More on Twittering the Revolution in Iran

The Wall Street Journal chimes in with another note of caution.

Perhaps the State will never be as agile and clever as individual expert hackers, but it’s unlikely most of the people Twittering Revolutions will be expert hackers. It’s more likely they will be people who leave behind silicon footprints, making them prime targets for retribution the day after.

Stendhal’s “Memoirs of a Tourist” in the Quarterly Review

I stumbled across something remarkable in an old copy of the British Quarterly Review.  It was a review of Stendhal’s “Memoirs of a Tourist.”  Stendhal is my favorite novelist, so I was not a little interested in learning what the Quarterly had to say about him.  What I found was one of the better vignettes of the author I’ve run across, quite true to life and full of insight into the human condition, written by a sadly anonymous someone who must have himself been a formidable intellect.  I heartily recommend it to the safekeeping of Stendhal’s “Happy Few.”  One could read through many a modern literary review without finding his equal in intelligence, perception, and writing skill.

The Tory (conservative) Quarterly Review and the Whig (liberal) Edinburgh Review towered like giants over the literary and political scene in Great Britain during most of the first half of the 19^th century.  Their influence was worldwide, and their praise or contempt could mean life or death to the literary careers of the aspiring artists of the day.  In spite of their political agendas, they tended to be more judicious and fair in their treatment of authors whose politics they found uncongenial than the magazines and journals of our own day.  The Quarterly, however, seldom praised liberals, and Stendhal was a liberal, although one of a decidedly unusual stamp.  Any weakness in a political opponent’s style, the accuracy of their work, or the strength of their logic was treated with a high toned, rather elegant derisiveness.  There were several playful jabs, but nothing derisive in this review, Tory though its author certainly was.

It is clear that this admirable reviewer felt the power of Stendhal’s writing.  In other words, he had that very unusual combination of knowledge and intellect necessary to perceive that he was dealing with a man of genius, at a time when, while that man had a certain literary reputation, he had hardly begun to acquire the literary status he eventually achieved.  One must recall that “Memoirs of a Tourist” was one of Stendhal’s minor works, written under a pseudonym, merely to bring in some very necessary income.  No matter.  Our reviewer caught the essence of the man through the mist, and portrayed him with such wonderful simplicity, strength, and accuracy, that one can only hope that some, at least, of the Quarterly’s readers could appreciate what he put before them.

Here are a few excerpts from the review, which appeared in the December 1839 issue of the Quarterly.  First, the beginning:

“We have read these volumes with lively interest:  much amusement is to be found in them; not a little of valuable information; the observations, reflections, jokes, and sarcasms, of a clever man – a very favourable specimen of the liberal of the present time; noted down from day to day, as he repeatedly asserts, in the course of journeys undertaken for professional purposes through several of the finest, and one or two of the obscurest, provinces of France.  The book is undoubtedly one of the ablest that the Parisian press has lately produced; and we are inclined to believe that it offers better materials for an estimate of the actual social condition of the France of Louis Philippe than could be gathered from a score of works holding forth graver pretensions.”

This is rare praise indeed for a liberal to appear in the pages of such a quintessentially Tory journal as the Quarterly Review.  Our Great Unknown was hardly taken in, by the way, by the typically Stendhalian pseudonym the author used in “Memoirs of a Tourist.”  In his own words:

“We understand (the work) is generally ascribed to the pen of M. Beyle (Stendhal’s real name)… We are not well acquainted with M. Beyle’s personal history (an observation that makes the rest of the review that much more remarkable, ed.) but it is evident that if he be the author of the Memoires, he has endeavoured to mystify his readers by the account which the Touriste is made to deliver of himself.  …never was there a thinner disguise than this gentleman’s assumed character of an iron-merchant.  There is not one mercantile atom in his composition.”  (How true! ed.)

There follows:

“He is evidently a practiced professional litterateur, who has spent a considerable part of his life in Italy…”  (No doubt about that!)

Perhaps the most convincing bona fide of our worthy reviewers recognition of Stendhal’s virtuosity is his attempt to convert him to his own party on the spot:

“M. Beyle may placard whatever liberalism he thinks proper upon fit occasions, but neither he, no, nor any other gentleman (the French have adopted this word by the way, as well as dandy) can be at heart an enemy of aristocracy.  He has exactly the same horror for universal suffrage, even for the coaxing of shopkeepers, and the mystification of town-councils, that the most dainty Sybarite of Vienna could avow.  In all his habits, feelings, opinions – in all but a certain stock of phrases – he is diametrically opposed to the principles of the Movement and the practices of its sincere advocates.”

There is much truth in what our Great Unknown says here, but I suspect he’s rather wide of the mark in converting Stendhal to a Tory, lock stock and barrel.  Be that as it may, I must say I’m grateful the fashion of writing anonymous reviews has passed.  Tory or Whig, our reviewer is surely a superlative one, and I would be pleased to learn more of what he has to teach if only I knew his name.  I appeal to those most likely to know to favor me with any clues they might have.

I note in closing that this particular number of the Quarterly Review has a great deal more matter of interest to anyone who cares to peek through a looking glass at another age, including an account of the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle, written long before Darwin dreamed of publishing “The Origin of Species.” 

Stendhal

Plutonium and the Return to Nuclear Power

I’m on board when it comes to restarting the nuclear industry – with reservations. What’s not to like? No carbon footprint. Less release of dangerous radionuclides into the atmosphere than coal plants. No need to pave thousands of square miles of environmentally fragile desert with solar collectors, windmills, and similar “environmentally friendly” and “sustainable” energy sources.

There is one big potential problem, though. When you burn uranium in a conventional nuclear reactor, you breed plutonium. The spent fuel rods currently stored on site at every nuclear plant in the country are laced with the stuff. You don’t need fancy centrifuges or gas diffusion plants to separate the plutonium. Any reasonably skilled chemist could do it. Once you’ve separated the plutonium, you have the one key ingredient you need to make a nuclear weapon. Oh, I know, it won’t be weapons grade plutonium, but no matter. The United States conducted a successful nuclear test with reactor grade plutonium.

Why, you ask, haven’t terrorists already stolen a batch of fuel rods if it’s so simple. Well, at the moment, the problem is that they’re so highly radioactive that bad actors would probably fry themselves before they could do any damage. They won’t stay that way, though. The radionuclides that make fuel rods so “hot” when it comes to emitting radiation have a certain half life. They decay, and become less radioactive at an exponential rate. At some point, they will become safe enough to handle, even without specialized equipment. The exact time will depend on the material configuration of the fuel rods when they were produced, and the degree of risk the person handling them is willing to take. True, we’re probably talking hundreds or thousands of years in the future, but beyond what date can we ignore the welfare of future generations? When does it become OK to subject them to the risk of nuclear annihilation?

Fortunately, there are solutions to the problem. One is fuel recycling, in which the plutonium from spent rods would be extracted and recycled into new fuel rods. An even better one is building breeder reactors to go along with the recycling. The problem with conventional reactors is that they use up the U235 in natural uranium as fuel. Unfortunately, only seven tenths of one percent of natural uranium is isotope 235, and the rest is 238. Depleted uranium is mostly U238, being what’s left over when the U235 is separated.

With breeder reactors, the U238 can be gradually converted into plutonium 239, a reactor fuel. In that way, a much greater percentage of the natural uranium could be converted to energy, greatly extending the time available to us for figuring out what to do when that fuel supply runs out. Alternatively, thorium, which can be converted into U233, another fissile material, could be used in the breeders. U233 has the very significant advantage of not being chemically separable from other uranium isotopes, and would, therefore be much more difficult to weaponize than plutonium.

Plutonium-based energy production is not benign. It would require tight security standards at every step along the fuel chain. But, then again, no known method of producing energy is benign, including the “environmentally friendly” ones noted above. If the choice were mine to make, I think I would agree with the guys over at Atomic Insights.

Meanwhile, it strikes me as a little crazy that we are gratuitously pumping potentially energy rich depleted uranium slugs out of the barrels of gatling guns. If we really start running out of energy, others might notice there are better uses for the stuff as well.

Nuclear Terrorism and Nuclear Smuggling: Will Portal Radiation Detectors Save Us?

Well, no. Not if you’re talking about interdicting a nuclear weapon or its components. The syllogism works like this: 1) Anyone with enough Special Nuclear Material (SNM) to assemble a bomb would have to be brain dead to try to tote it through a radiation portal. 2) Anyone clever enough to acquire enough SNM to make a bomb is not brain dead. 3) Therefore, anyone with enough SNM to make a bomb will not attempt to carry it through a radiation portal. (Apropos SNM, the image to the left shows a guy holding a plutonium “button.” He probably wouldn’t do that if it were radioactive enough to kill him outright.)

The location of radiation portals and their approximate performance parameters are easily accessible to potential nuclear smugglers at any of a host of “intelligence” websites online. The question then becomes, can they avoid passing them? Of course! How many of the millions of illegal immigrants currently in the country do you suppose passed through radiation portals? There are a virtually infinite number of ways to smuggle SNM into the country that don’t involve passing through radiation detectors, ranging from slingshots to personal submarines. The unclassified amounts of SNM deemed sufficient for a nuclear explosive device are 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, or 4 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium. However, there’s no need whatsoever to smuggle such large quantities all at once. Terrorists could “smuggle by components.” In other words, they could simply smuggle the SNM into the country bit by bit until they had enough for a weapon.

By the way, dear reader, if you are one of those whose tastes run to calculating how much SNM it would “really” take to make a bomb, here’s some advice for you: Don’t do it! In general, don’t try to impress everyone with how clever you are by speculating on the design details of nuclear weapons. You will take yourself right out of the dialogue, because anyone who really knows anything about such matters is liable to have a “Q” security clearance, and, according to DOE guidelines, will be unable to comment on whatever brilliant conclusions you’ve come to on the subject.

In fact, it is absolutely unnecessary to wander into classified territory in discussions of nuclear terrorism, or at least into the classified territory relating to the design of nuclear weapons. Once upon a time, the National Weapons Laboratories and others used to (and maybe still do) come up with silly menageries of “threat objects” to “help” the radiation portal operators focus in on what to look for. Of course, the radiation signature of such “threat objects” can vary over a wide range depending on what kind of shielding and other objects surround it, and even in which direction the “threat object” is pointing when it passes through the portal. Other than that, there are an infinite variety of potentially lethal weapon configurations that are quite different from those in whatever menagerie you happen to consult.

Look, the “threat object” is SNM. That’s what terrorists have to have to assemble a nuclear device, and that’s what you have to look for, period. Do they have to smuggle it in 4 kg or 25 kg chunks? No! Depending on how patient they are, they can smuggle in bits as small as they please, and then assemble them at the target. Would it be hard for them to assemble a weapon at the target. Well, much has been said about the great technical virtuosity terrorists must have to assemble a nuclear weapon. Here’s the reality:

1. Take two chunks of SNM, well separated, that, when combined, form a critical mass.
2. Put one of the chunks on the ground.
3. Climb up a medium size step ladder with the other chunk.
4. Take careful aim.
5. Drop the chunk you’re carrying on top of the other chunk.

Not exactly rocket science, is it? Now, this admittedly rather crude nuclear weapon isn’t going to outperform Fat Man, but, before the critical mass you’ve just created disassembles because of its own energy release, it will create a radioactive mess, paralyze all economic activity for a while in the surrounding area, and have a huge psychological impact. That may be just the result that potential terrorists have in mind. Why sacrifice the good will of potential sympathizers and collaborators by vaporizing hundreds of thousands of people? Why risk getting caught with the SNM while you try to figure out how to put together a high yield weapon? Furthermore, to assemble such a weapon at the target, you don’t have to bring in all the SNM at once. You can transport it in arbitrarily small chunks.

In a word, anyone who gains possession of SNM to begin with will not be deterred or stopped by radiation portals. In the first place, there’s no need whatsoever for them to go through the portal to begin with. However, if they insist on taking risks, they can spoof the radiation detectors by surrounding the SNM with appropriate shielding, or putting it next to a medical radioisotope or other innocent radiating material, or the SNM can be carried through in small enough bits to avoid detection.

The ineffectiveness of radiation portals will become increasingly obvious as more and more nuclear smugglers are caught. I an not aware of a single incident to date in which SNM smugglers were stopped by radiation detectors. The ones that have been caught tend not to be top drawer professional smugglers, but unsophisticated crooks who happened to have access for one reason or another. They were stopped, not by radiation detectors, but by good intelligence and police work. I suspect this pattern will continue into the future.

Does all this mean that all our attempts to detect illicit radioactive materials are a waste of time and money? I think not. In the first place, SNM is not the only kind of radioactive material the portals can detect. They have successfully detected scrap metal contaminated with radioactive waste, commercial radioisotopes without proper documentation, etc. As we build more of them, and devote more funding to their development, radiation detectors will become better and cheaper, perhaps to the point that a more effective detection strategy becomes feasible. Then, of course, there is a political side of the question to consider. If a smuggled nuclear device really does go off in a US city, how would you assess the chances of reelection of an Administration that had made a deliberate decision to discontinue funding of radiation portals?

The North Korean Nuke: Design for Delivery?

North and South Korea at Night

“If they had gone with the “fail safe” WWII design, it would probably mean it was too heavy to mount on a missile. They would be making a political bomb that would undoubtedly use a lot of high explosive to ensure it got a good compression of the plutonium pit. The 4 KT bomb, however, might very well fit on a DPRK missile. If they have stayed with this design, it probably indicates that weaponizing it is even more important than ensuring a successful test.”

Here’s something appeared in the UK’s “Guardian” a year ago that adds plausibility to that conjecture:

“Blueprints for a sophisticated and compact nuclear warhead have been found in the computers of the world’s most notorious nuclear-smuggling racket, according to a leading US researcher.

“The digital designs, found in heavily encrypted computer files in Switzerland, are believed to be in the possession of the US authorities and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, but investigators fear they could have been extensively copied and sold to “rogue” states via the nuclear black market.

“David Albright, a physicist, former UN weapons inspector and authority on the nuclear smuggling ring run by the Pakistani metallurgist Abdul Qadeer Khan, said the “construction plans” included previously undisclosed designs for a compact warhead that could fit on Iran’s (or North Korea’s, ed.) medium-range ballistic missiles.”

Read the whole thing. It begs the question of how we should respond if the North Korean leadership really is crazy enough to hit us, or one of our allies, with a weaponized nuke. Annihilate a population of slaves for the crimes of their leaders? We were ready to do that in the Cold War. Twenty years later, do we still really need to kill 10 or 20 million innocent Koreans to “make an example?” I’d hate to have to make that decision, because the answer may be yes.

Morality – the Nature of Good and Evil

To understand morality it is necessary to understand what it is and why it exists.  Morality is a construct of our minds.  In other words, it is subjective.  It is a part of us, in the same way that our eyes, heart, and feet are parts of us.  Being a part of us, it exists for the same reason that our other parts exist.  It promotes our survival, or at least did promote our survival at some point in our past.  It is a characteristic which evolved, in the same way that all our other characteristics evolved.  We do not yet understand how it works, or what gives rise to it, or the detailed nature of its development as our conscious selves interact with the world around us during our lives.  We cannot see it, as we can see our hands and feet, or hear it, as we hear our voices, but still, we know it’s there, and is a part of what we are.  The thinkers among us have often noted its remarkable consistency across otherwise widely divergent cultures.  For example, in response to a M. Le Beau, who claimed that, “The Christians had a morality, but the Pagans had none,” Voltaire replied in an article entitled “Morality” in his “Philosophical Dictionary,”

“Oh, M. Le Beau!  …where did you pick up this absurdity?  …There is but one morality, M. Le Beau, as there is but one geometry.  But you will tell me that the greater part of mankind are ignorant of geometry.  True; but if they apply a little to the study of it, all men draw the same conclusions.  …We cannot repeat too frequently that dogmas differ, but that morality is the same among all men who make use of their reason.”  

The point I wish to make here is not that Voltaire was strictly correct in his conclusions about the absolute consistency of morality, but that he noticed that it is a part of our nature.  While it may not be exactly the same in one individual as in another, the similarities across cultures are remarkable.  We experience morality, not as relative or situational, but as an absolute.  It was this aspect of morality that Kant perceived when he associated it with a categorical, rather than hypothetical imperatives. 

It is not difficult to understand why morality evolved.  We all have desires.  However, others desire the same things.  A state of affairs in which each individual laid claim to the same scarce resources, and was willing to battle all others to the death to acquire them would not be conducive to our survival.  On the other hand, if something in the consciousness of the individuals in a group caused them to share the available resources according to rules familiar to all, derived from certain fundamental principles, it would enhance the chances that the individuals in the group would survive.  It would give them an advantage over others not possessing the same quality.  Therefore, like everything else about us, morality evolved.   Its basic framework is hard wired in our brains.  Its behavioral manifestations are moderated more or less in practice by our environment, by cultural influences.  

We experience morality as an absolute.  Why?  Because it functions best that way.  We experience good and evil as real, objective things because they are most effective in promoting our survival if we experience them that way.  In other words, we experience a subjective entity as an objective absolute because it works best that way.  The resultant conundrums and apparent logical inconsistencies in our perception of good and evil have busied philosophers through the ages.  In all likelihood, morality evolved long before our emergence as a species.  However, while other animals have moral natures, and can distinguish between “good” and “bad” actions, they were fortunate enough not to be aware of these logical difficulties.  We, with our greater mental capacity, have often run afoul of them.

The ancient Greeks were certainly aware of the difficulties.  Plato explores the problem in his “Euthyphro.”  The “hero,” Euthyphro, gives himself out as an “expert” on piety.  Socrates embarrasses him in his usual style when he is unable to provide any logical basis for distinguishing good from evil. 

In fact, morality is not really absolute, in that it is subjective, and has no independent existence outside of our own minds.  If we did not exist, one rock would not be more or less good or evil than another.  Unlike a rock, good and evil have no objective existence.  They are constructs of our minds.  How then, “ought” we to act?

As Voltaire pointed out, we all experience morality in the same way regardless of what ideological or religious dogmas we associate ourselves with.  There is no difference between atheists and the most zealous Christians in this regard.  Visit an atheist website, and you will see that professed atheists can experience righteous indignation and are quite as firmly convinced that they know the difference between good and evil as any true believer.  Neither, as Socrates pointed out long ago, can provide any logical basis for this conviction.  What “should” we do?  To the extent that there is anything that we really “should” do, we should survive.  There is nothing more immoral than failing to survive.  Morality is a part of us because it works.  It is, therefore, probably not a good idea to “overthink” the issue.  We should not try to be too coy with Mother Nature.  On the other hand, morality evolved long before the emergence of modern human societies.  It may prompt us to do things which had survival value when we existed as small groups of hunter-gatherers, but would be disastrous in the context of modern civilization.  See, for example, what I have written below on the different moral standards we apply to “in-groups” and “out-groups.”  The outcome of nuclear war was not possible when morality evolved. 

Perhaps, then, we should act as enlightened moral beings, seeking to do good and avoid evil as we perceive them, but keeping in mind the reason that morality exists to begin with.  In other words, act morally, but not self-destructively.

A Poem for Today: Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Dynamic Detroit: The Decline and Fall of the US Automotive Industry

Diego Rivera Detroit Mural

“This life, to be known and appreciated, must be experienced as Detroit commoners live it, and witnessed with their vision. Then it appears as the best that America has to offer.”

“Detroit calls up the most intelligent and energetic laborers of the land, even as California lures the bums. Candidates for jobs are rigorously culled in the great shops. The survivors are, beyond question, the pick of plain Americans.”

“…Detroit was agitated by the Dionne quintuplets to a degree reached by the folk of no other region. The appeal was simply to Detroit’s ruling spirit – mass production.”

“This is the Detroit of the Detroiters: first, of course, the automobile capital of the world; then, the city of champions – Joe Louis, the Tigers, the Redwings; …the patriotic community that put on the most monstrous of American Legion parades; the music capital that presents Gargantuan outdoor festivals of song; the financial center that produced the most prodigious banking crash of the Depression;… the scene of the colossal spectacle and the nations’s hugest crowds; the city that calls itself Detroit the Dynamic.”

You can read the whole article here. It makes you think. Times change. The changes aren’t always in the direction of “progress.” If what’s happened to Detroit is what Greenspan refers to as “creative destruction,” then the destruction part has spun out of control. The last time I was driving through the area, I heard a radio announcer scornfully proclaim there was no one left in Detroit now but the mice. May the day never come when a radio announcer can say that about America.

H. G. Wells, H. L. Mencken, and the Baby Boomers

H. G. Wells

Now, I enjoyed reading “The Time Machine,” and “War of the Worlds” once upon a time, but never game them a second thought as serious works of literature. They certainly never impressed me as the sort of thing Mencken would waste time reviewing. My curiosity was duly piqued. I got the book. As usual, the Sage of Baltimore was right. “Clissold” is the genuine article.

If you’re a baby boomer, you’ll be fascinated. Wells wrote the novel when he was about 60, and it’s full of interesting insights and observations about the significance of reaching that age, what a post-60 future might look like, his observations on how others that age were dealing with life, etc. As with any great work of literature, I’m sure you’ll find reflections of your own thoughts as well, assuming you’ve managed to attain such a ripe old age.

Again, as with all good novels, “Clissold” is full of anecdotes that were surely drawn from Wells’ life experiences. For example, he tells the story of his visit to Geneva during the heighday of the League of Nations in 1922. There, among a host of other interesting types, he tells of meeting an old Indian. In his own words:

“I remember a charming Red Indian from Canada with a wonderful belt of wampum; it was a treaty all done in beads; by it the British Government gave sovereign dominion for ever and ever to the remnants of the Five Nations over a long strip of country running right through Canadian territories, territories in which prohibition and all sorts of bizarre moder practices now prevail. The Canadians were infringing the freedoms of that ribbon of liberty by sending in excisement and the like. So the Five Nations, with a grave copper face, wampum treaty very carefully wrapped in tissue paper, were appealing from the British Empire to mankind.”

As the cliche goes, “he couldn’t make stuff like that up.” And sure enough, one finds several references to the incident on the Web, for example, here and here. You’ll find more on wampum, along with a fascinating history of the Five Nations here.

There is much other food for thought in “Clissold,” including a rather heavy handed exposition of his world view and his rather Rand-like version of what mankind needs to do to save itself, a summary of which may be found in the Wiki article linked above. A closer look may be found here. Another chapter is devoted to a review of the news media of his day. Modern connoiseurs will surely find it fascinating. Other than that, I can only echo Mencken’s recommendation. This novel is well worth a read.

Genesis, the Firmament, and Christian Fundamentalism

Drawing attention to the many contradictions and inconsistencies in the Bible, as well as the verses that contradict what we’ve learned about the age of the earth, the size of the universe and the earth’s place in it, etc., can occasionally open minds if they are open to reason to begin with. Some of the best and brightest among us have always had the ability to find these discrepancies on their own, and the honesty to point them out to others. Such a one, for example, was Jean Meslier. This simple French priest composed three copies of a testament that demolished Christianity, not to mention all other versions of belief in a Supreme Being, more than a hundred years before Darwin published his theories. Somehow Voltaire and a few other kindred spirits got wind of the Testament, and so preserved it for later generations. Since then, it has been an inspiration to many who have also had the courage to think for themselves. Unfortunately, minds that live in little steel cages of “faith” aren’t so accessible. They can always adjust reality to fit scripture as needed.

Take, for example, the discrepancy in the genealogy of Jesus between the versions in the books of Matthew and Luke. It would seem that, on reading these two vastly different versions, a logical, open-minded person would conclude that the claim that the entire Bible is infallible is wrong. After all, a God who really loves us and wants us to find our way to a truth so critical to our welfare in the hereafter would hardly make us the butt of crude practical jokes, or allow gross mis-tranlations of his word to bamboozle generations of true believers. However, logical thought and open-mindedness are not strong suits of Christian true believers. They have simply come up with a host of “interpretations” of these contradictory genealogies to “make them right.” The interested reader can find an example here.

Another famous historical example, cited by Voltaire, among others, is the difficulty with the description of a “firmament” in the King James Version of the Bible. Early civilizations commonly believed that the sun, moon, stars and other heavenly bodies were set in a solid, crystalline shell, or “firmament.” That such a version of the firmament was exactly what the author or authors of Genesis had in mind seems obvious on the face of if to anyone who actually reads the book. For example, we read in Genesis 1:4, that it acts as a barrier, and there are waters above the firmament, placing the heavenly bodies beneath this body of water. According to Genesis 1:17, the stars are set in the firmament.

Thanks to Project Apollo, and a few other inconvenient interventions of reality, later generations of true believers didn’t have the luxury of standing pat on the firmament theory. No matter. They simply hand-waved it out of existence by mistranslating “firmament” as “sky.” This was a bit much to swallow for some of the more erudite and honest among the faithful. Christian evangelist Paul Seely is a case in point. He has given us a wonderful commentary on the historical facts relating to the notion of a firmament in many cultures, complete with observations on the original Hebrew as well as the later translations into Greek and English. He demonstrates conclusively that a solid firmament is precisely what is meant in the book of Genesis. Alas, Mr. Seely is a faithful Christian, and so had no trouble squaring the circle his philological inquiries had revealed. He concludes his paper with the observation that, “Certainly the historical-grammatical meaning of (the Hebrew word) raqiac is ‘the ordinary opinion of the writer’s day.’ Certainly also it is not the purpose of Gen 1: 7 to teach us the physical nature of the sky, but to reveal the creator of the sky. Consequently, the reference to the solid firmament ‘lies outside the scope of the writer’s teachings’ and the verse is still infallibly true.” (!!) Faith will always find a way.

Not surprisingly, this rather startling conclusion was rather too much of a mental double back flip for believers of lesser intellectual agility among fellow fundamentalists. They chose, predictably, to rearrange reality to get rid of the pesky firmament in the time-honored fashion noted above. Examples abound, and a few of them can be found here and here. Google “Genesis firmament” and you will find many more.

Of course, the book of Genesis also has a serious issue with the disconnect between its version of the earth’s age, at 6,000 years, give or take, and the fact that vast numbers of heavenly bodies have been discovered so far away from us that it took light thousands of times that long to reach us, and yet we see them nevertheless. There is an interesting discussion of the subject here. A slam-dunk for science say you? Wrong again, oh ye of little faith, For the fundamentalist, the Bible is, a priori, the absolute truth. For one who is determined to believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and the absolute truth against all odds, no evidence to the contrary will ever suffice. You see, facts that seem to contradict the Bible simply can’t be true. One accommodates them very easily, by simply readjusting reality.

I know! The same thought has occurred to me. We are living in an insane asylum. Occasionally I am bothered a little by the reflection that I, too, am a human being, just like the fundamentalists who have these fanciful notions. How much superior to them could I really be in matters of intellect? After all, we both belong to the same species. For that matter, if I glance about the asylum once again, I may discover a host of atheist “fundamentalists” with ideological notions that, though secular, are as inaccessible to reason as the faith of a theist. Well, enough of this. I’m not ready to turn myself in at the front desk just yet.