Interplanetary infection

Some years ago I wondered if Mars could be infected from Earth and then revisited the question, with the likely answer being "no." Another group decided to investigate life traveling to Venus instead.

That's "downhill," so you don't need as much energy to launch the bits of bacteria-laden rock, so the odds of it being sterilized in the blast are minutely smaller. OTOH, Venus isn't exactly the easiest place to live. Maybe some extremophile bacteria could survive, if there was something to "eat." Some bacteria survive here by oxiding using sulfur, but something had to produce the available sulfur in the first place. (geological chemistry? I don't know the mechanism) A huge amount of what's around us is shaped by life: O2 in the atmosphere, for instance.

Venusian microscopic life doesn't seem impossible--high up. Given what we know now. Maybe something will change the picture later...

Across the street

The weather will reach a seemingly tropical 44F today, and be mostly sunny. The workmen are wearing heavy jackets and gloves. The old roof is coming off, including some decrepit 4x8's, and new one is going on. 17-January. Tomorrow night it's supposed to hit -3F.

It's a ranch-style duplex, so they needn't climb high. I wonder if there's a discount for the off season.

UPDATE: They only did part of the roof, so I guess they were working on storm damage.

A few quotes

from the past day's reading:

"Genius ought'n to be eccentric!" he cried in some excitement. "Genius ought to be centric. It ought to be in the core of the cosmos, not on the revolving edges."

or this, about Augustine, and millions of the rest of us

an idleness which was fatal to his virtue

LA thoughts

The fires are far from the places we used to live, before we left in '63. The closest I've been since then was at meetings at UCLA, which may be threatened in the next few days. (I was offered a post there once, with a raise--but when I looked at cost-of-living it would have been a disastrous pay cut.)

I remember very little of the town. Most of what I know about it has come through pop culture, which is why Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" keeps coming to mind when I hear reports mentioning Santa Monica.

The contrast of that song is a bit jarring; "have some fun" vs evacuations and loss. But looking over the lyrics it seems as though part of the "fun" is the (lesser) contrast between the revelers and the busy or sleeping mundanes. I wonder if they'd have as much fun if the revels were a community dance, with everybody participating, instead of just a select few at night while everybody else sleeps.

That's a rabbit trail; coming back to the main track:

What can we do to make houses more resistent to fires? Metal roofs would help (it was something like a factor of 5 more expensive than asphalt shingles when we checked; it may be less now. Still it represented an investment of something like 1/3 the nominal value of the house.) Window frames that don't melt in the heat. Siding that doesn't allow embers to get stuck in cracks, and resists burning.

And the painful parts: trees away from the house (no shade), bushes away from the house (gardening and flowers), and so on.

I suppose if we want to build in flood plains we have to build for floods, and if we want to build in chaparral that burns regularly we need to build to resist burning.

Fixing that will take a while, though. In the meantime, they'll have to build more of the same, assuming they can get permits (never a foregone conclusion in California).

Walking back down the highway

after your car ran out, carrying a gallon of electricity...

Suppose you bring back a half a gallon of gasoline: enough to take you 10 miles, maybe? How big a battery would you have to carry to power an electric car to go 10 miles? (10 miles/400 miles range) * (1200 pounds) = 30 pounds of battery. Maybe a little less, as not requiring all the infrastructure of the car's battery. Say 20 pounds, or maybe 10kg for the non-Imperialists out there. Maybe push the weight back up a bit for the charging interface.

Not impossible, especially if the makers designed it as a backpack, but not fun.

Lure of magic

Andy Crouch writes about modern magic, and the side effect of instant gratification on development. Some things demand time and discipline to develop.

Tangentially, some fantasy pays at least lip service to the notion that magic takes lots of preparation effort, and that once you've shot your bolt you have to figure something else out if it didn't work. A story about a magician spending hours prepping and practicing would be pretty boring, though. (Did it trace to Jack Vance?)

And while these stages of life are singular and essential, magic is equally disastrous at other formative moments. A friend of mine found himself seated on an airplane departing Los Angeles next to a couple en route to their honeymoon in Hawaii. He observed with growing horror as the newly-married young woman opened up TikTok on her phone, began scrolling and swiping through videos, and did not stop, even for a bathroom break let alone a word to her husband, until the plane landed five hours later. One can only wonder how the rest of the honeymoon unfolded. Even and especially when we face the defining seasons of our lives, the temptation to use magic to evade their demands as well as their gifts can be—as every one of us knows one way or another—overwhelming.

UPDATE:

Grim has a couple of essays about magic and alchemy (the essay I linked uses the word "magic", which isn't quite right), and about magic and chivalry and virtue.

Waiting

We had a sermon on waiting the other week. Simeon got to see Jesus, but only as a baby. The rest everybody had to wait for. We still have to wait for the completion of the salvation. Joshua had to wait -- several times, not just at Jericho. Often the waiting is for things we can't do ourselves, though sometimes it seems that maybe we could expedite matters a trifle, if only ...

Just keep going, just keep praying, just keep doing the apparently ordinary stuff in front of you, just keep hoping ... and waiting. Patience isn't one of my front line virtues, which makes perseverance a little weak too -- and God seems to value perseverance.

Since so many of the things we hope for aren't things we can assist with very much (e.g. A isn't open to listening to advice from you), maybe the waiting is God's way of giving us a role that we can handle. "Hold until relieved," perhaps. We can't see what good our waiting does; maybe we will one day.

The same item

Two different children independently decided to order a replacement for something their grandmother had had when they were young--a modern version of a German face mug.

Can you spot the differences? No, one is not tilted; that's just to keep the illumination roughly comparable.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot?

Short answer: sometimes yes.

About 48 years ago an Illinoisian wrote a science fiction novel and spent a fair bit of effort publicizing it; even wangling an interview on a local radio station. In order to keep his science fiction un-prejudiced by current trends, he hadn't read any science fiction--mostly romances. I did my part for the university sci-fi club and spent the money and read the book, and wrote a review. I kept the copy around for a few years until I decided that emptiness was nicer to have. (A beta-reader told him the book was too long, so he cut out the only chapter with action/exposition. No, I'm not making this up; he said in the interview that's why he cut out a chapter. A reader could figure out where and what was missing.)

I don't know what brought that to mind yesterday, but I checked to see if the book had made any more of a splash. According to google (which is less than stellar for pre-internet things), the answer is no; it was listed among new books, but nobody's review (not even mine) was findable. No loss.

However, his self-publishing firm had put out two more books in 2017, with the same pen name. I read the blurb for one of them, and it is odd enough that I wonder if he read any more sci-fi in the intervening forty years. I'm guessing not.

The press published a bunch of books by somebody else, with titles like "Atomic Spirituality" and "Alien Threat from the Moon." I'll pass on all four of the writers.

Once burnt, twice shy.

Influential people

The local paper had an article today of the "influential people" who died this past year. It was pre-Carter's death, so I added that one in for my count. Of 69 entries, about 3/4 were entertainers (including sports figures here).

I wonder who wrote the headline. "Famous" might fit better than "influential"-- at least I hope it does.

Traditional sightings

At solstice the news had photos of the usual suspects circling the standing stones at Stonehenge and clambering around barrows--dreaming of a wight Christmas?

Letters to Malcom

Chiefly on Prayer, by C.S. Lewis

I've no good excuse for not having read this before. Something about the title seemed off-putting, perhaps--I'm not greatly intrigued by somebody else's correspondance, and reading about prayer can seem as much of an awkward duty as doing it can sometimes be (and Lewis wrote about that in one of the letters).

At any rate, I have corrected that deficiency, and if you haven't, you should. His letters show as much vivid imagery as his work written for publication, and some things he has thought about much more deeply than I.

A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the service but on the celebrant. You know what I mean. Try as one may to exclude it, the question, "What on earth is he up to now?" will intrude. It lays one's devotion waste. There is really some excuse for the man who said, "I wish they'd remember that the charge to Peter was Feed my sheep; not Try experiments on my rats, or even, Teach my performing dogs new tricks."

It isn't hard to find the book.

Carols

A joyful Christmas to all! And if joy isn't the first thing in your thoughts (a friend died yesterday--the doctors were pretty accurate as to how long he had), Jesus has been there too.

Thinking about carols: we all know that Joy to the World isn't a Christmas song, but we sing it then anyway. Some of the old favorites have grammar that confuses children (I was one) thanks in part to fashions for making English poetry work like Latin. But they are fun; they help us celebrate; they help us remember.

I got to thinking--is there a lack in the Christmas carol collection?

In the Christmas story we have John the Baptist, Elizabeth, Mary, Zechariah, Simeon, and Anna, inspired directly by the Holy Spirit.

We have Joseph and the magi, indirectly informed by the Holy Spirit in dreams.

We have Mary and the shepherds, informed by angels sent from God.

I can't think of any Christmas hymns devoted to the Holy Spirit. They all point to Jesus, and perhaps reference the Father. Perhaps that's appropriate, but it seems a little odd.

Fasts and Feasts

A post of AVI's brought to mind this Patheos post about an Orthodox Archbishop:

Visitations by Archbishop Dmitri Royster of the Orthodox Church in America were different, since the faithful in the 14-state Diocese of the South knew that one memorable event would take care of itself. All they had to do was take their leader to a children’s Sunday school class and let him answer questions.

During a 1999 visit to Knoxville, Tenn., the lanky Texan folded down onto a kid-sized chair and faced a circle of pre-school and elementary children. With his long white hair and flowing white beard, he resembled an icon of St. Nicholas — as in St. Nicholas, the monk and 4th century bishop of Myra.

As snacks were served, a child asked if Dmitri liked his donuts plain or with sprinkles. With a straight face, the scholarly archbishop explained that he had theological reasons — based on centuries of church tradition — for preferring donuts with icing and sprinkles.

A parent in the back of the room whispered: “Here we go.” Some of the children giggled, amused at the sight of the bemused bishop holding up a colorful pastry as if he was performing a ritual.

“In Orthodoxy, there are seasons in which we fast from many of the foods we love,” he said. “When we fast, we should fast. But when we feast, we should truly feast and be thankful.” Thus, he reasoned, with a smile, that donuts with sprinkles and icing were “more Orthodox” than plain donuts.

I have not been doing very well with my Advent fast this year, with remarkably little change in my diet--though I'm keeping the carbs low. I've proved somewhat better at the feasts. I think I need both, in rhythm.

Deaths in a happy season

I didn't know anybody at ALCS, but friends did, and friends had children there. One ten-year-old was in the room across the hall from the shooting, another child sat next to the shooter for a class, another had a locker close by and saw her regularly. Another friend might have, had paperwork been handled differently, been in the room that day.

Remember the Holy Innocents. It's not always a "happy" season.

Deuterocanonicals

The New Testament contains a number of references to the Jewish version of the Old Testament which many Protestants endorse: notably Isaiah, Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Micah, Malachi, and so on. Quite a few of those references are prefixed with "it is written."

Here is a list of quotes and "allusions" in the New Testament to the Old. Some of these are "it is written" references that assume the authority of the passage cited, while others are parallel—and sometimes it's a bit of a stretch.

The New Testament also contains a few obvious references to non-canonical material, for example: "Cretans are always liars", "in Him we live and move and exist", and the difficult one, referring to Enoch's prophecy. The first link is an obvious joke paradox, and the second was quoting their own writers to some pagan Greeks.

The Enoch one is hard – the book of Enoch as we have it is a mess (in my not so humble opinion). Some scholars think at least some of it dates to about 100BC, though parts may be older. The Jews think it contradicts the Torah, and though several early church fathers thought it valid scripture, today only a couple of Ethiopian churches do. I had a little trouble keeping the thread of the book sometimes. It is heavily into judgment – in fact, 1 Enoch 1:1-2 seems to say that it is meant for the last generation before judgment.

FWIW, Jude also quotes from the now-lost Assumption of Moses—so say several early Church Fathers who still had access to the work.

Whether what we have of Enoch is what Jude had (and the Qumran folks) I can't say. Jude's citation seems perfectly innocuous; the confusion comes from his attribution of the quote to "Enoch the 7th from Adam." I'm content, after having read it, to agree with everybody but the Ethiopians and read Enoch no more.

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At any rate, the obvious question is: Are there citations of the Deuterocanonical books in the New Testament? (The next obvious question is, are those books cited by the early Church Fathers? Yes, they are, but I haven't investigated how significant the citations are. And they approvingly cite books that nobody includes in canon, so the Fathers are not the sturdiest reeds for this sort of evaluation.)

So, I looked around and found a list of alleged references at scripturecatholic.com.

At one point the list says "James 2:23 – it was reckoned to him as righteousness follows 1 Macc. 2:52 – it was reckoned to him as righteousness." I think one could argue that Genesis is older than Maccabees, and refer to Genesis 15:6 instead. There are several such dubious references.

The list also has lots of what look like reasonable parallels. It links Pauls' "sacrifice to demons and not to God" to Baruch 4:7, which is a quite reasonable parallel, though not a "it is written" class of citation.

And there are a lot of sort-of parallels that I'd not really count unless the New Testament author explicitly made the connection for me, as Matthew does.

All in all, I don't see the same sort of obvious connections to the deuterocanonicals that there are to (some of) the rest of the Old Testament. That doesn't rule out canonicity, of course—most of the Old Testament isn't cited either. The New Testament would be much longer if it did that.

If there were such a "it is written" citation to Judith, I'd bet there wouldn't have been any argument about including it.

Human sacrifice

Spencer Klavan reviews a documentary about Lily Phillips, the woman who had sex with 100 men in one day for OnlyFans. I will not be watching the documentary, much less OnlyFans – sometimes curiosity can be an ugly thing, and sometimes dangerous to the soul. I'll take Klavan's observations of the documentary as accurate, and avoid the other for obvious reasons.

No one described the situation more clearly, or more fearsomely, than the anonymous viewer who wrote, “So weird, it's like watching someone commit suicide but they are still alive.”

I gather from what Klavan wrote that Lily's words in the interview were of empowerment—the ideology of antinomian liberation—while her manner spoke of torment. The ideology/religion of limitless emancipation demands some examples: prove you mean what you say about limitless pleasure. Even when your nature rebels against the lies your mind affirms.

In 2024 we are all extremely comfortable talking about “systems” of injustice and oppression, disembodied mechanisms and algorithms with the power to influence and entrap us. What distinguishes these forces from those that older authors called “powers of the air?” Less and less, it would seem. The medievals probably attributed consciousness and intention to these powers in a way we do not. Are we more justified than they were?

His description sounds like a human sacrifice.

Noise

When the defrost fan is running on high and your ears are muffled under a tight wool cap, you might not hear the engine stall as you try to back the still-cold minivan down the driveway. It will seem very strange that you have no acceleration, and that the steering now requires a gorilla to turn. A mild disadvantage of a smooth-running engine...