A cheaper catalyst

If you don't mind your electric-car, or really any car, looted for its platinum, by all means read elsewhere. For those of us trying to get by here is a catalyst without need of precious metal.

The article focuses on hydrogen but I am fairly sure this catalyst should work elsewhere we have a stubborn fuel and a weak oxidiser. Like ammonia-borane on the former side. I mean, when going into space we'd rather not schlep a catalyst at all, but: consider cleaner fuels that simply move the car around. Even an aeroplane.

The Fatimists pray at the Russias again

This blog refuses the Fátima visions as a contravention of the Assumption of Mary, therefore outside the Church. Among its own assumptions, if you will, is the notion that the Church can "consecrate" a nonCatholic nation that didn't ask for it in advance. That is nothing more or less than placing an enemy under the herem. This is an act fit for the Fourth Crusade, anathema to Christians.

So as I read this foul act of arrogance, I (literally) fear for the souls of the Church. The sheer presumption is all the more jarring in that it starts with an admission of guilt; making the reader wonder, what grounds have we for placing herem upon others. I think, though, we might salvage some reconciliation, if we stick with the Confession. If the bishops diagnose the symptoms, by name, they might be able to prescribe a remedy.

So let us read what the bishops have offered:

Yet we have strayed from that path of peace. We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars. We have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations. We have betrayed peoples’ dreams of peace and the hopes of the young. We grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their interests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns.

We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons. We stopped being our neighbor’s keepers and stewards of our common home. We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war, and by our sins we have broken the heart of our heavenly Father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters. We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves. Now with shame we cry out: Forgive us, Lord!

As noted, Russia is the outsider from a Latin (and much Orthodox) perspective. "We" cannot apply to a "them". That Mary is "queen of the rosary" further cements this in the Latin tradition, given the Greeks' employment of a different rosary entirely. Thus at stake is our conduct: greed and inattention. And aggression: expanding NATO, even unto Catholic Poland, without also bringing Russia into NATO, was an aggression.

Did the bishops ever speak out against insulting and exploiting post-Cold-War Russia? Did they show anything other than condescension to these "wayward brothers of our Faith"? I don't recall it. And the bishops don't admit it. So they have not offered a good Confession.

The "act of consecration" starts with a hollow confession of vague guilt and goes on to insult the Russians some more. It is worthless and the best we may all pray for is that our Lady does not hear it.

A metropolis without a metropolitan

I am not the only reader of Ishoʿyahb's 52 pre-metropolitan epistles who has noticed none of them (0) ever refers to his boss. He'll write to Cyriacos of Nisibin and to Gabriel of Bet-Garmay. He'll write to the lead churchmen of Arbela; he'll go over everyone's head to Catholicos Ishoʿyahb II. But he'll never talk to the metropolitan of Hidyab - where he, himself, will rule.

We know that Arbela did have metropole status and that it ran Hidyab, before these letters as well as after. Jean Maurice Fiey's diptychs (Assyrie chrétienne, 56) recall one Paul whom Thomas of Marga sends to Boran's embassy. Paul, er, doesn't seem to come back.

Enter Fiey, again. Fiey, whose preferred language was French, wasn't biased to E Wallis Budge's English and had further access to Syriac and Arabic. This led Fiey to Abboula's edition and translation of Thomas of Marga. Fiey also went back to the Syriac for Ishoʿyahb's letters, especially #40.

Per Fiey, Arbela had Makkīka (pronounced "Makkīḫa") for its archbishop - an Unausprechlicher Name for Ishoʿyahb. Fiey further sees Makkīka in #25's worm at "the head of the community" and in the Judas who came to Nineveh, and in the deceiver of M#23.

I'd love to believe this. But the one spot of evidence - the one footnote - is negative. Makkīka is not in the diptychs: note the bracketing in Assyrie chrétienne. So... where is he? Siʿrt?

Chinese archaeologism fails at Tibet

Kevin McSpadden based in South China delivers the CCP line on that country's archaeology. I call shenanigans that McSpadden has done any actual journalism.

McSpadden doesn't always deliver so much as a competent translation. What in blue blazes does this mean:

Scans performed on an ancient Tibetan seal last year revealed that it probably belonged to the son of a princess in the Tubo Kingdom (618-842), which was a consolidation of Tibetan tribes during the Tang dynasty (618-907). / The carving on the seal says “seal of nephew Azha King”, which helped archaeologists determine that the tomb was connected to the king of Tuyuhun, a Tibetan tribe that ruled what is now modern-day Qinghai province in northwest China.

The Tubo is a kingdom... or a consolidation of tribes... one of which is called Tuyuhun... which has a king. And seal of nephew Azha King is some authentic gibberish. Best I can make from this wordsalad, Tubo was like Pourshariati's take on the Sasanian Eranshahr: a federation of dynasts. The core is Tibetan. We know from Valerie Hansen that the Tibetans wrestled the Tang over the Tanggut of Gansu; and all involved struggled with the diversity of the East Turks beyond. Pity we can't know it from McSpadden.

As for the Yangshao as one of the first Chinese societies: this sounded sus to me. This society dates 5000-3000 BC and is uphill from the Han watershed; it's dangerously close to Gansu. Wikipedia holds Laurent Sagart et al. 2019 as the last word, that Yangshao could equally be counted one of the first Tibetan societies.

I know that in China today people with names like "McSpadden" cannot antagonise their minders needlessly, but a little more effort would have been nice.

Ishoʿyahb was already bishop in AD 628

A greater problem in Fiey, he shares with others, that he trusts Thomas de Marga... like a dupe.

Interestingly Fiey knows plenty cases where Thomas, and sometimes his English translator Budge, are wrong, and tells us. If Fiey thinks Ishoʿyahb was writing before Boran's embassy to Aleppo, then we should have letters which mention that embassy - even (or especially) after the fact, to boast about it. We have no such letters and Siʿrt leaves him out. The simplest solution is that Ishoʿyahb wasn't there. Here is another spot where Thomas and/or Budge has/have erred.

Among Ishoʿyahb's pre-Boran letters, Fiey thinks some were penned from Mount "ʿAwé" (ʿAbe) before he became a bishop. Fiey's hypothesis is important to Fiey's monograph which splits these letters into two sequential chapters. I hasten to interject my personal sympathy toward this hypothesis. If Ishoʿyahb wasn't a bishop under Boran, then either it didn't occur to anybody to invite him to the embassy or else he tagged along without getting his name on the documents noted by Guidi's Khuzestan or (really) Thomas (sadly Siʿrt missed an opportunity here). But... that's my argument, half-built upon my case against Thomas. Fiey, trusting Thomas, needs a stronger argument. I do not read where Fiey provides one.

Elsewhere "Diptyques nestoriens du XIVe siecle", Analecta Bollandiana 81 (1963), 371-413; 385f. This teases Assyrie chrétienne. But... diptychs do not come with dates.

Despite my sympathy I must warn the hypothesis is under constraint. The letter #8 commemorating Yazdîn went to an abbot. Yazdîn died under Khusro II when, up to planting-season AG 939, there was yet no pope. Still. This does not mean that a mid-level monk at monastery A could just fire off a pep talk to monastery B. Bet-Garmai and Nisibin each had a Metropolitan Bishop; if we trust Thomas then so did Arbela. At least the former two will go to Aleppo together. Epistle #8 makes most sense if Ishoʿyahb is someone who matters... like a bishop.

BACKDATE 3/26

JM Fiey on "Išōʿyaw"

As we're filling the gaps over this week, I'll direct those interested in Ishoʿyahb III to Jean Maurice Fiey's multi-chapter "Išōʿyaw le Grand" spread over Orientalia Christiana Periodica 35-6 (1969-70). The Introduction and first four chapters span OCP 35, 305f; the sequel commences the next volume.

Overall Fiey's monograph as far as I've read (26 March), which is as far as the fourth chapter, is good. It's the best of the (few) dedicated monographs we have. Although I'll be picking nits as I look closer.

Orthography is always a p.i.t.a. with Semitic languages as related in Latin script. I like to think we're good on the classical Arabic, at least these days; Qâric is getting there also, thanks to al Jallad and van-Putten. Syriac remains a problem; not least because the Nestorians and West-Syrians never agreed upon a standard, themselves. I dislike seeing "Išōʿya(h)b" or "mdi(n)ta" even where the rasm marks these consonants as unpronounced. Fer cryin' out loud these MSS often come to us in nineteenth-century copies. And then we look around and see he spells a similar figure, "Ichōʿdnah". So "Išōʿyaw" here is just - pretentious. Trust us the readers to figure out begadkepat on our own. (I'll admit mine own orthography isn't consistent on this here blog but... blog.)

BACKDATE 3/26

QUIBBLES 4/29/23: I think Ishoʿyahb was already bishop AD 638. I date some of the "Metro" letters, which dealt with Marammeh going out to Elam, to the last days of Ishoʿyahb's tenure as a more-humble provincial bishop not yet in Arbela. And, after Ishoʿyahb does get to Arbela, I think Marammeh will rise to become Catholicos in what we call AD 645 not 646; I place less weight upon M#26's context than does Fiey.

HD 166620's little ice age

I've been sick as a dog the last few days so not up to posting, but - this evening being a bit better - I would raise HD 166620 to general attention. Anna C. Baum, Jason T. Wright, Jacob K. Luhn, and Howard (?.) Isaacson pored over 50 years worth of 59 main-seq dwarf stars for sunspots. Here are their results.

Table 2 runs K (goldilocks) and G (i.e. our swiftly-warming Sun), with a few Fs; hence, sun like. Also if we can see them clearly enough to make out sunspots then they're pretty close, given the term is astronomy-relative. If these stars have habitable-zone planets (I assume many do) those planets - where are Earthsize - might be Earthlike.

I should have noted that Baum at least is from Pennsylvania State. This is the employer of Dr Michael Mann and (before being reassigned) of Jerry Sandusky. Mann does climate here on Earth - involving himself in the Hockey Stick Graph, which ignored the Maunder Minimum. Mann does not like when you point out his academic shenanigans and has been known to hire lawyers.

All that runup, to note that, like Penn State's athletic department, Penn State's academic department might be (more slowly) redeeming itself, by noting that the Maunder Minimum is actually worthy of note, if a little further from home.