microgravity furnace, for four hours at a clip. So it won't need full orbit; it is doing some freefall before gently returning. Dream Chaser would be in orbit or near-enough, so can take longer before drag pulls it back to us. If Astral wanted it, the 'Chaser could test their furnace for that much longer.

I don't know if Dream Chaser ever intends to dock with one of those orbital stations we're getting next year. That would allow the furnace to be used for many days, with the return cargo being much larger. We might have ideas for shrinking that furnace, at that.

Alla'dhat's not nothing for unmanned cheap returns, but... doesn't Elon already have Starfall? That's a metric tonne in a a 2.5× 1.5× 0.5m container.

Maybe the issue here is that these grams being returned are just that fragile.

LANTR to Mars

The nonenthalp LANTR has been evaluated for Mars, against classic NERVA: Daria Nikitaeva and L. Dale Thomas. They studied both the more-or-less direct Conjunction Class and the Venereal fryby. We join the Mars Society to consider Conjunction only, until/unless we have first-aid stations at Venus.

Nikitaeva-Thomas calculated a LOX-assisted NERVA could cut propellant volume but - refer to the periodic-table - raises the mass (by 32.4% so - 132.4% the baseline). The mass buys 540% the thrust and 122% the impulse. Raising mass is a major problematic as long as we are delivering the LOX from Earth; but from our Moon, which may even get to use a electric-powered sling: that wouldn't be an issue. More at issue is this LOX mass takes from the "dry mass" of the rest of the mission.

When other planets be considered for humans, I suspect better options shall be at hand.

Shockwave exhaust

Ryan Gosse, a bunch of Floridians, and our boy Tony Colozza of NASA offered "Nuclear Wave Rotor Bi-Modal Cycle for In-Space Propulsion" in, I think, 2024 (pdf). They fill out "wave rotor" with "enhanced nuclear" to make the catchy 'cronym WREN. h/t ToughSF on Twitter 30 August who summarises: A wave rotor uses shockwaves to compress the exhaust of a nuclear thermal rocket to 4765 K, achieving 1430s Isp at 2.27 kW/kg, or turn a generator to feed 3000s Isp thrusters at 0.47 kW/kg. The target is Mars(/Deimos).

I_sp is, recall, really a measure of exhaust velocity, so just x9.8. NERVA-mode 14 km/s just like it says on Table 1 (page 15, relayed at ToughSF).

As we've learnt from ramjets, usually this much temperature melts ... everything. We again want liquid-scale results from a still-solid core. They're saying the WREN can use the shockwaves to keep the hydrogen plasma off the chassis, heat it even more (Boyle's Law, bitchez) and ram it out to that bespoke velocity. So an afterburner except not burning.

The NΘP mode instead offers 34.7 kN of thrust, twice the beryllium option of fusion pinch (also skiffy). Which does indeed put Mars into the frame.

The NΘP propulsion cycles run a total irradiation time of only two days for a 45-day mission and less than 10 hours for a 65-day mission. (67 days is where Princeton's direct-fusion is at, now "Starfire".) To follow that - I suppose - they... don't run. The assumption is a one-way mission, perhaps short enough they don't need to spin the wheel nor, one assumes, build to a wheel. At Mars, the areonauts find their own gravity until return.

The paper notes that pre-ion-drive, I_sp had been chemical and rather unconstrained. [UPDATE 9/10: Their point-of-reference happens to be VASIMR; expect a poast on that] The high impulse allowed by electric propulsion permitted variable propulsion, for mass savings over the trajectory burn. Mass of propellant, that is; which means more for the mission, albeit likely to be taken by the NEP mode's own subsystems.

The paper must admit to wasting heat, defined as heat not going to propulsion. They hope to recover some of that as electricity: life support for the crew, or just filling up batteries (thus relieving strain on the radiators if nothing else). That's like old NEP or maybe NΘEP. Once at Mars solar-cells get only, what, 43% flux and on Mars that's at high noon with no dust. That's for a later day.

Also deferred is the propulsion cycle, dependent on thrust/weight α of the NΘP. The authors had touted the 10-48 hours as short. Classical NERVA, for its 900s, aimed for 30m-2h of burn. WREN must settle on NΘP 8-15 hours. That's not so short; it's comparable to the issues identified with NTR to our own moon (that paper recommended LOX for a true afterburner, so "LANTR"). The WREN authors suggest they drop the NEP components to focus on thrust; this would jack up the time of the mission and maybe require that spinwheel after all.

Soft landings

LANTR seems to stop short of landing a craft upon the Martian surface. As to that L1 Kevlar rope, as it is under construction it might leave a megameter or two over the landing spot. Bouncing cargo onto bare regolith is going to kick up some dust. Launching off again will kick up still more, especially if they use the Al-LOX mix.

A week ago Space Startup News pointed to xARC, on the southwest edge of the Texas Triangle, concerning Lunar mission architecture. They were going to drop off some 'bots to roam the regolith and cook up hexagonal bricks, to ensure dust-free landing pads, roads, other pavements. (Lunar Forge is on that tech.) Also supplied would be berms to keep dust from drifting back in, from all the industry hopefully happening around the site.

Meanwhile in June, Anderson, Saxena, Metzger [ht Toughsf 31 August] came up with another idea. The Solar-System has already built some berms for us, in the form of small craters. Land craft with the fragile cargo in one of those. Schlep cargo over rim with Lunar Terrain Vehicle. Assemble base around crater (some material here could have been dropped less-gently in other missions).

Zubrin has long noted is that bricks are good for pushing down, but not for pushing out. We are here talking about the base camp, even its airless robot-only stage. It might be a trick to find a suitable berm-crater reasonably close to a human-friendly environment, like a lava cave.

LANTR

Whilst we await Firestar's nuclear afterburner, Borowski et al. a decade ago had proposed a chemical one. The subtext, best I gather, was that solid-core HALEU is all we're allowed in Earth's orbit (bought from Centrus, say). That buys us NERVA at 900s I_sp. This has never been that great for thrust. Most Mars missions assume NERVAlike NΘP. Or big punches to orbital trajectories, like The Martian to Hohmann.

Borowski's crew was pondering a high-thrust solution as may ignore much I_sp and Earth won't care what is burnt near us. This has a use-case in delta-V punches: a mission to the Lunar poles. I'll bite; even that spaceline only got to equatorial Sinus Medii.

The promise is to achieve liquid-core-temp exhaust whilst still keeping the (fissile) heat-source, solid. That'd be a safer reactor in HEO, for our legal lower-grade fuel. In 2024 the plasma-core was still SDI scy-fy (and in 2026; also none of us knew or know what Howe is doing).

NERVA, it happens, assumes hydrogen for propellant. As the Hindenburg passengers can tell you, it reacts with oxygen. (This blog takes no sides on the cause of that one's initial blowup.) The paper suggests to bring along liquid oxygen - LOX - with that superheated hydrogen. The LOX is introduced after the burn which raises the exhaust velocity. This is thereby an "LANTR". Oxygen is cheap on our moon, maybe the only cheap volatile.

As to why to do this: that is because the N part of NΘP is a nuclear reaction, and not - like Orion - a bomb. As a reaction, it is supposed to run for longer. NERVA hasn't been tested for many hours in, what amounts, a thermos the size of the Universe. "Ultra Safe" was supposed to test this which is now General Atomics' job. Earth might not want a reaction running long in our shared well.

For short bursts of heat one might even swap those nucular roggets for enthalpy. Which segues...

The antiquity of Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum

If you had read (ye) "Old(e) Testament Pseudepigrapha": one of the texts herein was a pseud' on Philo. Of course Philo had nothing to do with the Antiquitatum Biblicarum. Western Christians, who copied and have edited this work, have rated it a "Pharisaic" document: close to Josephus' halakha against, say, Judith's (or anything else of the pre-Revolt Diaspora). Zeev Safrai posted an essay on "LAB" in 2018. Safrai puts this in the Jamnia / Javneh era after 70 CE, when the priests didn't matter.

As far as I know a post-Qumran date wouldn't have ruffled feathers at any point since the late 19th century relieved it from Philo. LAB was composed in Hebrew but Qumran shows no awareness of it (we'd be looking to Jubilees, which relation is reversed). It hasn't been picked up by Septuagintal literature the way Judith, say, was picked up in the Greek Esther. As noted Philo didn't know it. It is antiSamaritan, inasmuch as the old shrines at Gerizim / Shechem are condemned. The mutual relationships with 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra / 2 Esdras are famous.

Safrai dates LAB rather after Bar Kochba. It seems of interest LAB sides with Shammai on whether children should fast, where the Mishnah gives to Hillel the last word against Shammai. LAB also retains Jubilees' interest in maintaining the names of Israel's matriarchs, although I cannot call that "feminist" (this reflects a tradition of matrilinealism). These intra-Jewish disputes seem early to me. So far I admit this is a matter of taste.

I don't see where Safrai's essay has raised skub in the past eight years. So... I'll do it:

Within the earlier decades, came the Judaeans' Tumult in Cyrene, Cyprus, and Alexandria. Vridar, when he was poasting, deemed this revolt an important event. LAB - as Safrai knows - argues for the general eretz-Israel as holy and under G-d's protection. Perhaps this nods to a time when Jews were persecuted everywhere but in the Judaea proper, where peace maintained. I don't think that Jews could honestly say this after Bar Kochba and Hadrian.

Broken cross

A couple years ago David Woods (not this D.W.) submitted On the Origin of the Seventh-Century Solidi with Mutilated Crosses Conventionally Attributed to the Caliphate. Woods thinks it happened "639" (AG 950), Heraclius' years of ash.

All scholarship has put this mint before 'Abd al-Malik's Standing Caliph, itself preceding the aniconics. Woods agrees. It's just that most of that scholarship has put the un-cross coinage with Mu'awiya. Woods finds this evidence wanting.

Mu'âwiya preferred images of John's head, as I recall, ruling Damascus as he did; sometimes references to "Zion" in the Jerusalem area. Out east, we still see imitations of Sasanian tropes. These don't overlap the sceptre-on-steps.

Woods instead credits provincial Christian mints hurriedly minting something as won't offend a cross hater. He points to John Cataeus of Edessa, "Osrhoëne" as the Romans were naming that province. Also maybe the hapless Cyrus in Alexandria.

If Catholics are not for Catholicism

The Catholic Biblical Association of America is now headed up by a Levine. I'd not have said anything but Davila is congratulating this appointment. As Ron Unz might congratulate Yad Veshem if they'd hired David Irving . . .

Look. I've no objection to the CBA(A) calling in observant Jews to 'splain to us (can I still say "us"?) the language or mindset of Biblical-era Jews, perhaps before they were "Jews". Nor would I complain if Levine were delivering modern Jewish readings of those texts, up to Christian texts. I've been relaying TheTorah commentary on this 'ere Catholic (if perhaps cryptoNestorian) blog for years.

But President? Really?

Hey. Maybe the Catholic canon is imperfect. This is also a discussion being entertained 'ere. RETVRN to the old Greek for Jeremiah? Chuck Tobit back into the Dead Sea whence it came? Let's go! - but either way, these are Catholic decisions to be held by Catholics in a Catholic forum. These are not decisions for the levides, unless and until they've done RCIA.

Catholics need to have the fortitude to defend a Catholic reading of the Bible. If a Catholic organization cannot do this, that organisation needs to disband.

UPDATE 9/1: And this groomer apologetic is what he links, out of all posted at TheTorah last week on the theme. Predic'able.

A canon is not a law

A few days ago (h/t Jihadwatch), Todd Aglialoro 'splained how canon law is not shari'a. He's right.

Jews own a religious law, some say (or joke) several; Christianity claimed to have overthrown this. Some modern scholars (Patheos*koff*) argue that Luke's project went toward an anarcho-syndicalist set of Christian communes. That might run at odds with Luke's overall structure of the Spirit exiting Jerusalem and settling upon Rome, not (then) Christian in any way. Much as this particular blog might look askance at Luke's work - and at his interpreters; we are addressing Aglialoro who inherits Luke's Christendom. This post follows them to address the Roman church; not that in the Greek or Slavic worlds and certainly not in Syriac.

Here Christendom and Romanitas had fused sufficiently in the fourth century AD that Theodosius, and over a century later (and more-so) Justinian, were able to create Roman laws which were also Christian laws. Full circle - right?

Well, no. Justinian may be a saint for some (I understand he remains popular in Russia) but out here West, he's considered a tyrant. Because he was. This before we get to Rabbûla or to Shenûte. (Leaving Donatus aside.) Rome has always refused Byzantium's claim to be a "new Rome". We never lost our own Rome.

Also, in the west, and more so among the eastern Syrian "Nestorians": we have Dyotheletism. Religious law does not exist. We have religious canon. That is an old word - Akkadian, I hear - which means "standard". A canon defines what is a Christian and how the Church is to conduct itself. A nation may embrace Christianity and govern according to its ethic. That nation would form its own laws - in accordance. Not in extrapolation.

Future Failed Senatorial Candidate El-Sayed gets one cheer (as an Egyptian, he might even know Shenoute, although I'd be surprised if he knew Rabboula) for reminding us that Christians - at times - have imposed [monastic] canons as laws upon dubiously-willing citizens. Thing is, Catholics don't do this. "Muh Inquisition". No, dude; that was a state, and the Church tried to temper those excesses.

Where is the Dyotheletism in the Egyptian Sunni tradition? - more to the point, where is the notion that law exists outside the clerisy?