There’s a YouTube ad-kind-of-thing about space based solar power with a comments thread at the following blog post:
A message for the next President - Space Based Solar Power
I thought it was interesting seeing graphics anyway. There may be other thermal ways that solar energy could be collected in space as well, but that would take quite a lot of research and time if and when it would be a viable technology.
Keith Windschuttle, the editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant, has been taken in by a hoax intended to show that he will print outrageous propositions.
This month’s edition of Quadrant contains a hoax article purporting to be by “Sharon Gould”, a Brisbane based New York biotechnologist.
But in the tradition of Ern Malley – the famous literary hoax perpetrated by Quadrant’s first editor, James McAuley – the Sharon Gould persona is entirely fictitious and the article is studded with false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes…
The hoaxer, who intends to remain anonymous, has provided details of how the hoax was constructed, including a blog-style Diary of A Hoax, liberally studded with ironic quotations from Ern Malley’s poetry.
Diary of a Hoax is published here, and the article submitted to Quadrant is here but, unless it is taken down, can also be read by subscribers on Quadrant’s website here or in the print edition, which hit newsagents in the last few days…
Crikey - How Windschuttle swallowed a hoax to publish a fake story in Quadrant
A: But hey, we’re all too clever by half to be taken in by a hoax here.
B: Uh, but what if what you thought might be a hoax was not a hoax at all? How would you tell the difference?
A: ‘Cause we’re too clever by half, and we know what’s true don’t we, because
“(a) it sounded good and
(b) it flattered the editors’ [,readers' and audiences'] ideological preconceptions.”
and (c) it made us feel superior and gave us someone to laugh at.
Comedy rules, OK!
B: But its not funny…
Humanitarian crisis in Gaza
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs states that the Gaza strip humanitarian crisis is significant and can not be understated.[65] The UN states that the situation is a “18 month long human dignity crisis” in the Gaza strip, entailing “a massive destruction of livelihoods and a significant deterioration of infrastructure and basic services”. Fear and panic are widespread; 80 percent of the population can not support themselves and are dependent on humanitarian assistance.[65]
Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni has stated that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza,[222]and that Israel has thus protected the civilian population, keeping the humanitarian situation in Gaza “completely as it should be”. [223] The head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, has criticised Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for declaring that there was no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. He also criticised the Security Council for not responding faster to the crisis[223]
Shelter
The “entire civilian population” in the Gaza strip remains vulnerable.[224] There is a sense of “panic, fear and distress” throughout the whole strip. [65] [224] Civilians have implemented a self-imposed curfew since no public warning systems or effective shelters exist. [224] People have been evacuating their homes and staying in streets for long hours exposed to further danger, or staying with relatives. [64] Civilians face insecurities while re-stocking basic food items, water and cooking gas. [224] Most families are holed up in one or two rooms that are considered the safest in the home, without electricity and with barely running water. Children have no outlets and entire families are moving to safer places at night. [224]
The Palestinian Red Cross estimates that thousands of homes have been damaged and it became “increasingly difficult” for their residents to stay in them due to the cold weather. [190] The UNRWA has prepared its schools to act as temporary shelters for displaced persons. [64] As of January 1st, approximately 400 people spend the night under the UNRWA emergency shelters.[225][65] As reported by both the Save the Children Alliance and the Al Mezan Center, prior to the IDF ground operation, more than 13,000 people (2000 families) have been displaced in the strip. [190] The majority of those families seek shelter with relatives, while 1,200 people are staying on the temporary emergency shelters provided by the UNRWA. [190]
Fuel and electricity
The only power plant in Gaza is not operational due to the lack of industrial fuel and spare parts.[224][65]
…2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PRESIDENT-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down longstanding barriers between the American civilian and military space programs to accelerate a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a space race with China.
Mr Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defence Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because military rockets may be cheaper and ready sooner than the space agency’s planned launch vehicle, which is not expected to fly until 2015.
It wouldn’t take long, if such a merger between the civilian and military space programs takes place, before the military will completely dominate the space program. It would ensure that space will become militarised and that the people managing the space program will be from the military and will think about space in terms of military advantage and combat. Any space missions will immediately raise suspicions in international relations and may prompt rival powers to react in a way that they think will restore a balance of power, either in space or in hotspot regions on earth. That could easily start up a vicious cycle where the US military does indeed use space programs, such as a base on the moon, for military purposes to the exclusion of civilian or scientific purposes. Even one military ’secret’ on a space mission would instantly change the classification level for that mission and who can be involved with the mission or how openly it can be reported. It could narrow and restrict a genuine space program and could set the US back a few generations. The baton for scientific and civilian space programs would pass to the EU, India (or even Russia if they keep their space program separate from the military). The article states that the Chinese space program is linked with their military.
An independent civilian space agency is important. Perhaps transfers of technology or rockets between the military and NASA could be managed so that whatever is considered classified can be stripped, modified or replaced before it is delivered - if that is possible. Perhaps there could be an intermediary agency that keeps the military at an arms length from the civilian programs. Another option is to consider a level of commercial involvement with the civilian agency but in a way so that NASA remains in control and takes responsibility. These are just a few opinions from someone outside America.
The glories of the sky adverted to the Book of Job include a sidereal landscape vaguely described as “the chambers [i.e. penetralia] of the south”. The phrase, according to Schiaparelli, refers to some assemblage of brilliant stars, rising 20 degrees at most above the southern horizon in Palestine about the year 750 B.C. (assumed as the date of the Patriarch Job), and, taking account of the changes due to precession, he points out the stellar pageant formed by the Ship, the Cross, and the Centaur meets the required conditions…
Hadre theman — “the chambers of the south” — Canopus, the Southern Cross, and a Centauri
The above quote is from the Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 2. and dates from 1907. I don’t know whether the information is accurate or still current.
This could be an interpretation of The Book of Job Chapter 37:9
9. The storm winds come from the south, and the biting cold from the north.
Good News Bible, Today’s English Version.
The translation doesn’t catch the same meaning, so I don’t know how true this all is. Another translation includes the word ‘chamber’ but not the word ’south’:
9. From the Chamber comes a tempest, and from Mezarim the cold.
Anyway, that might have been how the Southern Cross was referred to in Hebrew over 2000 years ago. I don’t know the cultural meanings this would have. Its not a very reliable source and may not refer to the stars in question at all. They might not have understood stars as we do now.
Some other translations.
The cosmology from the early books of the Bible is very different from today, and possibly also from the understanding of the ancient Greeks and neighbouring cultures. The Hebrews were hostile towards astronomy and astrology, perhaps because these studies would challenge their explanations for the creation and structure of the world. The Book of Job in Chapters 37 and 38 sounds sometimes nearly like a tongue in cheek parody of an architectural Old Testament world view or perhaps that’s how it reads to us now, well after the Copernican revolution. Remember that it was written by a human being, and even presuming to write with the voice of God… I wonder whether modern day fundamentalists would take the text as being literally true. (How would they explain satellites?) It is a perplexing and interesting Book.
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For example, The Book of Job Chapter 38:31
31 Can you tie the Pleiades together or loosen the bonds that hold Orion?
could be a reference to the idea of a Firmament upon which stars are attached. The Truman Show movie refers to this cosmology when the stage light for the star Sirius falls to the ground near Truman (actor Jim Carrey). Seahaven, the fictional setting for the movie, is something of a Garden of Eden for the situation where there isn’t a Fall. Truman in the movie had to escape by himself from that strange solipsistic prison of spin. The Truman Show is perhaps also a comment on The Book of Job and the Old Testament cosmology.
Another interesting line is Job Chapter 38:33
33 Do you know the laws that govern the skies, and can you make them apply to the earth?
This sounds remarkably like a reference to Newton’s law of universal gravitation. The force of gravity that makes an apple fall from an apple tree is the same kind of gravitational force that keeps planets in orbit around the sun, and the moon orbiting around the earth (colloquially speaking). I don’t know if it is fair to make that interpretation (not really), but if it was, that statement would be comparable to brushing dust off a weathered 2500 year old iphone at an archaeological site today.
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In the first Creation narrative in Genesis, the Firmament or vault for the sky was created on the second day, the one day during the first week when God didn’t mention that He was pleased with what he saw at the end of the day. Maybe even the people who first wrote this down didn’t think that it was that credible a cosmology - but it filled a gap that needed to be filled. Packing all the laws of phyics, everything in the universe beyond the earth (or even just beyond the horizon) and everythig that happened over billions of years into just a couple of sentences was always going to be a hard sell.
Gaza has undeniably been under siege since June of 2007. The blockade of the Gaza Strip is clearly an act of war and it has continued for a protracted amount of time. A ceasefire while the blockade continues in not a peace settlement, it would be a strategy that would supposedly let Israel and the rest of the world forget about the Palestinians in Gaza while they remain under a constant state of siege. Do the people in the Gaza Strip also have the right to defend themselves in such a situation?
What would be the purpose of a ground invasion for a territory that is already walled off and isolated, impoverished, under siege and without any commerce with the outside world? This is not what we should expect from Israel. We expect Israel to try to use political processes to live with its neighbours so that the region is not in a constant state of war or suffering under a totalitarianism as in an extended police state. Time will tell, but this Israeli military campaign - and the career of Olmert as Prime Minister in general - could mark a turning point for the worse for the state of Israel. It is nearly as if they have given up on being part of the region.
Mr Dreyfus, who is also chairman of the national policy committee overseeing the development of the platform for July’s ALP national conference, said the plebiscite should be held before the next election, not with it.
Such a plebiscite would test opinion and not change the constitution. Mr Dreyfus said it would not commit the Government to the timing of a referendum and there was “no reason not to have the plebiscite this term. The process needs to get under way. There’s every reason to get on with it.”
He said the plebiscite should ask whether people supported having an Australian head of state and should also ask whether people preferred a head of state elected by the public or one chosen by Parliament.
The Labor platform provides for more than one plebiscite. This would allow the first on the principle of a republic and the second on a model…
Without discussing models first, the Australian public will probably think such a plebiscite is a deceptive trick. I don’t use caps very often nowadays, but for emphasis - THIS IS A ***VERY*** HIGH RISK OPTION. If such a plebiscite fails - because the politicians pushing for a yes vote just um and ah about models - then it could damage the republic issue and push a realistic referendum further into the future. Without going into the details of the models such a plebiscite is a waste of time and effort.
First discuss models, arrive at one that is satisfactory to the public, and then with wide public support consider electoral options. This plebiscite process is NOT a cunning plan - it was devised when the republican movement didn’t have a clue on how to move forward.
Acrux is the twelfth brightest star visible from earth, from both the northern and southern hemispheres, so it is certainly a significant bright star. From earth we see the multiple stars of Acrux as one bright star. If it was no longer or barely visible from locations to the east of Jerusalem about 2000 years ago, a journey by astronomers to clearly see such a bright star would be a plausible motivation.
The Hebrew name and meanings for the Crux constellation would have to be independently verified. One of the problems with the internet and Google searches is that mistakes are amplified. I can’t verify the name given to the star.
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The four brightest stars of the Southern Cross were listed in Ptolemy’s Almagest, a star catalogue from circa 150 AD in Egypt. Who knows, perhaps Ptolemy of Alexandria might have even scanned the night skies from the Pharos. The Latin (translation) seems to describe the stars’ locations within Centaurus:
CENTAURUS.
965 31. Quae est in poplite pedis dextri….[...] gamma Cru
966 32. Quae est in talo ejusdem pedis……[...] beta Cru
967 33. Quae sub poplite sinistri pedis…..[...] delta Cru
968 34. Quae in sura ejusdem pedis……[...] alpha Cru
So the stars of the Southern Cross were known in the ancient world around the Mediterranean. Is there a known star catalogue or map of the stars with the Hebrew cultural names and associated meanings from about 2000 years ago? A good place to start.
From Scientific American Online
The energy storage in question—a series of sodium–sulfur batteries from Japan’s NGK Insulators, Ltd.—can store roughly seven megawatt-hours of power, meaning the 20 batteries are capable of delivering roughly one megawatt of electricity almost instantaneously, enough to power 500 average American homes for seven hours. “Over 100 megawatts of this technology [is] deployed throughout the world,” Novachek says. The batteries “store wind at night and they contract with their utility to put out a straight line output from that wind farm every day.”
That removes one of the big hurdles to even broader adoption of wind power: so-called intermittency. In other words, the wind doesn’t always blow when you want it to, a problem Texas faced earlier this year when a drop in wind generation forced cuts in electricity delivery. But with battery backup, the 11-megawatt wind farm outside Luverne, Minn., can deliver a set amount of electricity at all times, making it more reliable or, in industry terms, base-load generation.
Storing the breeze: New Battery Might Make Wind Power More Reliable
If you wanted to, and if you agreed to take a very narrow window of time to base your view on, you could subscribe to the clash of civilisations thesis. I don’t. I think it is the flexibility of the institutions of liberal democracy and its ability to change - despite and contrary to cultural biases - that gives liberal democracies their strength. Science usually works against cultural assumptions and the bases for identity, especially religion and grand narratives that identity politics is all too fond of. Where ideology restricts freedom of expression and honest research you find that the state stagnates if given enough time. In the short term ideology may have something like a hybrid effect in biology - there might initially be a sudden burst of growth but the seed is mostly sterile and whatever grows after a few generations is stunted and weedy. Any state that wants to go down the path of puffing up identity politics while stifling true debate and research is heading for trouble, even if it might appear to work initially while long accumulated social capital is being burnt up.
The alternative thesis to the clash of civilisations in a post cold war scenario is the same as it was during the cold war. A state that is corrupted whether by force, money or ideology or whatever will slowly stagnate and become isolated, either from without or to enforce state power within. The question with China is whether they will move more towards the centre of the political spectrum and promote liberal democratic institutions - such as the rule of law and human rights - or whether the new wealth will make the nation flip from austere communism to a glossy fascism. But anything can happen. This is only a brief comment.
Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Gy-kgL8yA
From Scientific American - Coal war: can fossil fuel be cleaned up?
Merry Christmas!
And I hope that Santa left you something more substantial when he dropped by…
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Clean-Coal: as “clean” as a billion gallons of sludge.
For Christmas I’m reading Jung’s Answer to Job. It’s an interesting read about the change in understanding with regard to God from the Old Testament to the New Testament. A major shift, perhaps unconscious at first, was in the Book of Job. In relation to today, it seems that many fundamentalists are reverting to an Old Testament understanding of Yahweh. Jung used the term sacrificium intellectus for a lack of reflection that you can find in that mindset. Chapter 10 has an interesting take on the nature of moral thinking.
Anyway, a couple of other things that Jung pointed out about the Bible that I didn’t know:
On every day other than the second day of Creation in Genesis, God said that he was pleased with what he saw:
Genesis 1:6-8 Then God commanded, “Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places” - and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it. He named the dome “sky.” Evening passed and morning came - that was the second day.
Perhaps there was always the possibility that this could come undone, as it did with the Deluge that Noah and his Ark survived.
About the feminine principle during Creation, Proverbs 8:22-31 clearly expresses the presence of the Spirit of God - Sophia, Wisdom, the Holy Spirit - during the Creation in Genesis. There is nothing controversial in making that association:
Proverbs - Chapter 8 - In Praise of Wisdom
1 Listen! Wisdom is calling out. Reason is making herself heard…
22 “The Lord created me first of all, the first of all his works, long ago.
23 I was made in the very beginning, at the first, before the world began.
24 I was born before the oceans, when there were no springs of water.
25 I was born before the mountains, before the hills were set in place,
26 before God made the earth and its fields or even the first handful of soil.
27 I was there when he set the sky in place, when he stretched the horizon across the ocean,
28 when he placed the clouds in the sky, when he opened the springs of the ocean
29 and ordered the waters of the sea to rise no further than he said. I was there when he laid the earth’s foundations.
30 I was beside him like an architect, I was his daily source of joy, always happy in his presence -
31 happy with the world and pleased with … human[ity]…”
From the Good News Bible, American Bible Society, Today’s English Version, British Edition, 1976.
What is controversial about about associating the Spirit that moved across the water at the beginning of Creation in Genesis with the Holy Spirit, and even with making the link of the miracle of Jesus walking on water with being a reference to the Holy Spirit during Creation moving (walking when personified) across the water? What’s the problem?
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26 Dec 2008
One aspect of the feminine that I have not mentioned yet is Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. Perhaps in some ways she is somewhat similar to her son Jesus Christ as being both a living human being and also divine (I am struggling to find the right word). There have been quite a number of visions of Mary during the twentieth century and in 1950 the Catholic Church declared the Assumption of Mary. Jung wrote about this in Answer to Job (Ch19): “the dogma of the Assumption - which, by the way, I consider to be the most important religious event since the Reformation. ” In 1987 Pope John Paul II delivered the Redemptoris Mater, a further development on Mariology. Now I don’t understand this very well, but the point I am making is that these changes show that the nature of the feminine is changing or becoming more prominent.
Most Australians are decidedly secular and even hostile towards religion, yet I also find that there is a poor understanding of symbolism. The commercial media seems to have taken the place culturally of some of that numinosity that you normally find with religion. I think that is dangerous and could set the stage for a political demagogue. The political class are clever enough to engage the services of advertisers to market their messages, and they have more than enough cash to splash on it too. Hostility towards religion alone doesn’t make a culture immune to the numinous. You also need to understand secularism - the separation of church and state and how to go about arguing facts in the public realm. It is the unconscious that we are talking about. Anyone who thinks they are in control of the unconscious is being led around by the nose in ways they would never admit.
Here is a quote from Answer to Job (Chaper 10):
‘One ought not to make oneself out to be stupider and more unconscious than one really is, for in all other respects we are called upon to be alert, critical, and self-aware, so as not to fall into temptation, and to “examine the spirits” who want to gain influence over us “to see whether they are of God,” that we may recognise the mistakes we make. It even needs superhuman intelligence to avoid the cunning snares of Satan. These obligations inevitably sharpen our understanding, our love of truth, and the urge to know, which as well as being genuine human virtues are quite possibly effects of that spirit which “searches everything, even the depths of God”. These intellectual and moral powers are themselves of a divine nature, and therefore cannot and must not be cut off. By following Christian morality one gets into the very worst collisions of duty. Only a person who habitually makes five an even number can escape them. The fact that Christian ethics leads to collisions of duty speaks in its favour. By engendering insoluble conflicts and consequently an afflicto animae, it brings man nearer to a knowledge of God. All opposites are of God, therefore man must bend to this burden; and in so doing he finds that God in his “oppositeness” has taken possession of him, incarnated himself in him. He becomes a vessel filled with divine conflict. We rightly associate the idea of suffering with a state in which the opposites violently collide with one another, and we hesitate to describe such a painful experience as being “redeemed”. Yet it cannot be denied that the great symbol of the Christian faith, the Cross, upon which hangs the suffering figure of the Redeemer, has been emphatically held up before the eyes of Christians for nearly two thousand years. This picture is completed by the two thieves, one of whom goes to hell while the other enters into paradise. One could hardly imagine a better representation of the “oppositeness” of the central Christian symbol.’
Carl Jung, Answer to Job, Routledge Classics, London, 2002, pp 68-69.
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27 Dec 2008
Scoffing at religion and saying it is illogical won’t work. Perhaps some of the early Protestants tried to make religion more reasonable and in many cases Protestants destroyed the images and symbolic religious imagery in the old churches and tried to remove some of the mystery with common language translations of the Bible. The new religious fundamentalism tries to incorporate the rarefied certainty of Enlightenment thinking and science into its versions of religion (while rejecting science), which in another way misses the point about symbolism and perverts science and reason as well. In any case, science is more about a questioning of assumptions and only in high school or undergraduate learning environments is science presented as if its statements were an unquestioned certainty. In professional life and society we expect absolutely certifiable facts, perhaps to meet legal requirements and responsibilities or to avoid litigation, and this seems to flow back into every other aspect of society including our symbolic and religious inner worlds. Even then, with all the certainty of rating agencies we end up holding nothing more than subprime bundled up in glossy wrapping paper and with a nice star rated ribbon. We are then expected to believe the symbolic packaging as if it were a fact (deception).
The problem wouldn’t be there, I would contend, if there was a recognised separation between church and state, private and public, symbols and fact. The two realms have different kinds of rules that don’t work in the alternate realm. There is no contradiction with someone writing about both science and technology as well as about symbols and religion. One of the things I’ve noticed in writing these blogs is that when people can’t differentiate between symbol and fact it comes down to personal whims and preferences and raw self-interest (power in other words) - if it suits some people the most vicious acts and even murder are brushed aside as if they were mere symbols being expressed. They might read posts about political theory, science and technology and interpret those posts as being symbolic rather than being about mechanisms. And then they might read others posts about symbols and mythology and reject them because they don’t match with what they were told and ‘believe’ as fact. Perhaps they reject that there could be a difference between the symbolic and verifiable reality, in any case. It is a weird upside-down, chaotic and undifferentiated world that we seem to have become accustomed to over the last decade or so. This is about how words interact with reality. You need an adequate framework that keeps verifiable mechanisms and facts at arms length from symbols, wishful thinking or pure fantasy. And you also need to understand why that is important.
There are other ways of knowing as well. This framework is relevant to the contemporary problems of fundamentalism and the relation between science and religion. These are problems in the Western ways of seeing and are probably best addressed from within that tradition, at least until there is some kind of balance.
The Star of Bethlehem is one of those Christmas stories that has had people guessing on the nature of the star that was above Bethlehem around the time that Jesus was born.
Scientific American: What was the star of Bethlehem?
It’s a topic that will probably never be settled.
Still, how’s this for another idea: what if it could have been one of the stars of the Southern Cross?
The Southern Cross is no longer visible in the sky above Israel/Palestine but it was 2000 years ago. The constellation has slipped out of view since then due to axial precession. A star of the Southern Cross, Acrux, might have provided a motive for the three Magi (astrologers/astronomers) to travel to the high ground of Jerusalem in order to catch a better glimpse of the disappearing star.
Bethlehem is about 10 kilometers south of Jerusalem and if the aim was to see these stars from Jerusalem then Bethlehem would certainly have been a landmark over which the Crux stars would have passed. The star would have risen in the early hours of the morning to the east of Bethlehem, as seen by looking south from Jerusalem, risen into view and moving west would possibly have been over Bethlehem around the time of dawn. That is, you could say that the star STOPPED being visible directly over Bethlehem and only just above the horizon as observed from Jerusalem. Bethlehem being only 10km from Jerusalem could have also been a destination for a touristy day trip. Perhaps they wanted to see if Bethlehem provided a better vantage spot to view the star from.
There would have been nothing much of note about the stars of the Southern Cross for people living in Jerusalem around this time as they would have been visible every year. Still the view from a higher altitude might have made the journey worthwhile for the Magi from the east. They possibly didn’t understand the meaning of Bethlehem (as the birthplace for a future Messiah) and stars (the star prophesy) to King Herod. As visiting tourists I imagine that they would have paid a tribute to the King ruling Jerusalem at that time - Herod - and as ‘wise men’ given some explanation of what they had seen in layman’s speak. As soon as they realised their rational account of a simple observation of a star was taken in a mythological way they took off quick smart.
In retelling the story 80 or so years later the details may have been mixed up and the story embellished to make the visit of the Magi look as if it was related to the birth of Jesus.
At least this theory would include a motive to travel to Jerusalem. A one-off astrological event such as a conjunction of planets could be seen anywhere and an unexpected astronomical event such as a comet or supernova could not have motivated a long, time consuming and possibly dangerous trip. If the aim was to get a better view of stars that were known to be precessing out of sight then it would make sense that a group of astrologers/astronomers would have planned to travel to higher ground to make an observation.
To say that a star rose and then stopped being visible once it was over Bethlehem due to the light of dawn, from the vantage point of somewhere obvious in Jerusalem, is a description of an observation in a way that can be communicated to other people who might wish to observe the star themselves. Apart from the pole star, every star will move through the sky at night. There has to be something else happening for someone to say that a star stopped over a certain landmark. Perhaps that event was the break of day when the star is no longer visible. The Magi would have known about and understood the wandering stars, the planets, and other phenomena such as eclipses.
At least this theory posits a real star as being the unidentified Bethlehem Star and gives an account of the language used to describe its observation until sunrise, it posits a motive for the traveling Magi to plan a visit to Jerusalem and it may also explain some of the cultural misunderstandings, between scientific observation and religious interpretations as it so happens.
You could also say this interpretation of the Bethlehem Star as a star from the Southern Cross has meaning to us now, if indeed it can be shown to fit the criteria for the Bethlehem Star in the Gospels. That the Bethlehem Star marking the birth of Jesus is from the Crux constellation before that constellation was known by that name is striking. Even if the visit by the Magi and the birth of Jesus were historically unrelated and a coincidence of timing, the Gospels have linked these two events symbolically and the visit of the Magi to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and the star they were seeking to see are all NOW symbolically related to the birth of Jesus.The historical person who was Jesus and the archetypal/mythological Jesus Christ are related but not quite the same, to my way of thinking.
Another point worth making is that the Crux constellation is used to mark out the southern pole in the night sky of the Southern hemisphere. It points to the stationary place in the southern sky around which the other stars appear to rotate. Identifying the Bethlehem Star as being one of the stars of the Southern Cross symbolically would mark a shift in emphasis from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern. It works symbolically in a way that was not evident when these events occurred and were first recorded, and it still provides meaning.
The Southern Cross in the southern sky from Jerusalem around 7AM in early December, 6BC
Click on image for a full screen view
Image from Skychart
Cartes du Ciel Version 3 Beta 0.1.4
Latitude 31 deg 45 min North, Longitude 35 deg 00 min East
Altitude 760 meters
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To give you an idea of what is meant by precession and how constellations move over time, the following images show the stars from the same location and time of day over a sequence separated by 500 years:
1000BCE - 500BCE - 1BCE - 500CE - 1000CE - 1500CE - 2000CE
The following images show the position of Southern Cross during the early hours in early December in 1BCE:
3AM - 4AM - 5AM - 6AM - 7AM - 8AM
Skychart Animation of the Southern sky from Jerusalem between 3AM to 7.30AM on 1 Dec, 6BC
Click on image for a full screen view
See also Star of Bethlehem at Wikipedia
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Using the Stellarium software set in December 1BCE you can see that the Crux stars, particularly Acrux, would be directly over the place on the horizon where Bethlehem would have been during sunrise. Time zones may be different, and time systems as well, but on the software sunrise during December was around 6am. The position of the Southern Cross at day break varies depending on the time of year but it would be close to Bethlehem if seen from Jerusalem.
Well, its an idea that could be sustained with the evidence. I presume that it was Acrux, at the base of the Southern Cross, that was the star that the Magi wanted to have a better view of and that hung just above Bethlehem while it was last visible before dawn, when looking south from Jerusalem.
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23 Dec 2008
If the Bethlehem Star was Acrux - and it is a topic that will possibly never be settled one way or the other - it does have some telling symbolism that could be seen to be appropriate. A star, and the constellation over the last 2000 years, precessing out of view seems appropriate for a religious system that gives the Crucifixion and death of Jesus a central place, as well as his Resurrection. The star and constellation has disappeared below the horizon in the North but is now prominent in the South. A ‘dying’ star that is rediscovered and so Resurrected symbolically with new meanings fits with the Christian story. The story of the Magi could be likened to the story of the shepherd who searches everywhere for a single lost sheep and is joyous when that lost sheep is found again. It also resonates with the story of the brief encounter of the apostles with Jesus after his Crucifixion and perhaps the need to flee persecution. Curiously, the star was called Tri-shanku by ancient Hindu astronomers.
The nature of the Bethlehem Star will change with the meanings of Christianity, and in the last few years there does seem to be a drive to affirm some prominent astronomical event - that could have been seen everywhere in the the night sky not just in the locality of Bethlehem - with the story. It wouldn’t seem as exciting, I suppose, if the Bethlehem Star was one that was always there and silently pointing in a new direction, much as you would expect Wisdom to do. After all, if the Bethlehem Star was Acrux, the Crux constellation was actually pointing towards Bethlehem at sunrise as reported in the Gospels, just as it is still pointing to the south in the Southern hemisphere. The constellation to which the Bethlehem Star belongs would become symbolically more important than the star itself, if this alternative gains in credence.
Bethlehem is about 30 meters higher than Jerusalem, so it should have provided a better vantage point than Jerusalem. I don’t have the knowledge or software to test the idea thoroughly.
One of the most potent powers that God bestowed upon Adam, and symbolically to humanity, in Genesis is the power to name things. In the first chapter, naming by God is equated with the very act of creation itself, to an extent.
With the advance of science, that power to name, willy-nilly in some cases, became more conditional and subject to general rules. The exposure to foreign cultures with their radically different languages also had an effect to make plural the names for any particular thing. Colonial Europeans still, however, claimed to have the final word no matter what any other culture called a particular thing.
The so-called ‘death of God’ perhaps had something to do with that prerogative to name, and Freddy’s aristocratic solution was to propose a few individuals who maintain the right to name arbitrarily, even while denying that right to most other people. Naming also involves the assigning of meanings, making value judgments and the power to enforce them.
What do you name something that you don’t even know exists? Once something is born or discovered it can be named, but what about before that time? What word covers all possibilities - past, present and future - for what we will eventually be able to name but can not name now? That word would even have a unique but intimate relationship to the concept of death as well. It is a word for what is beyond our ability to name, beyond our words. Is there such a word? How would you describe the powers and nature of such a word to someone? How would you explain the meaning of such a word to a young child?
What would happen if the cultural baggage of such a word extended past thousands of years and through mindsets that are nothing like ours now. What would the varied meanings for such a word be? You’d think that their might be some reification and personification as well. Would you take such meanings at face value? Or would you look at the human meanings behind the use of that word?
Another twist in this story is that even if we found such a word and defined it most rigorously, that word with its meanings intact would still evade capture. Perhaps there is a hubristic wish on the part of some in science to tie the word up with its meanings, lift the lid on the lab’s waste bin, drop it in and be done with it altogether. But even in science the very notion of an experiment implies an unknown in the process of becoming known. If science claimed to know everything there was to know, it would drop the use of experimentation and become itself ideological and much like a stale lifeless religion in spite of itself. The hubristic act is in claiming to be able to completely define that word so that it can be pinned down in the lab. In such a battle of wills that controversial word will certainly outlive a human body and most likely change its many meanings over and over again. It might actually mean something different to every individual person, even with some similarities based on culture.
Does this approach signal a shift away from ontology and more of a move towards epistemology? We are talking about a ‘Word’, after all. Still, the cultural anxiety might have been because the God-like power to name may no longer be taken as a pronouncement on the real nature, or ontotogy, of the thing named. There is a gap between ontology and epistemology, and conservatives especially find that hard to deal with. It moves the emphasis away from a static naming by an authority towards a dynamic understanding through an ongoing relationship.
…Whatever happens to the ABL, the move to high-power laser weapons that use an invisible infrared beam to attack targets is already under way. Top among the early “directed energy” devices expected to be fielded is the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL), developed by the US air force and Boeing, which uses a smaller chemical laser than the ABL and is carried in a military transport plane or large helicopter.
A mirrored turret beneath the plane fires a 0.5-metre-wide beam of up to 300 kilowatts, according to a recent report on directed energy weapons technology for the German Foundation for Peace Research in Osnabrück. The ATL is ostensibly designed for attacking infrastructure from distances of around 10 kilometres - disabling vehicles by melting their tyres, for example, or destroying communications lines, phone masts, TV antennas and satellite dishes. The Pentagon’s claims that the ATL is non-lethal don’t hold water, says Jürgen Altmann at the Technical University of Dortmund, who wrote the German report. “With 30 to 100 times the heating power of a stove plate, applied to a spot of the same size, the weapon can kill people, set combustible objects on fire or explode munitions. It is clearly a lethal weapon,” he says.
…And last month Northrop Grumman launched Firestrike, an electrically powered 15-kilowatt battlefield laser that can be multiplied in power by adding more units.
The use of such weapons in armed conflict would represent “a new means of warfare”, says Altmann, yet the weapons are being introduced with little public debate. He believes laser weapons should be banned. Despite the fact they are likely to be used against combatants, it does not appear that the UN’s Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons will prevent their proliferation. That is because the treaty only covers lasers solely designed to blind…
Airborn Laser lets rip on first target- New Scientist [Emphasis mine]
The thinking behind a carbon cap and trading scheme seems only half-hearted. Not only do you need the regulation to make polluting processes relatively more expensive, but you also need cleaner alternatives so that people and organisations can make a rational judgment to adopt new cleaner technology with cheaper operating costs rather than chugging along with the old polluting technology. There has been some support for alternative sources of energy but in a way this misses the point. To give people and organisations an alternative that can lessen the amount of pollution they are responsible for, the main emphasis should be on energy efficiency. Most people buy electricity, they don’t generate it themselves. Optimising the way that energy is distributed and used at a network level would have major effects on reducing pollution overall. There have been little more than token measures - such as installing low wattage light globes - on the issue of energy efficiency, yet this is likely to produce the greatest and easiest gains in terms of reducing carbon dioxide emission over the network level. Network-level energy efficiency, after perhaps a slight initial decrease of bulk energy use over a network, will also reduce the rate with which energy use will increase over time.
It is a romantic and unrealistic hippy era notion that posits personal energy self-sufficiency as a goal [see the latest issue of New Scientist for an example of that purple hazy vision].
It is natural that because of this one-eyed understanding of the issue that you now find industry trying to undermine the carbon trading scheme.
It seems quite puzzling for people outside the political process and looking in, to see what the political class and media are doing with regard to the issue of climate change in Australia.
One idea for optimising the energy efficiency over the network is here. Another benefit from this kind of network level energy efficiency is that it builds an infrastructure where you can plug renewable sources of energy directly into these systems and the energy gained from these renewable sources will directly displace the amount of energy taken from the grid. These energy efficiency systems include a form of energy storage so that the problem of the intermittency of renewable sources is solved. It could also tie in with a future road fleet of plug in electric vehicles.
The 2008 Canadian parliamentary dispute is an ongoing political dispute in the 40th Canadian Parliament. At stake is the possible defeat of the Conservative minority government (comprising the 28th Canadian Ministry), appointed on October 14, 2008, and its replacement by a Liberal Party-New Democratic Party coalition government with support from the Bloc Québécois on confidence issues. On December 4, 2008, Governor General Michaëlle Jean (the vice-regal representative of Queen Elizabeth II, the head of state) granted the request of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper (the head of government) to prorogue parliament until January 26, 2009, thereby staving off the prospect of a possible change in government…
Canada is one of many nations that uses the Westminster system of government, a democratic parliamentary system modelled after the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The most recent major constitutional crisis in a country using the Westminster system of government was in Australia in 1975, when Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr. It had been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australia’s history, and bore similarities to the Canadian situation in 2008.
Watch this space.
A rare cosmic alignment tonight will produce a smiling face - or an emoticon, depending on your generation - high over the country…
From soon after 8pm until just before 11pm the planets Venus and Jupiter will stare down from the western sky like two brilliant eyes. Directly below, the crescent moon will form a happy mouth…
Another smiley face will not grin over Australia until the early hours of July 21, 2036.
A smile that will light up the night sky - Science - Specials - smh.com.au.
A Venus-Jupiter-Moon conjunction visible from Australia.
EUROPE is shivering through an extreme cold snap. One of the coldest winters in the US in more than 100 years is toppling meteorological records by the dozen, and the Arctic ice is expanding. Even Australia has been experiencing unseasonable snow.
But the stories about global warming have not stopped, not for a second.
Cold snap fails to cool protagonists of global warming | The Australian.
It seems really bizarre that the supposed best and brightest in a culture - those who are given space in major newspapers - can do nothing but play with semantics and words. Climate change is about an erosion of moderate climates. At the times and places where it is hot it becomes all the more hotter and at the times it is cold it can be all the more colder. And you may see the same place with record hot days in summer and record cold days in winter. Debating the point about climate change by playing on the semantics of the term global warming is worthy of a year 9 debating team after about five minutes of preparation, but such an argument can not be taken seriously. Climate change is about more extreme weather conditions - both cold and hot - while moderate climatic conditions become less common.
Just a reminder for those who need reminding: There are such things as seasons on earth - in winter there is less incident light from the sun so it is colder than during the season of summer. There is also DAY and NIGHT. It is usually warmer during the DAY because that is defined to be the time when the sun shines on a particular place on earth and it is colder at night because of an absence of sunlight. You could even make a semantic argument that we usually use the word DAYS to imply both calender days followed by their corresponding nights. In everyday language use we do not usually say that Friday is four DAYS AND NIGHTS after Monday. We assume that a calender day includes a night-time. Friday follows four days after a Monday - EVEN WHEN THAT INCLUDES FOUR INDIVIDUAL DAYS EACH FOLLOWED BY A NIGHT. You could write a book length essay on all the semantic uses and exceptions with regard to the word ‘day’.
Climate change points to extremes in climatic conditions. Most noticable events include heat waves, hot summers and bushfires. Following conventional uses of language we might refer to this as global warming even while climate change also involves nights and winters becoming colder as well.
There’s an article in yesterdays The Age newspaper titled “Coming down to earth” and written by Ian McEwan. Its on page 7 of the Insight section of the Saturday paper. There is no link to the article on theage.com.au so you’ll need a hardcopy if you want to read it. It is mostly about global warming. Here are a few paragraphs:
“Thus the matter is passing from virtue, from idealism and somber invitations to self-denial, which government, markets and the electorate distrust, to self-interest and necessity, for which they all have respect. Oil production will soon decline, and alternatives must be found anyway; many oil-producing countries are grisly human constructs on which no one wants to depend; if the US does not invest in green technologies now, it will have to buy them later from its competitors; Germany has created a quarter of a million jobs in renewable energy; it is beginning to be apparent that there is a vast amount of money to be made retooling and supplying a whole civilisation with new energy sources.
…In the words of John Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s leading climate scientists and chief scientific advisor to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, “what is required is an industrial revolution for sustainability, starting now”.
To be effective, this is only possible at the level of international co-operation - far more difficult to achieve than any technological breakthrough…
And so the mechanisms of the unreal, the smoke and mirrors, might have to come to the aid of our actually existing, overheating world. The process that let us believe we were dealing with climate change when we were doing nothing at all… these emanations of collective and collusive dreaming can have their positive side. Barack Obama may succeed in tipping the nations towards a low-carbon future simply because people think he can. Scientists, whose stock in trade is scepticism, and conference-weary diplomats along with millions around the world are attributing to him something like unearthly powers. He is invested with more symbolism - of renewal, of rationality - than his slight frame can bear. But having persuaded everybody else, he may be doubly persuaded himself. This aura will be his empowerment, as numinous as good luck, as permanent as spring snow. He has to move decisively.”
From Coming down to earth, by Ian McEwan, in The Age of Saturday 22nd November 2008. [My emphasis]
As the article states further, much of the thinking for how these new sustainable energy systems will look like has already been done. It has not yet been put into action at a large enough scale:
“the problems are solvable, but they are formidable too.”
I wish my use of language was as refined as this author’s…
One thing about Bush, Cheney and Howard is that with politics and power you can stifle opposition and destroy things, but fanciful thinking, fear and Cheney’s so-called ‘dark side’ can not create. They can not create.
With regards to sustainable energy systems I think that carbon capture and sequestration as well as more nuclear power are both mock solutions to global warming that were trotted out during the Bush era. We know for certain that even with CCS, coal power stations will eventually be closed as renewable energy systems - with local storage capacities and the ability to coordinate these with the grid at a macro level - are installed at larger scales. Installing more solar panels on roofs alone won’t work as a solution; you need to be able to store the energy generated by renewable sources for when it is needed. Grid connected and coordinated energy storage capacity is what will transform energy systems, IMHO. For Australia to try to run with CCS and nuclear power would be like falling for a dummy pass. We have yet to see whether Kevin Rudd can also make the transition from the institutional denial of reality during the Howard/Bush era to the new era based again on a respect for reality. As with anything else, you don’t need to wait until you have the benefit of hindsight, you can use reason and think the issues through…
