Artemis

Some people are excited about the Artemis mission, and others are pretty grumpy about it. Moon shots have been done before, of course, and the thrill isn't going to be the same. I remember the original well.

The same reasons for not doing it at all circulate again: Benefits are speculative, We've got great needs (wars, the poor, etc) that all need dealing with and this is a mere distraction, and so on. There's a new reason too: Why not use robots for exploration since they work so well now.

Of course the benefits of using low earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit are not speculative at all anymore, but we have a better handle on what we can find on the Moon and Mars and a better appreciation for how hard work there will be.

The "How can we spend money on this when we have so many poor/etc" sounds very noble-minded, but that argument has no boundaries or limits. Why did Beethoven waste his time composing music when he could have been agitating for peace and trying to relieve poverty?

No. There are things worth doing, things that make life better, that have nothing to do with the usual list of desperate needs. I judge exploration (physical and scientific research) to be among those, along with arts. "We can put a man on the Moon but we can't fix homelessness." Well, we can carve a Pieta but we can't cure drug addiction--and probably never will. I don't believe the societal-problem advocates should have an automatic veto on the work of the rest of us.

The question comes down to balance. You can overdo anything. And there are several kind of costs to consider: money of course, but enthusiasm and good will too. Thanks to the intervening years of development some effects can be had for much less (in constant dollars) than they could for the Apollo program. Enthusiasm seems harder to come by, for pretty much anything. A certain decadence set in in society, and NASA turned rather sclerotic. Private rockets pack a lot more enthusiasm now.

If you argue that the Artemis program lacks vision--that we're just doing what our ancestors did, just a little bigger; a little larger pyramid this time--I admit there's justice to the argument.

If you complain that it's inefficient to try to loft people instead of robots--granted.

If you complain that the Constitution doesn't mandate research spending like this--well, it doesn't mandate poverty spending either. And several decades of the latter have shown some stubborn problems with poverty elimination and a moral hazard or two as well--the programs are not an unmitigated good.

You could argue that private firms should take up the torch of space travel. I like the idea, though we have a tragedy of the commons problem already.

Where should the balance be--this year? I don't know. Existential problems, such as war or overwhelming debt, may demand cuts to the bone and beyond. We don't have a good track record of facing up to problems and making hard decisions either.

Nor do I know on what scales you weigh conflicting desires: smaller classes or more to teach about?

I do know that if I had funding authority, I'd want to keep trying to explore.

Webcam and zoom

(Logitech C615, ubuntu 22.04.5, gnome/wayland) Under cheese the resolution looks quite decent, but under zoom it's fuzzy, as though it doesn't want to focus. It turns out that changing the resolution can't be done from a zoom desktop, but only through logging into the web interface to the account.

Even with that, autofocus is painfully slow.

Speeds

When I learned to type we measured speed in words per minute. Did Incan scribes measure their quipu speed in knots?

Judas

We get some detail about Judas, but not a huge amount. The story isn't mainly about him anyway.

He was a thief, and helped himself to what was in the moneybag. How did John know? Matthew, a tax collector, might have spotted small discrepancies easily enough, and told Jesus, and John, close to Jesus, heard of it. Was Judas afraid of exposure, unwilling to repent?

I've read it proposed that Judas, knowing Jesus' power, wanted Him to quit dilly-dallying and use that power and popularity, and so tried to force Jesus' hand. It didn't work the way Judas hoped, hence his despairing not-quite-repentance. It's quite plausible, but not supported by the texts.

Or perhaps he was jaded with miracles. Many others saw the same miracles and merely got angrier with Jesus, and not at all interested in following Him. Jesus had said some things that would be really hard for a good Jew to listen to ("eat my flesh"), and maybe Judas was wondering if Jesus was really good. We're told that the disciples, when on mission, were also doing miracles--perhaps Judas did some miraculous healings too. People are really good at forgetting inconvenient things, but that would be a doozy to try to forget.

Or perhaps he was sloppy and the devil slowly took hold of him.

Or perhaps his motives were a mix of all of the above.

I heard it asked if Judas had a choice; if the prophecy meant that somebody had to betray Christ. I think that's a bit backwards. If Judas had chosen otherwise, the prophets would have been told something else to say.

It's been claimed that Peter is Everyman, standing in for us all, denying Christ through fear and surprise. But so is Judas, betraying Christ and perhaps not entirely sure why. And so is Thomas, doubting the testimony. And so is John, loved by Christ.

Speedy trials

A mysterious death. After a gold miner was found dead, "tensions escalated when during the procession into town, residents claimed that, in line with traditional practices, the corpse allegedly identified Thomas Cooper as responsible for Morris’ death."

That would certainly explain the mob that tried to kill Thomas earlier.

Following the incident, Thomas Cooper reportedly confessed, alleging that Morris was killed through traditional means. He claimed that food and alcohol consumed at the gold mining site were poisoned through witchcraft. He also alleged that others were involved but has not disclosed their identities.

Authorities say investigations into the matter are ongoing.

There's a picture of a partly destroyed house that Thomas was hiding in. I rarely saw palm-branch roofs--they weren't legal. Crowded villages tended to have one house set the rest on fire, so corrugated metal or asbestos roofing was mandated.

I wonder when during the various proceedings the confession happened. I'd bet it was before the authorities rescued him.

Naval engineer's prayer

Drachinifel says this was a real plea by midget submarine engineers.

Grafting

Discussing Romans 11 this morning we noticed how Paul uses the reverse of normal grafting to emphasize that his Gentile audience shouldn't get swelled heads: grafting wild grapes onto a cultivated vine.

Grafting is weird -- who thought of it? How could you guess you weren't going to just kill the scion?

People started doing it somewhere between the Middle East and China, and it slowly spread from those places. Apparently more observant people noticed naturally occurring "inosculation" where branches or roots grow together on contact. I've not seen this with branches, but I have with tree roots -- I just never made the connection. Somebody did, played around with the process, and came up with other possibilities.

Lots of other possibilities.