Sunday, December 29, 2013

Newtown, Connecticut: Mass Murder, Assumptions, and Judgment


(Andrew O'Reilly, via Fox News Latino, used w/o permission.)
"The grave of Ana Grace Márquez-Greene at the Newtown Village Cemetery. Ana Grace's parents began the Ana Grace Project shortly after he[r] death to help communities identify children with mental problems and works to prevent similar tragedies to the Sandy Hook shooting. (Photo: Andrew O'Reilly)"

Sandy Hood Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, is in the news again.

Someone killed about two dozen people there last December, most of them children. He then killed himself.

Authorities have released documents which give a bit more information about the killer than we had last year. He was a young man, and apparently not a particularly happy one.

I am sorry that he is dead, for several reasons: and very sorry indeed that so many innocent people stopped living that day.

Assumptions

I don't think more than a few crackpots will assume that elementary schools should be closed because they cause mass murders, or that automobiles should be banned because they make people kill children.

Given some of today's largely-unconsidered assumptions, though, other goofy ideas may get seriously discussed.

It's possible that the young man had Asperger's syndrome. It's not associated with violent behavior, but it's a "syndrome," and many folks are nervous about 'crazy people.'

The killer was home schooled: for reasons that are obvious, given what we're learning about his behavior.

I don't think folks with Asperger's syndrome should be locked up, or that home schooling leads to mass murder: but my kids have been home schooled, and I've been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome — and you know what those people are like.

Judgment, Good and Otherwise

Adam Lanza was 20 when he killed his mother, 20 first-graders, another six adults, and finally himself. As I said before, I'm sorry that all those folks are dead: including Adam Lanza.

Families and friends of the victims have suffered a great personal loss, and we have all lost whatever those 28 people might have contributed to our world. That's not the only reason for sorrow over their deaths, though.

Human life is sacred, and murder is wrong: even when the victim is oneself. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258, 2259-2262, 2268-2270, 2280-2283)

I think what Adam Lanza did was very wrong. There is no reasonable excuse for murder or suicide. Don't expect a rant about 'that sinner over there' going to Hell, though. I've read about the fellow who prayed to himself, and the one who had some sense. (Luke 18, 10-14)

I'm a Catholic, and although I'm expected to notice whether behavior is good or evil — judging the spiritual state of others is strictly against the rules. It's also a profoundly bad idea.

I've got this one life, followed by a performance review. (Matthew 7:5, Romans 2:1-11, Hebrews 9:27, Catechism, 1021-1022, 1749-1756, 1777-1782, 18612283)

After that there's creation's closing ceremony, and that's another topic. (May 21, 2011)


(From Hieronymus Bosch, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

In the news:
Related posts:

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Joyful, Yes: Giddy, No

My desk is tucked behind a hutch in the north room, which gives me a sort of oversize bulletin board by my left elbow. This poem, written by my father, had been taped to it:
Autumn Yard Work (II)
Bernard I. Gill

Life passing
Leaves falling
Birds flying
Clouds floating
I'm watching
Rejoicing
It fell off Friday, for no apparent reason. I could assume that the slip of paper falling at that particular moment is a sign from God, caused by a ductile fracture in the tape, or both. That reminds me of secondary causes, which is another topic.

Quite a few folks enjoy autumnal colors. Not so many, I suspect, rejoice at reminders of "life passing." We have a few dozen decades in this life, sometimes much less. There's reason to think that we can't live more than about 125 years, even with medical technology that hasn't been invented yet.

So how can any sane person be "rejoicing," while contemplating "life passing?"

Being a Christian, and understanding a little of the big picture, helps.

Joy, Ecstasy, and Victory Celebrations

Joy and ecstasy don't mean quite the same thing, but they're similar ideas.

Joy can mean intense happiness, particularly if it's ecstatic or exultant happiness.

Ecstasy can mean intense joy or delight, being so emotionally whipped up that rational thought and self-control are impossible, or 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA): and that's yet another topic.

A dictionary says that "to rejoice" means "to feel joyful; be delighted."

I've seen folks be wildly emotional in a delighted way: particularly during some victory celebrations. Sometimes folks torch cars and loot stores in the process, sometimes they don't, and that's yet again another topic.

But someone can rejoice without losing self-control or becoming irrational.

I'm about as sure as I can be that my father wasn't out of control when he wrote that poem: or earlier, when he was doing autumn yard work. I've had a few brushes with that sort of joy, too.

"Set Free From Sin"

"The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew...."
("Evangelii Gaudium," Pope Francis (November 24, 2013)
I'm not going to try boiling 51,000 words of Evangelii Gaudium down to sound bite size. There's more than enough in those three sentences to keep me busy in this post.

Maybe it's obvious, but "set free from sin" doesn't mean that Christians are perfect people. We're all wounded people, living in a damaged world. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 386-390)

Jesus took my place, accepting the consequences of sin. That set me free from sin: but doesn't exempt me from trouble here and now. (Matthew 16:24; Catechism, 599-618, 976-983)

Being "set free from sin" doesn't mean that I can't make mistakes, and certainly doesn't mean that I can't make daft decisions.

I have free will and can decide to do something I know is wrong. That's why we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Penance. Catholics living in America generally call it 'going to confession.' It's also called the sacrament of conversion and sacrament of forgiveness. (Catechism, 1422-1484)

Being happy is okay, but expecting a life full of giggles and good times is silly. I'm content with the occasional glimpses I have of coming attractions. God willing, at the end of all things I'll join the saints and angels: rejoicing.
"But as it is written: 'What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,' "
(1 Corinthians 2:9)
Related posts:

A very quick look at joy, Catholic style:
"By his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has 'opened' heaven to us. The life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. He makes partners in his heavenly glorification those who have believed in him and remained faithful to his will. Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.

"This mystery of blessed communion with God and all who are in Christ is beyond all understanding and description. Scripture speaks of it in images: life, light, peace, wedding feast, wine of the kingdom, the Father's house, the heavenly Jerusalem, paradise: 'no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.'603

"Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man's immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory 'the beatific vision':
"How great will your glory and happiness be, to be allowed to see God, to be honored with sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ your Lord and God, . . . to delight in the joy of immortality in the Kingdom of heaven with the righteous and God's friends.604
"In the glory of heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God's will in relation to other men and to all creation. Already they reign with Christ; with him 'they shall reign for ever and ever.'605"
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1026-1029)

"The New Testament uses several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls man:

"- the coming of the Kingdom of God;16 - the vision of God: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'17

"- entering into the joy of the Lord;18

"- entering into God's rest:19
"There we shall rest and see, we shall see and love, we shall love and praise. Behold what will be at the end without end. For what other end do we have, if not to reach the kingdom which has no end?20
(Catechism, 1720)

"Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life. The virtuous man is he who freely practices the good.

"There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it."
(Catechism, 1765)

"The moral virtues are acquired by human effort. They are the fruit and seed of morally good acts; they dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love. "
(Catechism, 1804)

Friday, December 27, 2013

Dust and Fomalhaut: Learning that There's More to Learn

Scientists recently found dust circling Fomalhaut. There's a reasonable explanation for how it got there: but the explanation raises new questions.
  1. The Comets of Fomalhaut
  2. Luhman 16AB: Not Quite Stars, Maybe a Planet
  3. Colliding Comets? Something's Spreading Dust Around Fomalhaut

"Kuiper Belt?"

When I was growing up, Pluto was the most recently discovered planet. Since then, Pluto has been reclassified as a Kuiper belt object and the number of known planets passed 1,000 a few months back. As I've said before, it's an exciting era: for me. Your experience may vary.

We've learned that Sol, our star, isn't the only one with something like the Kuiper belt. These doughnut-shaped zones of leftover construction material are important in two of this post's news items, so here's a quick look at the borderlands of Sol:


(Data from the Minor Planet Center; Carl D. Murray and Stanley F. Dermott "Solar System Dynamics," Cambridge University Press (1999); Art and text from WilyD, Deuar and Serendipodous, all of the English Wikipedia; used w/o permission.)

What the colors mean:
  • Red = The Sun
  • Aquamarine = Giant Planet
  • Green = Kuiper belt object
  • Orange = Scattered disc object or Centaur
  • Pink = Trojan of Jupiter
  • Yellow = Trojan of Neptune
Numbers along the left and bottom edges show the scale in astronomical units. Colored spots show where known objects in the Solar system were in the year 2000. Four outer planets are blue, Neptune's trojans are yellow, Jupiter's are pink. Stuff between Jupiter's orbit and the inner edge of the Kuiper belt are called centaurs, and colored orange in this map.

The map shows gaps in the Kuiper belt that probably aren't there. That blank zone near the bottom, for example, is where the Kuiper belt runs in front of the Milky Way from our point of view. It's hard to pick out dimly-lit chunks of frozen gas scattered among clouds of stars.

Asteroids sharing a planet's orbit, about 60 degrees ahead of and behind the planet, are called trojans. The few known Neptunian trojans are hard to see on that reduced-scale picture. Here's a closer look:


(Data from the Minor Planet Center; Carl D. Murray and Stanley F. Dermott "Solar System Dynamics," Cambridge University Press (1999); Art and text from WilyD, Deuar and Serendipodous, all of the English Wikipedia; used w/o permission.)

Stars and the Search for Life

None of the articles I picked for this post deal with the search for life on other planets: understandably, since those stars probably don't support life.

Fomalhaut is a Class A star, much hotter than our sun, and much younger. Fomalhaut produces quite a lot more high-frequency ultraviolet radiation than our star, which might keep any sort of life from getting started.

If a planet like Earth is at a 'Goldilocks' distance from Fomalhaut, and if life can begin despite the radiation: there might be something like prokaryotes living there. That's a lot of "ifs." The earliest known life on Earth emerged when our planet was about as old as Fomalhaut is now, and that's another topic.

This week's other star, Luhman 16AB, isn't actually a star. It's a brown dwarf, roughly as hot as an oven. There are quite a few reasons why brown dwarfs probably can't support life, even if one has an Earth-like planet in its habitable zone. On the other hand, there are almost certainly an enormous number of brown dwarfs in the galaxy: so maybe a few of them got lucky, so to speak.

Fomalhaut isn't the only well-known star with a planet. Pollux, about 34 light years away in the constellation Gemini, has a planet with a nearly-circular orbit. The planet is roughly as far from Pollux as Mars is from our sun, and several times as massive as Jupiter.

We probably won't find any life orbiting Pollux. The star started as a main sequence Class A star, a bit like Fomalhaut, but ran through its supply of hydrogen and is now a K0 III giant. Any life that emerged on a Polluxian planet would have been fried long ago.

Looking at how many stars have planets, and what we're learning about the durability of life here on Earth, I think it's likely that there's life elsewhere in the universe. We may even have neighbors in the stars: free-willed rational creatures with bodies at least vaguely equivalent to ours.

If that's the case, and we meet them during my lifetime, it won't shake my faith.

More of my take on seeking truth:

1. The Comets of Fomalhaut


(From Amanda Smith, via ScienceDaily, used w/o permission.)
"Artist's impression of the Fomalhaut system. The newly discovered comet belt around Fomalhaut C is shown to the left. The comet belt around Fomalhaut A is in the distance to the right. The belt around Fomalhaut A is offset slightly, a signature of the elliptical orbits in the belt, which may have been caused by past interactions with the star Fomalhaut C. (Credit: Amanda Smith)"
"Companion's Comets the Key to Curious Exoplanet System?"
ScienceDaily (press release) (December 18, 2013)

"The nearby star Fomalhaut A hosts the most famous planetary system outside our own Solar System, containing both an exoplanet and a spectacular ring of comets. Today, an international team of astronomers announced a new discovery with the Herschel Space Observatory that has made this system even more intriguing; the least massive star of the three in the Fomalhaut system, Fomalhaut C, has now been found to host its own comet belt. The researchers published their results today in a letter to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"Fomalhaut A is one of the brightest stars in the sky. Located 25 light years away in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus ... Fomalhaut C, also named LP 876-10, is a dim red dwarf star invisible without a telescope, and was only found to be part of the Fomalhaut system in October this year.

"Fomalhaut A's prominence made it a key target for the Hubble Space Telescope, which astronomers used to find the ring of comets, hints of and then a direct image of the planet, Fomalhaut b, in 2008 (astronomers use uppercase letters for stars, and lowercase letters are used for planets, so 'Fomalhaut b' is a planet, and 'Fomalhaut B' is the second star in the system)...."
As press releases go, this one's refreshingly well-written. I'm not sure that the Fomalhaut system is "the most famous planetary system outside our own Solar System," although Fomalhaut's name is arguably more memorable than KIC 11442793 or Gliese 667C.

The Fomalhaut system is well-known, though, at least among folks who keep track of exoplanet research. For one thing, Fomalhaut b is the first planet outside the Solar system to get its picture taken by astronomers.


(From NASA and ESA, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
"...This false-color composite image, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, reveals the orbital motion of the planet Fomalhaut b. Based on these observations, astronomers calculated that the planet is in a 2,000-year-long, highly elliptical orbit...."
(Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland; via Wikipedia.)

Another 'named' star. Pollux, a little under 34 light years away, may have a planet. Then again, it may not. One source says that analysis confirmed that Pollux b is real in June of 2006. Another analysis, submitted in July of 2006, said that observed fluctuations were real, that they might be caused by a planet circling Pollux: or something else.1

Both the CalTech/NASA Expolanet Archive and the Paris Observatory's The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia list Pollux b as HD 62509 b. I checked, and Strasbourg University's SIMBAD listing confirms that Pollux is HD 62509 - star # 62509 in the Henry Draper catalog. And that's yet another topic.

Fomalhaut: Dust and Mysteries

"...The new discovery might hold the key to some of the mysteries of the Fomalhaut system. The lead author Grant Kennedy, an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, said, 'It's very rare to find two comet belts in one system, and with the two stars 2.5 light years apart this is one of the most widely separated star systems we know of. It made us wonder why both Fomalhaut A and C have comet belts, and whether the belts are related in some way.' To get a feeling for how far 2.5 light years is, light from the Sun takes only 8 minutes to get to the Earth, and 5.5 hours to get to Pluto, and the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is only 4 light years away.

"This discovery may help solve the major mystery in the Fomalhaut system: the orbits of the comet ring and planet around Fomalhaut A are elliptical (which simply means that the orbits aren't circular). The elliptical orbits are thought to be the result of close encounters with something else in the system, perhaps with another as yet undetected planet or perhaps with one of the two other stars, B or C.

"The discovery of the comet belt around C is important because such encounters can not only make the comet belts elliptical, they can also make them brighter by causing the comets to collide more often, releasing massive amounts of dust and ice. Stars are rarely seen to have such bright comet belts, so their detection around both A and C suggests that they may have had their brightnesses enhanced by a previous close encounter between the two...."
(ScienceDaily)
The Fomalhaut star system is wonderfully odd. It looks like the three stars orbit a common center, even though light takes two and a half years to travel between Fomalhaut A and C.

There's an unexpected amount of small debris in the comet ring around Fomalhaut A, which may be caused by comets colliding many times each day: or by something else. I'll get back to that.

2. Luhman 16AB: Not Quite Stars, Maybe a Planet

"Possible Exoplanet Found Orbiting Nearby Binary Luhman 16AB"
Sci-News.com (December 17, 2013)

"Astronomers have detected what they think may be an exoplanet circling a brown dwarf pair called Luhman 16AB, the third-closest star system to the Sun.

"Luhman 16AB, also known as WISE 1049-5319, was discovered earlier this year by Prof Kevin Luhman of Penn State University and his colleagues.

" 'The distance to this brown dwarf pair is 6.5 light years – so close that Earth's television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there,' Prof Luhman noted.

"Luhman 16AB is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnard's star, which was discovered 6 light-years from the Sun in 1916...."
Brown dwarfs are stars with the fires out, sort of. A brown dwarf is a ball of gas, mostly hydrogen, bigger than Jupiter: but not massive enough to start hydrogen fusion in its core. These not-quite-stars are about as hot as an oven, and have weather, with clouds the size of planets.

Some have planets, or whatever astronomers decide to call a thing that orbits another thing where the smaller thing is about as massive as Mercury, Saturn, or Jupiter; and the bigger thing isn't massive enough to be called a star.

The universe is simple in some ways, anything but in others, and that's yet again another topic.

Aside from being very close to us, by cosmic standards, Luhman 16AB is special because there may be a third object in the system: which brings me back to that possible planet.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory noticed that one of the the brown dwarfs wiggles, or exhibits periodic perturbations, depending on how many syllables you prefer.

It's too early to be sure, but they may have detected effects of a planet. If that's what they've been measuring, the planet's year is between two months and a year long.

3. Colliding Comets? Something's Spreading Dust Around Fomalhaut


(From ESA/Herschel/PACS/Bram Acke, KU Leuven, Belgium, via Space.com, used w/o permission.)
"This infrared image shows the young star Fomalhaut and its surrounding dust disc it as seen with ESA's Herschel space observatory. Astronomers suspect Fomalhaut's debris disc stems from dust particles created by prolific comet collisions, with an average rate of 2,000 daily crashes between comets of 1 kilometer across."
Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/Bram Acke, KU Leuven, Belgium
"Comet Demolition Derby Around Star Surprises Scientists"
Space.com (April 12, 2012)

"A young star that is home to at least one alien planet is also ringed by a vast, dusty cloud of comets, like our own solar system. But there's a big difference: There may be as many as 83 trillion comets there, with collisions destroying thousands each day, a new study suggests.

"In fact, there is so much dust around the star that the equivalent of 2,000 comets, each a half-mile (1 kilometer) wide, would have to have been obliterated every day to create the icy dust belt seen today, researchers say. In an announcement of the discovery, European Space Agency officials dubbed the demolition derby a 'comet massacre.'

"The dust also could have been created by few crashes of larger comets – perhaps just two collisions every day between comets 6 miles across (10 km) – but that's still a mind-boggling statistic, they added...."
Astronomers can't see the comets, much less individual dust grains: but are confident about the size of the dust because it's so cold, between minus 382 and minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit. That's minus 230 and minus 170 degrees Celsius.

Fomalhaut's A's dust ring is farther from its star than Sol's Kuiper belt, but Fomalhaut is brighter than our star: so those dust grains should get blown away by pressure from Fomalhaut A.

Fomalhaut is young, for a star: but stars can last a long time. Dust has been getting swept out of Fomalhaut's 'Kuiper belt' for about 440,000,000 years. After nearly half a billion years, the original dust should have long since been blown into the abyss between stars.

Something's replacing it, and debris from colliding comets are among the less-unlikely sources.

Debris, Data, and Explanations


(From NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI); via Space.com, used w/o permission.)
"This illustration shows the size of the debris disc observed around the star Fomalhaut, as compared to the size of the Kuiper Belt and asteroid belt in our solar system."
"...The crashing comets encircle the star Fomalhaut about 25 light-years from Earth. Acke and his colleagues studied the comet belt with the European Space Agency's far-infrared Herschel space observatory, which spotted the telltale dust created by the constant collisions of comets in motion, the researchers said. [Latest photos from Herschel observatory]

"Depending on comets' sizes, there could be between 260 billion and 83 trillion comets in the dust belt around the star, the researchers found. If you combined the amount of material in Fomalhaut's dust belt, the mass would be the equivalent of 110 Earths, they added.

"Fomalhaut's comet belt arrangement is similar to the Kuiper belt of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune in our own solar system. Scientists have known about a dust cloud surrounding Fomalhaut since the 1980s, though now the Herschel observatory has revealed the ring in greater detail than ever before...."
(Space.com)
Maybe between two and 2,000 comets run into each other every 24 hours in Fomalhaut A's comet belt, or maybe something else is kicking up dust. This isn't dust in the British sense, by the way: rubbish readied for disposal. Fomalhaut's dust is very tiny particles, about a millionth of a meter across.

Happily, Fomalhaut is so close and so bright that observing it is comparatively easy. If comets have been in a sort of demolition derby there, scientists will almost certainly get enough data to explain why they're colliding: the comets, not the scientists.

If scientists learn that the dust couldn't come from comets - - - I'll be very interested in seeing what other explanations get published.


(From Grant Kennedy / Paul Kalas, via Sci-News.com, used w/o permission.)
"View of the Fomalhaut triple star system from Earth; the small inset shows a zoom of the newly discovered comet belt around Fomalhaut C as seen at infrared wavelengths by Herschel. Image credit: Grant Kennedy / Paul Kalas."
(Sci-News.com)

More about Fomalhaut:
Related posts, about science and:

1 Pollux almost certainly has a planet:

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

South Sudan: New Nation, Old Trouble

There's trouble in South Sudan: a bit more than what's usual for our world.
  1. "Mediated Political Talks," "Ethnic Divisions," and People
  2. South Sudan: Statements
  3. Hope and Decisions

Trouble in South Sudan

As far as I know, what's happening in South Sudan hasn't been called a war: not officially. Folks are systematically killing each other though, so it's not "peace," either.

What apparently set off this month's conflict was disagreement over who should have won the recent election. That was just the trigger, though. I gather that at least two ethnic groups in South Sudan have been at odds for a long time. That's not unusual, which doesn't make it right.

Maybe it's obvious, but war is not a good thing. People get killed, things get broken. Avoiding war is a good idea. So is working for peace, although it's okay to keep someone else from killing you, and that's almost another topic. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2302-23017)

South Sudan's troubles aren't the sort of thing I enjoy thinking about on Christmas Day. On the other hand, one of my Lord's titles is Prince of Peace - and we've got a mandate to make this a better world. (Catechism, 1928-1942)

I'm not personally involved with anyone in South Sudan, but know about some folks who are:
I think folks in South Sudan need to work out their own way of accepting each other. Meanwhile, many folks there have very serious, immediate needs. That's something we can help with, which is why I included those Caritas International links. No pressure, of course.

I plan to be back Friday morning, discussing an entirely different sort of news.

1. "Mediated Political Talks," "Ethnic Divisions," and People


(From AP, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
"South Sudan crisis: Increased efforts to end bloodshed"
BBC News (December 25, 2013)

"International efforts are intensifying to end the bloodshed in South Sudan, where thousands of people are believed to have died in the past 10 days.

"The UN Security Council is almost doubling the number of peacekeepers to 12,500 in the world's newest state.

"US Secretary of State John Kerry urged both President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar to end hostilities and begin mediated political talks.

"The fighting has exposed ethnic divisions in South Sudan.

"Mr Kiir is an ethnic Dinka, while Mr Machar represents the Nuer tribe.

"The violence erupted on 15 December when Mr Kiir accused Mr Machar, who was vice-president until his sacking in July, of plotting a coup.

"Mr Machar denies trying to seize power...."
I think "mediated political talks" are a good idea. I'm also quite sure that political ambition is just part of South Sudan's troubles.

Phrases like "ethnic divisions" may be cliches, but it's a fact human beings aren't all alike. I like it that way, and think diversity is a good idea. That's real diversity, not the 'my way or the highway' version.

Not everybody sees the world that way.

It's easy, in a way, for me to be tolerant. Nobody's trying to kill me because I'm the 'wrong sort.' I probably had kinfolks on both sides of the Lindisfarne incident, but that was a dozen centuries back now, and not quite another topic.

2. South Sudan: Statements


(From FoxNews.com, used w/o permission.)
"UN official says 'absolutely no doubt' thousands dead in South Sudan"
FoxNews.com (December 25, 2013)

"The United Nations' humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan said Tuesday that he had "absolutely no doubt" that thousands of people had been killed in violence that threatens to tear the world's newest country apart a little more than two years after it won independence.

"Toby Lanzer made the remarks quoted by Sky News after U.N. investigators discovered two mass grave in the rebel-held city Bentiu in the oil-rich Unity state. Human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told the Associated Press that one grave contained 14 bodies and a site nearby contained 20 bodies. Originally the U.N. said 75 bodies had been seen but later corrected that statement to 34 bodies seen and 75 people missing and feared dead.

"In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to beef up its peacekeeping force in South Sudan. It condemned targeted violence against civilians and ethnic communities and called for 'an immediate cessation of hostilities and the immediate opening of a dialogue.'..."
A spokesperson getting statistics wrong in an early statement doesn't surprise me. What's going on in South Sudan isn't a nicely organized ball game, with referees keeping score.

Under the circumstances, I think it's remarkable that the count was correct, and all that needed correcting was to change "dead" to "missing and feared dead."

About the U.N. Security Council's vote, I think it's a good idea. What some diplomats say, thousands of miles away from South Sudan, probably won't make much difference. Still, what they said makes sense: and might encourage enough folks who do make a difference that talking is better than killing.

I'm not a great fan of the United Nations, by the way. But that outfit is the closest thing we've got to Tennyson's 'Parliament of man ... Federation of the world."

Eventually, I hope we will have an "international authority with the necessary competence and power" to stop wars. (Catechism, 2308)

Right now, the United Nations is what we have to work with. For the moment, it will have to do. (June 16, 2011)

3. Hope and Decisions

"South Sudan conflict 'spreading around the country' "
BBC News video (December 24, 2013)

"New evidence is emerging of alleged ethnic killings committed during more than a week of fighting in South Sudan.

"The violence follows a power struggle between President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, and his Nuer ex-deputy Riek Machar.

"The BBC's Africa analyst James Copnall reports."
BBC News is either taking the usual precautions about not jumping to conclusions, or the "alleged" part of "alleged ethnic killings" has to do with motive: not whether or not folks are turning up dead.

Either way, they're dead. I hope enough folks in South Sudan decide that staying alive and making their country work is more important than killing the 'other' people. My ancestors eventually made that decision: so it's not a forlorn hope.

Related posts:
Background:

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Whatever



About two millennia back, Jesus was born. It's still a big deal, which is why folks like me celebrate the event each year, right around the winter solstice.

You'll find a slightly-larger version of that picture on Apathetic Lemming of the North. That's the Lemming, with his back to the camera.

One more thing: Merry Christmas!

Related posts:

Sunday, December 22, 2013

"In the Beginning:" a Continuing Story

The story starts here:


(From NASA/JPL/STScI Hubble Deep Field Team, used w/o permission.)
"1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,"
(Genesis 1:1)
About two thousand years ago, my Lord came to live with us.
"1 2 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

"He was in the beginning with God.

"3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be

"through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;

"4 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."
(John 1:1-5)

"And the Word became flesh 9 and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth."
(John 1:14)
We celebrate his arrival each year around this time.


(From John William Waterhouse, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
"10 In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth,

"to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary.

"And coming to her, he said, 'Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.'

"But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

"Then the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

"Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.

"He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, 11 and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father,

"and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.' "
(Luke 1:26-33)

(From Georges de La Tour, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
"And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David,

"to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

"While they were there, the time came for her to have her child,

"and she gave birth to her firstborn son. 3 She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

"4 Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock."
(Luke 2:1-8)
After Jesus was executed, and then stopped being dead, my Lord gave us standing orders:
"11 Then Jesus approached and said to them, 'All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

"Go, therefore, 12 and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit,

"teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. 13 And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.' "
(Matthew 28:18-20)
And that's another part of the story.


(From ISS007, used w/o permission.)

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Friday, December 20, 2013

Will the Real Neanderthals Please Stand Up?

Neanderthals were incredibly strong, had brains bigger than today's average, and disappeared about 28,000 years back. We're learning more about how they lived: and maybe how they thought.
  1. Intentional Burial, Neanderthals, and Safety Coffins
  2. Handy With Tools
  3. Big Brains, Low Brows
  4. Getting a Grip About Neanderthals

Neanderthals: Real and Imagined


(From GEICO, via ZDNet, used w/o permission.)

A 'caveman' could have walked with hunched shoulders and spoken in grunts and shrieks: but so could the fellow wearing a necktie in that screenshot.

GEICO's caveman commercials weren't the first time that folks from prehistoric times were shown as articulated, sensible people: but stories like Isaac Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy" were few and far between.

For quite a bit of the 20th century, many folks assumed that Neanderthals looked like a 1911 reconstruction: a "primitive" creature with an ape's posture and hand-like feet.

These days some scientists say that Marcellin Boule goofed because the man whose skeleton Boule used had severe arthritis. Others say that there wasn't enough of the skeleton left for an accurate reconstruction, so Boule filled in the gaps with a reasonable guess about what Neanderthals were like. I think Boule could have been a little too sure about evolutionary theory of his day: but that's mere speculation.

We've learned quite a bit since 1911, although there's still several opinions about who - or what - Neanderthals were.

Accepting Reality

I've become dubious about assumptions that Neanderthals and other early models of humanity weren't 'human.'

I don't doubt that somewhere along the line humanity started from matter that wasn't human. It's also obvious that they didn't look like folks do today. But we're learning that 'primitive' creatures like Neanderthals cooked their vegetables, made tools, and - almost certainly - created art.

That's the sort of thing people do. It even looks like we were using fire well over 700,000 years before the first Neanderthals appeared.

As I said last week, I take Genesis 2:7 seriously. I also understand that the Bible wasn't written by an American and isn't a science textbook. (June 9, 2012, January 14, 2011)

I prefer accepting reality as it is, and find it easy to believe that we've learned a little about this astonishing creation since the days when the Akkadian Empire flourished.

Not Perfect, Yet

I believe that God created, and is creating, the universe. (Genesis 1:1; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 279, 301-303)

That's not even close to assuming that the Almighty is obliged to accommodate a timetable published by a 17th century Calvinist.

God doesn't make junk, but this isn't a perfect world. Not yet. This creation is in a "state of journeying," which I think sounds cooler in Latin: "in statu viae." Part of our job is managing creation on that journey, and that's another topic. (March 17, 2013)

1. Intentional Burial, Neanderthals, and Safety Coffins


(From Beauval, Archéosphère company, via LiveScience, used w/o permission.)
"A pit in a French cave that may have been an intentional grave dug by Neanderthals to bury one of their number." Credit: C. Beauval, Archéosphère company
"Neanderthals May Have Intentionally Buried Their Dead"
Charles Q Choi, LiveScience (December 16, 2013)

"Are modern humans the only species that has ever dug graves? New research suggests the answer is no: Neanderthals also may have intentionally buried their dead. The new findings are further evidence that Neanderthals might have possessed complex forms of thought — enough for special treatment of the dead, scientists said.

"The first potential discovery of a Neanderthal tomb occurred in 1908 at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southwestern France. The well-preserved state of these 50,000-year-old bones led researchers to suggest that Neanderthals buried their dead well before modern humans arrived in western Europe. However, skeptics argued that the burials may not have been intentional.

"Neanderthals were known to bury their dead in the Middle East. However, these burials dated to a time when contact with modern humans (Homo sapiens) might have occurred, suggesting that humans' Neanderthal relatives might not have come up with this idea on their own. ..."
We've used cooking fires for at least 1,000,000 years, and kitchens of a sort for 800,000 or more. Neanderthals didn't look quite like the folks who live in Europe today: but I don't see why they wouldn't have buried their dead.

A certain degree of rational skepticism is important in science. In the long run, it keeps scientists from getting assumptions and facts confused. We may not have quite enough evidence to prove that Neanderthals showed respect for their dead more or less the way folks to today.

Then again, maybe the evidence is there, and not all scientists want to believe it.

Reading that Neanderthals may have "intentionally buried" their dead reminded me of safety coffins and other gadgets that enjoy occasional popularity: and that's yet another topic.


(From "Popular Mechanics" Magazine 1921, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

2. Handy With Tools


(From University of Missouri, via LiveScience, used w/o permission.)
"Researchers have discovered a 1.42-million-year-old hand fossil that possesses the styloid process, a vital anatomical feature that allows the hand to lock into the wrist bones, giving humans the ability to make and use complex tools."
"Human Hand Fossil Turns Back Clock 500,000 Years on Complex Tool Use"
Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience (December 16, 2013)

"The discovery of a 1.4-million-year-old hand-bone fossil reveals that the modern human ability to make and use complex tools may have originated far earlier than scientists previously thought, researchers say.

"A critical trait that distinguishes modern humans from all other species alive today is the ability to make complex tools. It's not just the extraordinarily powerful human brain, but also the human hand, that gives humans this unique ability. In contrast, apes — humans' closest living relatives — lack a powerful and precise enough grip to create and use complex tools effectively.

"A key anatomical feature of the modern human hand is the third metacarpal, a bone in the palm that connects the middle finger to the wrist...."
'It happened earlier' seems to be a recurring theme as we learn more about our ancestors. The earliest verified use of fire goes back about 1,000,000 years and we've apparently had a very 'human' knack for throwing stuff for almost 2,000,000 years.

It's likely that this hand bone comes from someone who lived about 1,420,000 years ago. That's not surprising, since by then folks had been making stone hand axes and cleavers for 380,000 years.

I'm strongly inclined to see homo erectus, Neanderthals, and our other early ancestors, as people. I don't look quite like them, but I don't look quite like my more recent forebears, either.

Driven by Inadequate Impulse Control???


(From BodyParts3D, DBCLS; via Wikimedia Commons; used w/o permission.)

Theses pictures show the third metacarpal in red. The styloid process is a sort of small flange on the back side, by the wrist.

The last I heard, there's still debate about whether bigger brains drove tool making and tool-ready hands, making tools encouraged bigger brains and more dextrous hands, or hands came first.

I've jokingly suggested that we got 'all of the above' because our remote ancestors had trouble with impulse control.

3. Big Brains, Low Brows


(From Neanderthal Museum (Mettmann, Germany), via LiveScience, used w/o permission.)
"Neanderthals had a characteristic 'bun head' shaped skull which allowed for expanded visual processing in the back of the brain. That left them less head space for the frontal lobe, which governs social cognition."
"Neanderthals Doomed by Vision-Centered Brains"
Tia Ghose, LiveScience (March 12, 2013)

"Neanderthals' keen vision may explain why they couldn't cope with environmental change and died out, despite having the same sized brains as modern humans, new research suggests.

"The findings, published today (March 12) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that Neanderthals developed massive visual regions in their brains to compensate for Europe's low light levels. That, however, reduced the brain space available for social cognition.

" 'We have a social brain, whereas Neanderthals appear to have a visual brain,' said Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton, who was not involved in the study...."
I give Clive Gamble credit for saying "appear to have." He's probably right, since Neanderthal brains were almost certainly organized along the same lines as ours. Assuming that large eye sockets mean large eyes is probably right, too: although I'd like to see supporting evidence, like muscle attachments that make more sense if the eyeball was bigger than today's version.

What the team Dunbar was on concluded about Neanderthals' frontal lobes may be right, too: and could help explain why folks who look like us are still around.

"Social cognition" isn't just about knowing what to say at a party, or which fork to use. It's the sort of thinking we do whenever we work, relax, or trade with other people.

Among other things, we may be wired with a sort of 'cheater detector' that helps us learn to tell when another person isn't being honest with us. Maybe Neanderthals had trouble telling the difference between a good bargain and a disastrous tradeoff.

Art and Assumptions

In a perfect world, nobody would be dishonest: but this isn't a perfect world: yet. That brings up free will, original sin, and more topics than I want to cram into this post.

Gamble also said that what the Royal Society published explains why Neanderthals didn't decorate themselves or make art. Maybe there's so much getting published these days, that an expert can't keep up.

Back in December of 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published an article by folks who were studying "Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals."

Maybe Gamble believes that Neanderthals in what's now Spain couldn't have used body paint or shells, so the cosmetics must have belonged to someone else. Or he hasn't gotten around to skimming the PNAS article yet.

There's good reason to think that Neanderthals made some cave art, although it's not up to Cave of Altaira standards. I think we have a lot more to learn about what sort of folks Neanderthals were.

4. Getting a Grip About Neanderthals


(From Smithsonian Magazine, used w/o permission.)
"Indicating that Neanderthals buried their dead, a stone-lined pit in southwest France held the 70,000-year-old remains of a man wrapped in bearskin. The illustration is based on a diorama at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. (Stan Fellows)"
"Rethinking Neanderthals"
Joe Alper, Smithsonian magazine (June 2003)

"Research suggests the so-called brutes fashioned tools, buried their dead, maybe cared for the sick and even conversed. But why, if they were so smart, did they disappear?

"Bruno Maureille [anthropologist at the University of Bordeaux] unlocks the gate in a chain-link fence, and we walk into the fossil bed past a pile of limestone rubble, the detritus of an earlier dig. We're 280 miles southwest of Paris, ... where for three decades researchers have been uncovering, fleck by fleck, the remains of humanity's most notorious relatives, the Neanderthals.

"We clamber 15 feet down a steep embankment into a swimming pool-size pit. Two hollows in the surrounding limestone indicate where shelters once stood. I'm just marveling at the idea that Neanderthals lived here about 50,000 years ago when Maureille, .... points to a whitish object resembling a snapped pencil that's embedded in the ledge. 'Butchered reindeer bone,' he says. 'And here's a tool, probably used to cut meat from one of these bones.' The tool, or lithic, is shaped like a hand-size D.

"All around the pit, I now see, are other lithics and fossilized bones. The place, Maureille says, was probably a butchery where Neanderthals in small numbers processed the results of what appear to have been very successful hunts. That finding alone is significant, because for a long time paleoanthropologists have viewed Neanderthals as too dull and too clumsy to use efficient tools, never mind organize a hunt and divvy up the game. Fact is, this site, along with others across Europe and in Asia, is helping overturn the familiar conception of Neanderthals as dumb brutes. Recent studies suggest they were imaginative enough to carve artful objects and perhaps clever enough to invent a language...."
I'll agree that Neanderthal probably weren't the brutish not-quite-people that paleoanthropologists first imagined. On the other hand, writing that maybe "...they were imaginative enough ... and perhaps clever enough..." may still be a bit condescending.

As I've said before, "sly and clever," isn't the quite same as saying "shrewd and smart."

Conventional Wisdom and Megaliths

"...Around 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals innovated again. In what passes for the blink of an eye in paleoanthropology, some Neanderthals were suddenly making long, thin stone blades and hafting more tools. Excavations in southwest France and northern Spain have uncovered Neanderthal tools betraying a more refined technique involving, Kuhn speculates, the use of soft hammers made of antler or bone.

"What happened? According to the conventional wisdom, there was a culture clash. In the early 20th century, when researchers first discovered those 'improved' lithics—called Châtelperronian and Uluzzian, depending on where they were found—they saw the relics as evidence that modern humans, Homo sapiens or Cro-Magnon, had arrived in Neanderthal territory. That's because the tools resembled those unequivocally associated with anatomically modern humans, who began colonizing western Europe 38,000 years ago. And early efforts to assign a date to those Neanderthal lithics yielded time frames consistent with the arrival of modern humans.
(Joe Alper, Smithsonian magazine)
Most historians, archeologists, and paleontologists sincerely want to sort out what really happened: my opinion. Sometimes, as they collect new data, and learn new ways of analyzing what's been learned before, they have to change their minds.

For example, I remember when textbooks said that ancient Egyptians were the first folks to use huge stone blocks in structures. We knew more about the ancient Mediterranean civilizations than the 'natives' who lived in Europe when Pharaohs ruled.

It was fairly obvious that Europeans had built places like Stonehenge, but academics weren't quite ready to believe that 'natives' could have done it on their own.

Assumptions and Pyramid Builders

Ancient Egypt got started around 5,000 years ago, and built the big pyramids during the Old Kingdom. That's roughly 4,700 to 4,200 years back. Work on Stonehenge's final phase didn't start until about 4,000 years ago, so historians and archeologists figured that the "primitive" Europeans imitated what they'd learned by trading with Egypt.

That assumption still worked, even after we learned that the stone part of Stonehenge didn't start until about a century after the Old Kingdom started. On the other hand, it looks like work on the Giza pyramids didn't start until about 4,500 years back: after stonework at Stonehenge started going up. We were also learning that folks in Asia Minor and elsewhere used large stones even earlier.

A sort of compromise position was that techniques for using really big pieces of rock developed independently. Maybe so, or maybe we weren't quite ready to accept the notion that 'primitive' people might have taught the ancient Egyptians how to build pyramids.

"Primitive" People: Who Learned What, How and When?

"But more recent discoveries and studies, including tests that showed the lithics to be older than previously believed, have prompted d’Errico and others to argue that Neanderthals advanced on their own. 'They could respond to some change in their environment that required them to improve their technology,' he says. 'They could behave like modern humans.'

"Meanwhile, these 'late' Neanderthals also discovered ornamentation, says d’Errico and his archaeologist colleague João Zilhão of the University of Lisbon. Their evidence includes items made of bone, ivory and animal teeth marked with grooves and perforations...."
(Joe Alper, Smithsonian magazine)
We're probably even less ready to accept the idea that Neanderthals taught folks who looked like us how to upgrade their stone tech. Maybe Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons, and others, developed new and improved stone tools independently.

Or maybe it was a cooperative effort: sort of like what's happening in information technology today. No one country seems to have a monopoly on new ideas, and that's not quite another topic.

Successful as Neanderthals: Eventually

"...Contrary to the view that Neanderthals were evolutionary failures—they died out about 28,000 years ago—they actually had quite a run. 'If you take success to mean the ability to survive in hostile, changing environments, then Neanderthals were a great success,' says archaeologist John Shea of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. 'They lived 250,000 years or more in the harshest climates experienced by primates, not just humans.' In contrast, we modern humans have only been around for 100,000 years or so and moved into colder, temperate regions only in the past 40,000 years...."
(Joe Alper, Smithsonian magazine)
Riding out 250,000 years of Earth's current glacial epoch is no small accomplishment. Looking at what we're learning about the human genome, I suspect that Neanderthals aren't exactly "extinct." 'Neanderthal' DNA is still in folks whose recent ancestors lived in Europe.

Their unique characteristics apparently were overwhelmed when folks with bulging foreheads hit their stride. Make that "our stride." Like most folks living today, I look more like the pointy-chinned Cro-Magnons than their huskier contemporaries.

I think there's a very good chance that we'll last at least as long as the Neanderthals, although folks living 125,000 years from now may not look quite the same. Humankind had a very long history when Neanderthals faded from the scene. We don't always make wise decisions: but we almost always learn from our mistakes. Eventually.

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Marian Apparition: Champion, Wisconsin

Background:Posts in this blog: In the news:

What's That Doing in a Nice Catholic Blog?

From time to time, a service that I use will display links to - odd - services and retailers.

I block a few of the more obvious dubious advertisers.

For example: psychic anything, numerology, mediums, and related practices are on the no-no list for Catholics. It has to do with the Church's stand on divination. I try to block those ads.

Sometime regrettable advertisements get through, anyway.

Bottom line? What that service displays reflects the local culture's norms, - not Catholic teaching.