No more hydrazine

NASA have apparently seen Europa Report so are taking alternatives to hydrazine seriously.

I admit, I am one of those Deplorable people whose nose wrinkles when he hears the word "green" bandied about. Usually it refers to carbon-dioxide. Which molecule helps keep plants green in the first place. So I wish they'd not use the word. Still: this is a health issue especially if a module fails to break atmo and ends up back down here. Or for lightweight payloads whose first-stages aren't Elon's - like China's whole fleet.

One avenue of approach is to send up a lot of water, or get it from Ceres I guess, and then use solar-panels to break up the water into the hydrogen and oxygen you can use to give thrust for your journey.

Then there's ASCENT. It's better than N₂H₄! ... because it burns hotter. There's your Tsiolkovsky: faster exhaust, more I_sp, as they hint when they talk about how awesome it is for small spacecraft. A bit hard on the ol' engine tho'. On the other hand... we're going to be graduating to NERVA eventually, nu? So we need that engine tech anyway.

Push and shove

Schwabe's eleven-year solar cycle is explained: it's the alignment of Earth / Venus / Jupiter, which recurs in 4043 Earth days, or 11.07 years. That means Sidereal, so sorta-Julian if we're marking time on our calendars. Although as Dr Frank Stefani's and his team's paper notes, Newtonian mechanics get chaotic over long spans, so the great calendar debate might not matter much.

I did like Stefani's title. Bond... Gerard Bond! In that spirit, I've run a title to fit Stefani's own name . . .

I perked up at the word "alignment" and wondered it I might fit 4043 days into an even number of Earth / Venus synods. No such luck. Nicola Scafetta had posted an article 2011-12, doi 10.1016/j.jastp.2012.04.002, which defined that trio's "alignment". The alignments, Scafetta warned, are not perfect. IRG Wilson explained this a bit more the following year (warning, Stefani's link is bad, use mine). Even an imperfect Jovian alignment with a Venus/Earth synod might add torque to such tides as our inner planets raise upon the Sun.

This further implies that not all eleven[-plus]-year sunspot cycles be equal.

The Latin Leo/'Umar

Per Arthur Jeffery's introduction to the famous Leo III / 'Umar II Armenian text, In [JP] Migne's Patrologia Graeca, CVII, cols. 315-324, we find the Latin version of an Epistola Leonis Imperatoris Augusti cognomento Philosophi ad Omarum Saracenorum regem de fidei christianae veritate et mysteriis et de variis Saracenorum haeresibus et blasphemiis, printed among the works of Leo VI (886-912) the Philosopher. Jeffery notes also that the Latin tracks close to the Armenian. The Latin is shorter although - pace Hoyland - still in the form of a rebuttal to argument previously written "to me": scripsisti mihi, dictum est mihi.

Jeffery deemed our Latin text a misfile from Leo III, presumably misfiled well into the tenth century AD by men ignorant of the Byzantine kings. Hoyland, 498-9, follows Jeffery and also 'Âdel Théodore Khoury, Les théologiens Byzantins et l'Islam (Paris: 1969), 201-2. Although, as a misfile, some features of the Latin look more anachronous than the Armenian.

Jeffery's footnotes follow a nineteenth-century discussion about this work. Jeffery notes that the Latin is a pro-Toledan text which filioque formula Leo VI, good Byzantine as he was, refused. The whole filioque controversy had grown out of the Monotheletic drama; that debate calmed down with the Romans' rehabilitation of Maximus Confessor, then re-arose under Constantine V once that strong emperor wrested peace from the 'Abbasids and started looking west again.

Charlemagne and the Aquileians seem to have been the most gung-ho on filioque. Rome herself refused a side until AD 1014 which, notoriously, set Rome on that track to break from Constantinople.

Another contemporary controversy was that over icons. The Armenian version mentions - on the Arabs' side - some words apropos of the Cross and images, Jeffery 321-2. The Armenian text accordingly starts by defending the Cross, moving on to the images. As I read what Jeffery brings as parallel, in the Latin, here also is a defence of the Cross. But for images I do not find in the Latin even a mention.

Leo III was no iconodoule himself, for instance dismantling the Pantokrator (seen in Justinian II's coin) off the City gates. But he also wasn't an iconoclast like Constantine V. It seems in character - as Hoyland implies - that Leo preserves a vestige of an earlier version. Come the Latin version, icons no longer pose a controversy between Christian and Muslim. The abbreviation - I think - gave this author his opening to skip all that talk entirely. Much as the Romans didn't want to talk filioque.

I would, then, propose a western author, aligned with the Latins although assuredly a Greek speaker, running a parallel Latin defence of the faith. He was doctrinally Toledan so probably not writing in Rome. This westerner wasn't much for icons so agreed with the Byzantines on that much. To this day, we Catholics prefer stained-glass and statuary; they can be lavishly done, as we may observe in the Sistine Chapel, but they are an afterthought in our venerations.

I'd put our man in northwestern Italy rather than the Adriatic. The Catalan / Marseilles littoral looks promising.

Disortion

Some segments of the mainline conservative press are filing in behind the alt-right to support Sean McMeekin: Powerline, National Review. These are, perhaps, emboldened by the Guardian. For fear of dis-serving my readership, of which faithful souls Google will acknowledge one person in Portugal and maybe some Algerians; I give you a contrary opinion.

I only have the one, tonight: Geoffrey Roberts at The Irish Times. I'd give you David Aaronovich at the Times of London too but they're paywalled (although I can probably beg a reader to send that over). Anyway those fine Gaels accuse their fellow Celt McMeekin of disorting (sic) the history.

Do forgive my descent into gotcha-poasting. Roberts had attempted his own, by quoting further from a Stalin quote which McMeekin quoted in part. The Irish Times is, I'd argue, insulting its own readership: by assuming that said readership trusts the word of the Vozhd.

Roberts thinks that relentless anti-communism has led McMeekin into his flaws. I tend here, perhaps ironically, with Vox Day that, yes, "communism" is a bugaboo to the Right as is "capitalism" to the Left - or "fascism", or "racism", or "whiteness" - an idle bandying about of names, designed to cast out one's opponents to the outer darkness.

To that end I am unsure, despite that "SEE? SEE!?!" comment about the Stalin quote, that Roberts has even identified flaws, beyond aligning against Koba The Dread more than Roberts should like. Take this paragraph:

According to McMeekin, it was Stalin who goaded the Japanese to invade Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. He says the Soviet campaign for collective security against fascist aggression was a sham, as was Moscow’s support for Republican Spain during its civil war. Then, in 1939, Stalin engineered an Anglo-French-German war over Poland. Allied to Hitler, Stalin overplayed his hand by refusing to deepen his pact with the Nazi dictator. That disastrous miscalculation almost led to the Soviet Union’s defeat in 1941, says McMeekin, but Stalin’s bacon was saved by western military aid, the crucial source of all subsequent Soviet victories over Hitler’s armies.

Where is Roberts' rebuttal? For that matter, where is Roberts even quoting McMeekin? Roberts in his paraphrases is even less fair to McMeekin than McMeekin was to Stalin - this man is in John of Damascus territory. That is not a compliment. (There's content about 1943 in Roberts' review as well although I'll admit, I haven't got this far into McMeekin's book, so I must reserve judgement on that. 1943 wouldn't matter to my main concern anyway, which is the Icebreaker hypothesis, all about the lead-in to 1941.)

Even Roberts has to agree that ol' Dzhugashvili murdered Poles and deported suspicious elements as in, all the Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian Germans. But... eggs, omelettes; Uncle Joe saved us from Hitler. Mind you, Hitler thought he was saving us from Uncle Joe. GROG TRIBE ROOL, GRUG TRIBE DRULE

At least Roberts does not libel this professor at Bard College of being a "pseudo-historian" as Max Parry has done. Although that might just be because McMeekin was holding back. And/or because Roberts' publisher doesn't want to get sued.

I see in Roberts' review an implicit threat. Nice career you have there, Sean.

Health report

The usual suspects are still slamming "DAH VAXX!" so, here we go again.

On Wednesday, I wondered if I was getting an ear infection. Yesterday the crud settled into an upper throat / sinus thing, so - at least it wasn't strep. Today there's been some nasal congestion.

Throat lozenges did the trick yesterday. Didn't even need zinc, which is good because I ran out of cold-eeze last year. And there aren't any anomalies with taste or smell. So yeah: allergies. Air quality in this valley has been terrible this week (it's been running into the 90°s F) and, oh yeah, the flowers are in bloom. I did my work up in the Estes region, thankfully without disruption.

As for the rest, here is the nugget of truth in the piles of AC/VD ordure (VD is to AC what Driscoll is to Treacher): the immune system is greedy. If your body thinks it's got an infection to handle, it is going to prioritise that over the rest of your body's needs. I can fully accept that the immune system considers muscle-maintenance as "Priority 2". That is why allergies, multiple-sclerosis, and other autoimmune nasties make us weak.

I am still going to the gym, but. Obviously given the heat (and work) I have to get on that early in the morning. And I'm holding steady at the weights I'd been doing Monday / Tuesday. I don't expect to be upgrading my system for another couple days.

As for DAH VAXX - whatever.

Upload #200: laying the table

It's been over a year; and we're at the bicentennial mark. But I haven't forgotten this project!

The first issue here is that Google forced its websites to follow a different format. I'll get around to finetuning all that as the weeks go by and I figure out, say, how to get HTML working again.

I spent much of last year, off and on, figuring out sura 45: only 37 verses, or maybe 38 or 39. Either way you slice it, or add a verse to it if you're Ibn Mas'ud, it's not much to go on, for linking with other suwar. Some while ago I figured out that it used sura 25 and was parallel to sura 27. (And to 85.) So what I've done, at last, is to strip out MUCH unnecessary content and to figure out where it sits with respect to 27 and 85. I now think it precedes both. That's an edit to "Days of Allah" and to "Hell's Ditch", also "What Waits Behind These Roads" for sura 34.

I've been tweaking "The Rebel’s Wind" whilst we're at it. And "God’s Path Leads through the Caliph". Just because those were more recent and needed the love.

And because centennial, I felt I needed a new project. You've seen I've been interested in John of Damascus' hits against the Quran. Honestly, I wasn't trying to misdirect you. But I couldn't prove to myself, let alone to you, that John was using any version of sura 4 other than the version of the mufassirûn. John's take(s) on the fifth sura - I think - showed more promise. So: "Jesus’ Arraignment". Not part of the Table sura, at least not at first.

Madrassa.

The axion laundry

Late last night, maybe even midnight (I'd hit the hay right after finishing Wilczek's book about nine PM), the Kavli IPMU put out a press release through its Japanese domain. They are on the hunt for "axions". I might as well transmit Wilczek's take on these.

Wilczek has gone long on axions, mediating his "axial field". In fact, he gave to these elusive particles their name - inspired by a detergent, no less. This is the "Higgs boson" of dark matter, if you like; a wonder-particle explaining a lot of stuff at once.

Also like Higgs, axial researchers constrain the axion's mass ever-higher until, as with Higgs in 2012, they (hope to) find it so proving the field. Unlike Higgs, the axion cannot be detected in any mortals' lab. But the primordial axial-field fallout can be mapped: beyond that Cosmic Microwave Background which, against Big Bang research prior to 400000 years, presents the foreground. Kavli IPMU figure that experiments looking for dark matter can be reconfigured to map the axial background. If that earlier field exists/-ed.

As noted here, axial research got Betelgeuse wrong and couldn't find any axions thence; and I haven't heard any followup from those seven quasi-magnetars. I've been an axion skeptic for about half a year now. And Wilczek is a climatebro so a thorough heart<3soience normie. I distrust normies.

But as the IPMU point out, even if there is no field and its axions don't exist, any map of whatever is behind the CMB is still of value.