Impossible Usually is Not

Oil at $100 a barrel is “impossible” the headlines said. But I remember Tom Peters in the early 1990s warning us that we would never again see oil at $35 a barrel. And today’s dollars are even smaller than they were in 1992. In terms of 1992 purchasing power, we are living with oil at about $15 a barrel right now.

 “If true, that could also eliminate the threat of $3 a gallon gas. In an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey, an oil industry newsletter, Ali al-Naimi responded "we may not" when asked if oil markets would ever lift prices to $100 a barrel again.”  (The Middle East Economic Survey website requires a login. The news was widely reported on CNN, Reuters, CNBC, etc.)

“Impossible” is an absolute claim. Physical absolutes are primaries. As Ayn Rand pointed out in Galt’s Speech in Atlas Shrugged whether you have your cake or eat it – or whether your neighbor eats it – is an absolute. Either-or, the excluded middle of logic, is an absolute. Whether the price of crude oil can never again be below $35 or above $100 is not an absolute. 

Calculators at Walmart cost
a fifth or a tenth of their prices
in 1976 when the dollar was
three times as large as ours.

It is pretty easy and common to create a list of statements of impossible outcomes that are now integral to our lives. No steamship could carry enough coal to cross the Atlantic. Heavier-than-air transport was a pipe dream. The world only needs five computers.

Most events and circumstances that are open to human action are objective. “Objective” means rational-empirical: at the same time both logically consistent and evidentiary to the senses. 

A better explanation, a better theory, is better logic. Cartesian geometry is an example. It does not contradict Euclidean geometry, but subsumes it under a wider set of truths. Epigenetics improved upon Darwinian evolution. Statistical mechanics completely replaced phlogiston as an explanation of “heat.” 

New discoveries  – the atom, the chromosome, distant planets, accelerating galaxies – lead to new inventions: stainless steel, Kevlar, rayon. Those are the new facts that require and validate new theories.

I forget where I read it, but it has been pointed out that physicists have no Journal of Phlogiston, but philosophers still have peer-reviewed periodicals for Aristotleanism, Platonism, and other archaic collections. Another expression is, "The news is always the same. It just happens to different people." Researching 19th century America from newspapers in order to write about numismatics, I found many stories that could be reprinted (almost) verbatim today. 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

Harriman’s Logical Leap 

Greg Browne’s Necessary Factual Truths 

Browne on Kuhn 

Numismatics: the Standard of Proof in Economics

Police in a Global Culture

English is the lingua franca of Earth. Just about anywhere you go, important information will be in English, certainly in cities where visitors are common.  It is a fact of history and sociology that cities attract people. Urbanism is a distinct culture. If you have taken a subway in Boston, you can navigate the Metro in Budapest. So, it is not surprising that the police in Athens are labeled in English. Even if you could read out "Astunomia" you would not want to mistake that for "Astronomia." Of course, few astronomers assemble in ranks with shields and batons. But why do the police in Teheran use English? 

From the Telegraph (UK)
ASTUNOMIA literally means "city management"
but is the modern Greek word for POLICE.

Bulgarian police at subway entrance in Sofia

Korean Police

Teheran
(but it could be anywhere)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Laissez Faire Criminology
Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science
Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security
Employee Theft

The Future Starts Slowly

Not only was Star Wars: The Force Continues a disappointment, I spent two weeks slogging through The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling.

Previous works by Bruce Sterling shifted my paradigms. I read Islands in the Net in the early nineties while I was working for Kawasaki Robotics, so I really identified with the global corporate solidarity. The heroine was unique to the story. A lot happened to her, and she persevered through it all. Sterling created a colorful, complex mosaic of life in the early 21^st century. I looked forward to it, and I enjoy living it now. He got most of it pretty right. Africa is still a problem, but showing hope. For the vagrant nationalist submarine, we have ISIS.

Schizmatrix painted a different solar system future. With Earth reduced by nuclear war, the few thousands who were off-planet, in space, on the Moon, continue as best they can. They do well. The characters were memorable individuals. I took away a couple of philosophical lessons about human action in society.

Revolution is for the young. But their glorious new dawn actually blinds them to the emerging reality that is better than they expected.  The girl who sacrificed herself in an act of political desperation was forgotten. And she missed out on everything that everyone else enjoyed. Aristotle said that tradition is stronger than law and it seemed sensible to me that a single spaceship with a small crew could claim the sovereignty belonging to a nation.  I fell in love with Intersolar Kabuki. Corporations are individuals. Creating them is easy; and they live without their founders, as children do their parents.

Difference Engine, Sterling’s collaboration with William Gibson, created a believable alternate past that has become steampunk in the culture of science fiction fandom

Just past half way through The Zenith Angle, I had to go back and start over. I lost track of the action because there was none. The main characters were not memorable. Sterling wrote the story in the heat of the 9/11 attacks. The world of 2004 looks much different now. I was amused at his reference to “Web logs” as we called them briefly. Like the cyberpunk world of today viewed from 1985, nothing ages as poorly as futurism.

I never figured out who the Dot Commie was. I never understood the purpose of Jeb. Putting Tony and the hero, Dr. Derek Vandeveer, inside an experimental, remote controlled jet was folly: no one would ever do that. Tony’s treason took me completely by surprise. Van’s assault on Tony’s sales pitch inside the observatory was also ludicrous. It is one thing to hide under a table. It is another to move around, and not be seen by a dozen people, half of whom are supposed to be intelligence agents for India and China. Discovering that Nobel laureate James Cobb was a fiction was a double disappointment. He would have been really cool in real life. Worse, was the invention in the first place: you can no more make up a Nobel laureate than you can invent a different capital city for Ohio.

Halloween 2015.
"You can't fool me,
Your Highness.
You are a rebel and a traitor
to the Empire."

Star Wars was our first date, October 31, 1977. It was part of the culture of our home as a family. It was not the only aspect. We had other interests, influences, and expressions. But it was there. And we followed the story in the theaters. Our daughter had the Marvel comics. ("I don't know who you are, or where you came from, but from now on, you will do exactly as I say!") Proofreading for Bantam-Doubleday, Laurel worked on a book about the mythology of Star Wars, Joseph Campbell, and all that.  So, we went to see The Force Continues for our wedding anniversary. “What did you think?” she asked. “I am pretty sure that I saw this already,” I replied. She agreed.

Talking about it at work with another fan, the story seemed to deviate from the accepted fanfic/profic arc. Han and Leia have twins, a boy and a girl. Skywalker has a child, a daughter as I recall. So, who is Rey? The force is strong within her. The Lucasfilm trailer even hints at the family connection. How did she get left behind by either her Princess General mother or else by her Last of the Jedi father? We can only hope that another movie will answer that, but I will not call that a new hope – and I will not be in the theater to see it.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Firefly: Fact and Value Aboard Serenity

Teaching Science with Science Fiction

Monsters from the Id

Claude M. Watson 

Welcome to the Future

New Year’s Day is completely arbitrary – and truly necessary and important. Various days have been the beginning of a new year. The vernal and autumnal equinoxes became May Day and Hallowe’en celebrations: planting or harvest, take your pick. The Romans formerly marked the vernal equinox, but adopted the Winter Solstice from the Egyptians. Julius Caesar made January 1 the start of the New Year. The important fact is that we denote a time to evaluate and re-evaluate, to leave the losses behind and invest in the profitable returns.

It is difficult to imagine the future. The Jetsons or the Gernsback Continuum could only be projections of the known present. Space travel had been with us since Jules Verne. No one in my childhood had predicted the consequences of understanding DNA. Now we have CRISPR therapies on the horizon. CRISPR: Clustered Regularly-Interspaced  Short Palindromic Repeats are known from prokaryotic cells - the life forms that existed before the invention of the nucleus. And who knew that cancer could be contagious? (See The Scientist here.) 

 

Anousha Ansari and I, May 2011

 We still have no Lunar Colony.  However, introducing speakers at a BSides computer security conference here in Austin last year, I met a lawyer who has paid for her seat on a Virgin Galactic flight.

My conservative comrades have a trope they enjoy: the good old days. They were my good old days, too. We rode our bikes till dark. We made up our own games. We accepted each other on our own terms, bullies and sissies alike. No one was diagnosed AHDH. And all that…  But they were the bad old days, too. Kids disappeared off the streets and playgrounds. Kids died of diseases.  We expected a nuclear war any day, every day.

Take one measure: automobile deaths. Today as then, give or take, about 40,000 people a year die in car crashes in America. But the population was under 200 million then, and is over 300 million now. Cars are safer, ain’t no doubt.  And we drive better, having grown up in cars in the first place. We are better adapted both as consumers and producers.

Sure, in 1965, we had computers, and we had telephones, and we had cameras – but they were not the same device… and none of them listened to you sleep to tell you when you had enjoyed the best REM cycle.

Sarah Smith and I,
January 2010.

Take another measure: I have all of my teeth – well, most of them. I gave up a molar a couple of years ago. The students at the University of Michigan Dental School assured me that they would “go to heroic lengths” (their words) to save the tooth.  “Then what? I will be 85 and back in the chair with a problem. If it will not leave me with a sagging cheek, just take it out.”  But when I was a kid no one my age now had all their own teeth. None of them could do the push-ups or sit-ups or clear the mile that I did last year to earn a fitness ribbon. (My brother has a new Dacron aorta and expects to return to running marathons -- but he always outshone me...)

Utopia has a cloudy lining.  My wife has a brand new Honda Accord. When you put on the right-hand turn signal, it speaks back the last text message from your phone. Fortunately, the Honda Accord is one of the least susceptible to outside hacking.  It could be worse. 

Speaking of “susceptible” it was in the Asimov Foundation Trilogy that the homework computer corrected the kid’s spelling. We cut that short by 23,000 years…

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Space is the Place: Come to the High Frontier

Disruptive Diagnostics and the Business of Science

John Kemeny Knew: We Shall Have Computed

The Cure for a Failing Empire

The Innkeeper’s Dilemma

Who should be evicted to provide a room for the lady expecting a baby? And what if someone needier came along? Ultimately, would Mary have given up the stable? The story of the Manger is presented without discussion. When need is the standard of judgment, the problems are not easily resolved. 

Apparently, the innkeeper gave them the use of the stable, free of charge. Logically followed from that premise, the innkeeper would become a charity, himself begging for money to supply others with room and board from the goodness of his heart, and that of the donors. In the Literal Word, the Holy Family was just passing through. After the visit from the shepherds, a few days later, the Wise Men found Mary in a house. Eventually, everyone fled Herod's soldiers. But the next needy person might not be a traveler. Then, the innkeeper could have a permanent guest. In the final analysis, his inn would be filled, not with the families of itinerate carpenters, but with clans of the unemployable.

On the other hand, our commercial culture rests on several thousand years of norms, folkways, and customs that prevent and remediate such conflicts. The power of the purse and the sanctity of contract could have informed a better solution. 

From The Daily Kos 22 Dec 2015

Joseph and Mary approached the inn. Joseph knocked. The innkeeper answered. “We need a room for the night.” 

“We are full,” the innkeeper said.

“But my wife is having a baby. We need a place.”

The innkeeper was sympathetic, but unmoved. “All I have is the stable. It will have to do.”

Having a better grasp of the problem, Mary spoke up. “Why not remove someone who is not in need and give us their room? Let them sleep in the stable?”

“Well, first of all, I do not want a woman in labor in the middle of the inn. It will disturb everyone.”

Mary countered, “It is going to be a miracle birth: no muss, no fuss; easy-peasy.”

“What?”

“It begins with the fact that I am a virgin, in fact, the Virgin.”

“All right, look,” said the weary innkeeper whose livelihood depended on making everyone (else) happy.  “Whatever you say… I am not going to stand here and argue. Let me make some arrangements. And speaking of arrangements, what did you bring for money? The stable you can have for eight prutot, as two mites make half a farthing. For a room, I need something close to the temple tax, a denarius, a drachmon, half a shekel.”

Mary whispered sweetly into Joseph’s ear, “I told you to call ahead and make reservations.”

Joseph said, “The drachmon, denarius, and half shekel are not exactly equal.” 

“I am not a money changer,” sighed the innkeeper. “Find them in the temple. Everything spends in this town, especially at tax season.”

And so it was done – with some difficulty…

The innkeeper knocked and entered, waking the rug merchant. “I am sorry,” he said, “but I am giving your room to a woman having a baby.”

“Where am I going to sleep?”

“The stable is available.”

“But I paid for a room.”

“I will refund half of your money. After all, you have been here half a day.”

“Oh, no,” said the rug merchant. “The stable is a downgrade. What have you got worth 24 Roman sestertii?  You know, if I took this to the judges, you might catch a break: those old Solomons love a challenge. But if I complain to the Roman curator, you might find yourself in an uncomfortable outcome. Plus, where am I to store my rugs? They will not be improved by the stable.”

Not seeing sleep in his future, the innkeeper put the rugs in his own room – at no charge and no discount, even up.

 

From The Daily Kos 22 Dec 2015

The Three Wise Men followed the star. They found the inn.  The inn was crowded. 

“Whoa! Where are you guys going?”

“We are seeking the King of the Jews for we have seen His star in the east.”

“Of course you did…” replied the weary innkeeper. “And that could not possibly have been Herod, the actual king in Jerusalem?”

“The star is over your place,” said Melchior.

“Well, I assure you, we have no kings here. Have a table. I will bring a nice brisket, some bread, olive oil, wine. What did you bring for money? Nulla mensa sine impensa.”

Caspar opened his purse and took out a large silver coin. The innkeeper inspected it. “You Parthians! The image of Mithradates is not popular with the Romans. I don’t want any trouble. Got anything else?”

Balthazar shook out a handful of civic bronzes from Antioch. The wise men enjoyed their brisket. The innkeeper racked his brain for a guest likely to be a king in disguise.

A knock at the door. The innkeeper opened up. There stood an old couple, bent and gray. The woman leaned heavily on the man’s arm. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Love Actually Quote-Along

Foundations of Human Sociality

Success of the WEIRD People

Christopher Hitchens's god is not Great 

Corporations and Capitalism

Many libertarians are opposed to corporations, calling them creations of the state.  They certainly are creations of law. Corporations are an improvement over traditional modes such as Shariah law; and they have ancient roots of their own in Roman law. 

Before corporations as we understand them today were invented, unrelated people could only come together for business as partnerships. By law, if one partner died, the partnership was dissolved. No one can speak for a dead person. Limiting businesses to partnerships would make modern enterprise impossible. 

The family business is a different matter. Under traditional law, left over from agrarian times, the family business is a kind of farm, owned by the pater familias, and ownership passed by inheritance. In order to avoid the limitations of partnership, every co-owner would have to be adopted into the family. In that case, the head of the family decides your shares and your profits. That is what privilege is, literally, private law. The pater familias can do whatever on the farm. In Roman times, he could sell family members into slavery.

However, Roman law also recognized the collective entity: the herd. The herd exists independent of any one animal. If you buy or sell the herd, some die and others are born along the way. It is the same herd. Roman emperors granted charters to groups of individuals: burial societies and fire fighters were among the first. Some people claim that the Benedictine Order, chartered in 579, is the oldest continuing corporation. Wikipedia has other ideas here.  But note that many of those are family businesses. 

The modern corporation was the steam engine of commerce. It allowed the creation and management of capital on the scale demanded by the industrial revolution, and wholly beyond the needs of simpler, land-based societies. Shariah Law recognizes partnerships, not corporations. Also, it forbids the payment of interest. Anyone who lends money becomes a partner and shares in the profits. It worked well enough for simpler times and places. However, even Shariah recognizes something called a waqf. A waqf is like a foundation. It was created first over wells: everyone needs it; no one can own it; it must be managed for the common good. Sometime later - I know only about Cairo 1600 - the waqf was used to create family

Trustees of Dartmouth College
v. Woodward,
17 U.S. 518 (1819) was
the landmark case
in U.S. law for
corporations.

foundations that let merchants aggregate their wealth without it being redivided by inheritances. 

In the West, universities were chartered as corporations to allow them to survive their founders. They also could make their own laws for their own communities: Bologna, Oxford, Cambridge, Padua, Heidelberg, ... When Cambridge discovered its original charter to be unhelpful, they went to Parliament for one -- and got a seat in Parliament as a result. Even Sir Isaac Newton served a term.

As for the modern corporation, you could not own most of your comforts without them. To condemn the entirety because of the actions of a few individuals is collectivism.

In the future, the corporation may be the legal structure by which a software earns its legal rights. We already have electronic filing. There is no way to know who the original actor is. She might be a program.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Capitalist Culture
Venture Capital
Money as Press and Speech
Numismatics: The Standard of Proof in Economics

The First Newtonmas

We commonly call the Nativity scene “the first Christmas” though it was not. The first Christ Mass could not have been celebrated before the Church existed. So, too, did the first Newtonmas not come until 248 years after his birth.

It seems that three students at Tokyo University started Newtonmas in their dormitory sometime before 1890.  As the undergraduates developed into graduates and assistants, their professors were drawn into the celebration, and a more suitable assembly hall was found in the University Observatory.  By 1890, they called themselves the Newtonkai  (Newton Association; 皆 = kai = “all”) and moved to the Physical Laboratory. There, they played games symbolic of great mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers: Newton’s apple, Franklin’s kite, a naked doll for Archimedes … 

That story comes from “A New Sect of Hero-Worshippers” published in  Nature, Vol. 46, No. 1193, p. 459, 8 September 1892. It available from the publisher for $18 if you are not a member, or it can be found online at Google Books.

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;

God said, 'Let Newton be' and all was light."

Alexander Pope

Isaac Newton's annotated copy of the Principia Mathematica (NQ.16.200)

Newton's own copy of the the first edition of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) with corrections in his own hand for the second edition, has been digitised and can be found following the link below. This is one of the first of the Wren's treasures which will be made available digitally over the next few months.  

Newton's annotated Principia

"Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25th December 1642, and died on 20th March 1726".  -- http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/sir-isaac-newton

• "Cambridge University Library holds the largest and most important collection of the scientific works of Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton was closely associated with Cambridge. He came to the University as a student in 1661, graduating in 1665, and from 1669 to 1701 he held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics. Under the regulations for this Chair, Newton was required to deposit copies of his lectures in the University Library. These, and some correspondence relating to the University, were assigned the classmarks Dd.4.18, Dd.9.46, Dd.9.67, Dd.9.68, and Mm.6.50.  […]
• A number of videos explaining aspects of Newton's work and manuscripts are available from the NewtonProject's YouTube site, a selection of which are presented alongside our manuscripts."  -- http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/newton 

"The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences is an international research institute running a series of visitor programmes across the spectrum of the mathematical sciences. Established in 1992, the 350th anniversary of Newton's birth, INI has no direct historical links with Newton, but was named after him because of his great achievements in the fields of mathematics, optics, physics and astronomy. INI continues in this tradition of crossing the boundaries between scientific disciplines" -- http://www.newton.ac.uk/

Links to resources at http://www.newton.ac.uk/about/isaac-newton

“The Isaac Newton Trust was established in 1988 by Trinity College. The objects of the Trust are to promote learning, research and education in the University of Cambridge. The Trust makes grants for research purposes within Cambridge University, it founded and contributes financially to the undergraduate Bursary Scheme, and it offers a number of other funding opportunities for the University and its constituent Colleges.” 

http://www.newtontrust.cam.ac.uk/

A Bibliography of Sources

Berlinski, David. Newton's Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World. New York: Free Press, Simon and Schuster, 2000.

Craig, Sir John. Newton at the Mint. Cambridge: University Press, 1946.

Craig, Sir John. "Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters."  Notes and Records of the Royal Society (18), London: 1963. 

Craig, Sir John. “Isaac Newton - Crime Investigator,” Nature 182, (19 July 1958), pages 149-152.

Keynes, Milo. “The Personality of Isaac Newton,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society (49), London: The Royal Society, 1995.

Levenson, Thomas. Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist (Boston;New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 336 pp. $25

Marotta, Michael. “Merry Newtonmas,” Newsgroups: rec.collecting.coins, Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2000 11:49:41 GMT

Marotta, Michael. “Sir Isaac Newton: Warden and Master of the Mint,” The Numismatist, Vol. 114, no. 11 (November 2001), p. 1302-1308, 1363 : ill., port.

Newman, E. G. V. "The Gold Metallurgy of Isaac Newton." The Gold Bulletin, Vol 8. No. 3, London: The World Gold Council, 1975.

Westfall, Richard S. Never at Rest: a Biography of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

White, Michael. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer. Reading, Mass.: Helix Books, Perseus Books, 1997.

www.experiencefestival.com/newtonmas

www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/, The Newton Project, Professor Rob Iliffe Director, University of Sussex, East Sussex - BN1 9SH

www.royalmint.com/museum/newton Web site pages of the British Royal Mint.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Newtonmas 2014 

James Gleick: Observable Genius 

Newton versus the Counterfeiter 

The Unit Circle 

Saving the World Through Beer

Save the World Brewing Co. of Marble Falls, Texas, is “America’s first 100% philanthropic production craft brewery.”  They just extended their service to humanity from their tap room to the bottled retail markets.  They create about a dozen different brews. I tasted three at my neighborhood Whole Foods and bought a six pack.

Save the World Brewing Company is the mission of former physicians Quynh and Dave Rathkamp. Their volunteer work overseas distanced them from “the first world problems” of most of the people they saw in their pediatric practices. They found themselves called by God to follow a different path.  (Full story here.)

Their sales representative, Cory, was at Whole Foods. I recommended that he visit the Wheatsville Co-op; and he told me that he had just come from there, and they now have it on the shelf. 

Cory brought Agnes Dei, Lux Mundi, and Humilus Filus.  I purchased the third.  It was a hard choice because all of them were superb. I have never thought much of Texas beers.  (See here and here. ) These were heavenly. They are full-flavored with overtones. The Lux Mundi was light, of course, yet tasteful and pleasing. I chose the warm and toasty Humilus Filius, both for culinary and philosophical reasons. My previous favorite had been Arrogant Bastard, but now I am converted. 

(I wrote this last night. I went to post it this morning, and, of course, it was labeled "Draft.")

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

(These are some of the two dozen articles about locally produced retail foods.)

Sunday at the Co-op 

Hot Dang Vegie Burger Mix 

Salsa Showdown: Jaime’s versus Royitos 

Mayan Mojo 

Drippin' Sauce

Epic Meat Bars

Star of Wonder: Arguments over the Christmas Star

In science, a good problem takes us far beyond the results of a single observation. The Christmas Star has been debated on many levels. The International Planetarium Society website (ww.ips-planetarium.org) lists over 100 citations to the Star of Bethlehem. Some of those articles and letters were part of a multifaceted decades-long argument among at least five astronomers and one editor. Writing in Archaeology Vol. 51, No. 6 (Nov/Dec 1998), Anthony F. Aveni cited 250 “major scholarly articles” about the Star of Bethlehem.

A Wondrous Problem

Timing any proposed astronomical event is the first challenge. The book of Matthew records the birth Jesus as having been during the reign of Herod. The book of Luke says that the birth of Jesus happened when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Biblical accounts have to be reconciled with secular histories by the Romans Lucius Cassius Dio and Josephus Flavius. Those histories record the reign and death of Herod the Great, king of Judea, and a client of Rome, who lived from 74 or 73 BCE to 4 BCE. Josephus also tells of the appointment of Publius Sulpicius Quirinius as legate in Syria, to which Judea was annexed for taxation. That is accepted as 6 CE. Any candidate must fall within those dates.

Moreover, the evidence must belong to a class that is supposedly interesting to astrologers. After all, the Magi traveled to Bethlehem seeking the King of the Jews, “for we have seen His star in the East.” Something is always happening in the sky, but what is significant—and why?

Conjunction Junction

For about 1500 years, the story of the Star of Bethlehem was accepted as historically accurate because it was divine truth. Miracles were not questioned. (The Church did investigate such claims, and even appointed a Devil’s Advocate to argue against them, but the outcome was seldom in question.) With the Renaissance, a new way of looking at the world evolved.

About 50 AD coin of Antioch in Syria shows
Jupiter to west of Aries.
(EPI KOUDRATROU = “of Quadratus"
the name of the Roman legate).
Year is Rho Delta = 104 of Roman rule.
Author’s collection.

The scholarly tradition of explaining the Star of Bethlehem with scientific evidence apparently began with Johannes Kepler. Over the centuries, the Christmas Star has been explained as a comet, a meteor or meteor shower, but the conjunction theory has been the most popular.  The triple conjunction identified by Kepler is not alone.

In 1604, he published The New Star in the Foot of the Serpent (De stella nova in pede serpentarii: et qui sub ejus exortum de novo iniit, trigono igneo…). In that tract, he examined a triple conjunction, as well as a nova, which he identified as the cause of the conjunction. He was not alone in that kind of a belief. Others expected the conjunction to cause a comet. Reviewing the facts in 1614, Kepler said that the Star of Bethlehem was a nova in 4 BCE caused by a triple conjunction in 7 BCE. (See “Common Errors in ‘Star of Bethlehem’ Planetarium Shows,” by John Mosley, The Planetarian, Third Quarter 1981.)

The triple conjunction of 7 BCE occurred in Pisces. Some astrological lore identified that constellation with Judaea. Other traditions give Pisces to the Libyans, among others. However, back in the 1960s, at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, planetarium director Dan Snow, told us of the Pisces connection. So, for me, the Wise Men traveled to Judaea because of a rare conjunction in Pisces.  

“… the Star was Jupiter or a series of conjunctions between Jupiter, Venus, and Regulus in 3 and 2 B.C.  …  On August 1, 3 B.C., Jupiter became visible above the predawn eastern horizon as the ‘morning star.’ Twelve days later, at about 4:00 a.m., a very close conjunction occurred between Jupiter and Venus, the space between them narrowing to only 0.23 degrees. Five days later Mercury emerged from the glare of the sun and came into conjunction with Venus on the morning of September 1, their minimum separation being only 0.36 degrees.

“The fact that Jupiter became stationary among the stars on December 25 (and, by the way, directly midbodied to Virgo the Virgin) may well explain what Matthew meant in his Gospel when he said that the star came to a halt over the village Bethlehem…” (“The Star of Bethlehem Reconsidered: An Historical Approach,” John Mosley, IPS Planetarian Vol. 9 No. 2, Summer, 1980.)

 

About 51 AD coin of Antioch ad Orontem
(eastern side of the metropolis).
Year is Rho Epsilon or 105 of Roman rule.
(“et” is the abbreviation for “etios” = “year”)
Crescent Moon and Jupiter
to the West of Aries.
Author’s collection.

Money Talks

In 1999, Rutgers Press published The Star of Bethlehem: the Legacy of the Magi by Dr. Michael R. Molnar. In addition to his achievements as an astronomer, Molnar is a numismatist. He was attracted to a series of coins from Antioch in the first century of the present era. They show a star, a crescent moon, and a Ram, among other symbols and legends.

Jupiter underwent two occultations (“eclipses”) by the Moon in Aries in 6 BC. Jupiter was the regal “star” that conferred kingships a power that was amplified when Jupiter was in close conjunctions with the Moon. The second occultation on April 17 coincided precisely when Jupiter was “in the east,” a condition mentioned twice in the biblical account about the Star of Bethlehem. In August of that year Jupiter became stationary and then "went before" through Aries where it became stationary again on December 19, 6 BC. This is when the regal planet “stood over.” A secondary royal portent also described in the Bible. In particular, there is confirmation from a Roman astrologer that the conditions of April 17, 6 BC were believed to herald the birth of a divine, immortal, and omnipotent person born under the sign of the Jews, which we now know was Aries the Ram. Furthermore, the coins of Antioch and ancient astrological documents show that there was indeed a Star of Bethlehem as reported in the biblical account of Matthew.”

http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/product/Star-of-Bethlehem,1998.aspx and http://www.eclipse.net/~molnar/

It is important to note that Jesus was not the only king, and his reign was not the only new age. Julius Caesar was assassinated March 15, 44 BCE. In May through July, a comet appeared, a singular event, not Halley’s or any other recurring comet. The people of Rome accepted it as obvious fact that the soul of Julius Caesar had ascended to the heavens. Julius Caesar was the first historical Roman deified by the Senate. His adopted heir, Gaius Octavius, became at once Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, and also Divi Filius.

Moreover, although he was born 23 September and therefore a Libra, Octavian Augustus took Capricorn as his personal symbol. Capricorn is the zodiacal sign of the winter solstice, of course, and therefore the symbol of the new year – ultimately, a new age.

Molnar’s book offers images of the Caesar Comet coin and Augustus’s Capricorn on a coin. The centerpieces, however, are the coins of Antioch (the Roman mint closest to Judaea) and the astronomical interpretation of them. It is important to understand that while some were struck during the accepted lifetime of Jesus, the series is broader than that. What was meant at the detail level to the people of the time must remain at least somewhat conjectural.

Is There a Wise Man in the Planetarium Tonight?

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard several cases involving so-called “creation science.” Those rulings defined the limits of what is permissible for public funds and religion.  In 1971, the Supreme Court created “The Lemon Test” named for the plaintiff in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).  Writing for the Court’s unanimous (8 to 0) opinion, Justice William J. Brennan established a three-pronged test to determine whether or not government action in religious matters was allowable.

1. There must be no “excessive government entanglement” with religious affairs.
2. No law or action can either advance or inhibit religious practice.
3. Any government action must have a secular legislative purpose.

The Supreme Court and lower appellate courts heard many such cases over the past 35 years. The Lemon Test stands the test of time.  If your planetarium is publicly funded, then the “Star of Christmas” cannot be a December holiday show. But what if your star theater receives no tax dollars? It may nonetheless be problematic.

Agreed, it brings in viewers. Allow me to suggest that Colorado is among several states that have liberalized laws regarding marijuana. How would you react to a Colorado planetarium that handed out marijuana cigarettes? It would surely bring in the crowds. They definitely would enjoy the show. But would that be advancing science?

(A longer version appeared in the December 2015 issue of Sidereal Times of the Austin Astronomical Society.)

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One Light Second

What can you do in a light second? Our 2005 Honda Civic turned 186,282 miles today. (I did not get the moment for a snapshot: I was on the freeway.)  Since 2005, we closed out Laurel's parents' estate, moved to Ann Arbor, completed our degrees, and moved to Austin. 

For seven years (2004-2010), I wrote the "Internet Connections" column of the ANA Numismatist magazine. ANA President William Horton presented me with a special Presidential Award for my work in the hobby.  I also served until 2011 as the webmaster of the Michigan State Numismatic Society. For a few years (2004-2007), I was the magazine editor, also. I was appointed to the Board once and elected to the Board once.

My associate's and bachelor's degrees are in criminology because when work as a technical writer got hard to find, I picked up a job as a security guard in 2002. When we moved to Ann Arbor, I was hired by campus safety at Washtenaw Community College and served there for a year (August 2005 - September 2006). I then worked for Securitas (2006-2007) and Allied Barton (2007-2008). That was actually the same job: when the client changed contractors, we just changed uniforms.

The Washtenaw County Commission appointed me to the city-county community corrections advisory board, 2005-2008. I joined Infragard and ASIS: the American Society for Industrial Security.  Not finding work as a security supervisor, I returned to graduate school and earned a master's in social science. I chose that for the opportunity to plan my electives. I concentrated on transnational white collar crime.

Moving to Austin in 2011, I was hired by Securitas. I worked several of the downtown high rises.  I like being a business serving businesses.

I also found work as a technical writer. Project clients have included Dell, the Texas Department of Information Resources, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Military Department, and the Texas Education Agency. I am currently with Prologic Technology Systems, whose TEAMS software serves independent school districts and charter schools.

In November 2014, I joined the Texas State Guard. As a petty officer third class in the maritime regiment, I work in Future Operations as a trainer and technical writer for WebEOC, the virtual emergency operations center. I also completed a certification with CERT, the city's Community Emergency Response Team.

Also in November 2014, my wife and daughter bought me a telescope. I joined the Austin Astronomical Society and earned a certificate in telescope operations for their Eagle Eye Observatory outside of Austin.

On the downside, since 2005, we lost four cats. BA ("Badass Little Cat") was struck by a car in Kingsley, Michigan. Madonna died of old age in Ann Arbor while we were out of town. The pet sitter claimed not to have seen her, but the evidence at the scene was clear: she died in my office.  Isis had been my brother's cat. We had her only for a couple of years.  She died here of natural causes at about ten. Losing Goofy was the hardest. He had been with us the longest, 19 years.

I started this blog on January 2, 2011. Over 136,000 visitors have read the 391 posts. The most popular article (1957 views) has been "What (if Anything) Did Dorothy Learn?" You never know what other people will find interesting.

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Only a Cat

Goofy was the last cat to live with us. When Laurel rescued him from the wheelwell inside a truck hood, he might have been a month to six weeks old. When he died 20 November 2015, he was 19.  He had stopped eating four days before. He had been losing weight, down to 9 at the end, from almost 20. He had a lot of muscle.

He dodged at least nine bullets. The first was shortly after my wife and daughter brought him home. The vent cover was off in my daughter’s room, and Goof jumped in. They were panicked and called a furnace guy immediately. Apparently, it is a known problem, because he told them that cats seldom make it all the way to the furnace, and they should check the ducts all the way down. They did.  

A dozen years later, he and I were sitting on the back porch in another house. I saw a motion. A skunk. Goofy’s hairs went out and his back went up. I said, “Goof, you don’t want to do that.” But he did. He was sorry. We washed him off with hydrogen peroxide, but he still smelled for a few days.

Goof always walked kind of pigeon-toed. Laurel thought that he would have made a good "Waiting" icon for Windows 95, like the the Dinosaur.

Goofy always had a furrowed brow; and he seldom purred: he was a cat of constant sorrow.  He was great for head butts and liked having his chin rubbed.  He was an avid reader.

About 2006 or so, a vet told us that Goofy had cancer on his spine. The expensive surgery was the only way to save his life. We did not have that kind of money, and, as it turned out, whatever was on his back was not malignant.

About the time that he met the skunk, he tore several of his back toes. They always were extended and never retracted. We think that he climbed a tree or fence to get away from something, but we were not involved in whatever that was, and could only guess.

"The Game of Rat and Dragon" by Cordwainer Smith

Summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Rat_and_Dragon

Full text: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29614/29614-h/29614-h.htm

"You pinlighters! You and your damn cats!"

The author known as Cordwainer Smith was a Ph.D. professor of Asiatic studies at John Hopkins University. Like all myth, his science fiction stories are universal, but the special flavor of the alien is attributed to his interest in Chinese literature. He served as an intelligence officer in World War II with the rank of major.  About Paul Linebarger (Cordwainer Smith) here: http://cordwainer-smith.com/