Fukushima, Six Years Later

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster could have been much worse. But it may have been avoidable.

Meltdowns and non-nuclear explosions at the power plant didn’t directly kill anyone.

More than 40 patients who were evacuated from a nearby hospital died later. They had been critically ill. Getting rushed away from a nuclear incident in progress wouldn’t have been good for their health.

Three former power company executives now face criminal charges.

The earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns in 2011 killed nearly 16,000 folks and left many others homeless. Many folks still can’t return to their homes. Quakes happen. This one was nobody’s fault.

What happened in Fukushima is another matter. I’ll be looking at the disaster, what’s happened since, and why questioning authority can be a good idea.

Earthquake and Tsunami: March 2011

Earth’s mantle is sinking near Japan’s east coast, pulling part of the crust under the Okhotsk Plate. But not smoothly.

On Friday, March 11, 2011, about 32 kilometers below the surface, Earth’s crust moved abruptly.

About 31 seconds later, the Japan Meteorological Agency’s detectors had sensed the event and broadcast warnings to several million folks. That probably saved many lives.

Japan is now up to 2.4 meters, 7 feet 10 inches, closer to North America.

The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami destroyed about 45,700 buildings and damaged about 144,300 more.

It’s stronger than any other recorded in Japan during the last 16 centuries, and the fourth strongest recorded anywhere on Earth since 1900.1

Tsunami: Over the Wall and Into the Generator Room


(From Shigeru23, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Diagram of the #1 Fukushima reactor building and seawall. A – Plant building, B – Tsunami’s peak height, C – Ground level of site, D – Average sea level.)

TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is the famous, or infamous, one.

The crew of its sister plant, Fukushima Daini, were what my culture calls ‘lucky.’ Most of them. One person, trapped at a console during the quake, died later.

The tsunami flooded Fukushima Daini’s standby generators, too. The 2,000 folks working there still had one remaining high-voltage power line connecting the plant to Japan’s power grid. That kept the plant’s control systems online.

Part of the crew remained at the plant while others assembled a nine-kilometer emergency power connection. Each 200-meter section of cable weighed over a ton.2

Meanwhile, folks at the Daiichi facility were dealing with their own disaster.

The Fukushima Reactors 1, 2, and 3 automatically shut down immediately after the earthquake.

They’re supposed to do that.

If a reactor’s going to be shaken, it should be comparatively inactive and cooling.

Reactors 4, 5, and 6 were already shut down and cooling. They were due for refueling.

During normal operation, these reactors provided power for their own cooling systems. Reactors stay hot for a long time after shutting down, so the cooling systems must keep running.

Diesel-powered generators started normally and were providing power to the cooling systems when the tsunami hit.

The tsunami was about 13 to 15-meters, 43 to 49 feet, high. It reached the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant about 50 seconds after the earthquake started. The plant’s seawall was 5.7 meters, 19 feet, tall.

The tsunami went over the wall and kept going.

The diesel generators were in a low-lying room. They promptly flooded, and failed shortly after submersion. That cut power to cooling systems for reactors 1, 2, and 3.

Temperatures rose inside the reactors.

Water, instead of cooling the reactor reactor cores, circulating through radiators, and returning to to the cores, stayed in the reactors’ containment vessels. It turned to steam.

Explosions

Pressure began rising in the reactors’ containment vessels.

By about 6:50 Saturday morning, reactor one’s core had completely melted, dripping to the reactor pressure vessel’s base.

Something exploded inside reactor one’s building at 3:36 Saturday afternoon. The concrete building collapsed. By that time, folks near Fukushima reactors one or two were being evacuated.

The explosion was non-nuclear.

It’s a near-certainty that very hot steam reacting with the zircaloy fuel assembly cladding produced hydrogen. This wouldn’t normally happen, but this was not a normal day.

The containment vessel wasn’t designed to hold hydrogen, and was already under excessively high pressure.

Hydrogen — again, almost certainly — leaked into the the rest of the building. It rose to the top of the building, mixing with oxygen. Eventually the hydrogen-oxygen mix reached something hot, and exploded.

That was Saturday morning, March 12.

Pretty much the same thing happened in the reactor three building on Monday, March 14. Nobody died, but 11 folks were injured. A vent pipe connected buildings holding the number two and three reactors, letting hydrogen flow into the reactor two building.

An explosion in the number two reactor’s building on Monday caused more damage.

Japanese and world nuclear authorities may have been trying to reassure folks and prevent panic. During a March 15 news conference, the IAEA’s director general, Yukiya Amano, said that there was a “possibility of core damage” at Unit 2 of less than 5%.

That may have been an accurate estimate, based on valid data. But it was an estimate. Radiation levels near most of the damaged reactors were too high for humans. Even wearing hazmat suits.

The good news is that fires at the Fukushima power plant didn’t last as long as the Chernobyl blaze. Nowhere near as much radioactive material leaked out.

But folks responsible for the plant’s design should have known that the seawall wasn’t nearly high enough. Given the circumstances, putting the generator room below what would be sea level was also a regrettable decision.3

1. Radiation, Bacteria, and a Robot


(From AFP, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Lava-like rocks were spotted underneath one of the damaged reactors”
(BBC News))

“Fukushima disaster: Robot finds possible melted nuclear fuel”
(July 23, 2017)

“An underwater robot has captured what is believed to be the first images of melted nuclear fuel deposits inside Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, its operator Tepco says.

“Large amounts of solidified lava-like rocks and lumps in layers were seen underneath its unit three reactor.

“If confirmed, it would be a major milestone in the clear-up operation.

“The power plant was hit by a tsunami in 2011, causing the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl….”

A few bacteria, like Deinococcus radiodurans, thrive inside nuclear reactors. It’s no place for most critters, though.

That’s why researchers working with Toshiba developed the “little sunfish” submersible robot.

It looks like a high-tech loaf of bread, and is about the same size, trailing a cable. “Little sunfish” carries two cameras, a dosimeter, and uses tail propellers to maneuver.

Folks recently sent the submersible robot into what’s left of the Fukushima’s unit 3 reactor. The melted and re-solidified stuff they found looks a bit like icicles and layered lumps.

It’s probably from the reactor’s core: melted fuel and metal that dripped to the containment vessel’s base and burned through, ending near the bottom of the vessel’s concrete pedestal. We’ll know more as the investigation continues.

Why Design Matters


(From Japan Atomic Industry Forum, Tepco; © British Broadcasting Corporation; used w/o permission.)
(“How Japan managed to get Fukushima’s reactors stable during the disaster”
(BBC News))

What happened at Fukushima could have been worse. I think folks who were at the plant, working with the equipment, deserve credit for dealing with the disaster.

Higher-ups who decided where the equipment was, and what tasks the crew was allowed to do — not so much.

Nuclear reactors always produce heat when they’re active. That’s part of what makes them such good energy sources for power plants.

Once a nuclear reactor becomes active, it stays hot for a long time: even after it’s shut down. The ‘up’ side of this is that nuclear reactors can make a great deal of very steady heat for a long time.

When their cooling and safety systems aren’t well-designed, carefully maintained, or regularly tested, we’ve got problems.

Happily, competent folks with an interest in public safety took control of what was left of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant after the meltdowns started. Thanks to past disasters, we’re getting better at containing broken reactors and cleaning up afterward.4

2. Ignorance?


(From AFP, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Tsunehisa Katsumata (L), Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto all deny the accusations”
(BBC News))

“Fukushima nuclear disaster: Tepco executives on trial”
(June 30, 2017)

“Three former power company executives have gone on trial in Japan on charges linked to the Fukushima disaster.

“It is the first criminal trial over the 2011 meltdown at the nuclear plant.

“The meltdown, triggered by an earthquake which caused a massive tsunami, was the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

“All three have pleaded not guilty to professional negligence resulting in death and injury of patients evacuated from a hospital near the plant….”

The former TEPCO chairman and two vice-presidents could get up to five years in prison.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s still much more than a ‘slap on the wrist.’ Particularly since they seem to be around my age. Five years is a good-size chunk of how much time I’ve got left.

I don’t know whether to be sympathetic or not.

On the one hand, they were old enough to know better when they made their decisions. ‘Boys will be boys’ isn’t an excuse for some behavior, but youthful inexperience helps explain some daft things we do.

On the other hand, They’re probably around my age. They might not have had opportunities to stay informed about what’s happened over the last half-century.

That’s be a lousy defense, I think, since they were responsible for nuclear power plants.

Ignorant managers and executives make good characters in comics and stories. In real life, they’re somewhere on a continuum between ‘annoying’ and ‘dangerous.’

I have no idea what motivated them or how much they knew. For their sake, I hope they really did not understand the risks they were taking with lives and health.

3. Fears, Reasonable and Otherwise


(From Reuters, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Tens of thousands of families were forced to leave their homes as the reactors melted down”
(BBC News))

“Fukushima: Japan court finds government liable for nuclear disaster”
(March 17, 2017)

“A Japanese court has ruled for the first time that the government bears partial responsibility for the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“The court was responding to a case brought by a group of evacuees who had been forced to flee their homes.

“It ruled that the disaster could have been averted if government regulators had ordered plant operator Tepco to take preventive safety measures.

“The government and Tepco were both ordered to compensate the evacuees….”

International news is focusing how folks are coping with the Fukushima Daiichi disaster’s lasting effects. So am I.

But let’s remember that the quake and tsunami caused severe damage along much of eastern Japan, and indirectly affected the entire country.

The worse of it was along a 670-kilometer, 420-mile, section of Japan’s coast: from Erimo, Hokkaido, to Ōarai, Ibaraki. Well over 100,000 folks are still homeless.5

This court’s ruling, holding both Japan’s government and TPECO responsible for not planning ahead, seems reasonable. Nobody involved in decisions that led to the Fukushima meltdowns came out looking good.

Some harm is obvious. About 80,000 folks had to abandon their homes. Many would have been well-advised to leave anyway, since a tidal wave set off this SNAFU. Concerns about radiation were legitimate, too.

However, this isn’t a “Beginning of the End,” “It Came from Beneath the Sea,” or “Creature with the Atom Brain” scenario, where radioactive monsters attack a city. Most folks, happily, realize that atomic grasshoppers, octopi, or zombies, are make-believe.

I think we’re still working on reasoned caution where radiation is involved.

Radiophobia

“Radiophobia,” obsessive fear of ionizing radiation, isn’t new. The term goes back to “Radio-phobia and radio-mania,” a 1903 paper by Dr Albert Soiland.6

Some folks had unreasonable fears of radio broadcasting and receiving technology.

Their fears were slightly fact-based.

Sticking my head in an active microwave oven wouldn’t be healthy. That’s why we’ve got safety switches that cut power when we open the door. Usually.

Opening the door while the oven is working will, occasionally, release a very short burst of microwaves. It’s not enough to hurt anyone.

The microwaves are, however, strong enough to register on a radio telescope’s receiver.

A hastily-opened microwave oven ‘sounds’ a lot like a Fast Radio Burst, or FRB. But not not quite.

Astronomers at the Parkes, Australia, observatory eventually realized that some odd FRBs were from their break room: not from still-unknown sources beyond our galaxy. And that’s another topic.7

My guess is that Dr. Soiland’s “radio-mania” described folks who were entirely too willing to use ‘cures’ like Bonnore’s Electro Magnetic Bathing Fluid. One chap, an eager imbiber of Radithor, “Perpetual Sunshine,” wound up buried in a lead-lined coffin. (October 14, 2016)

Feeling Stressed

Getting back to sorting out the Fukushima mess, I strongly suspect that psychological and emotional disorders will account for some compensation. I’d better explain that.

I think “intentional infliction of emotional distress” is a form of assault, and a legitimate legal accusation.

I also think that ‘you made me feel bad, give me money’ can turn into a legal scam, if judges and juries trust their feelings more than their reason.

Many folks who lived near Fukushima are ‘stressed out’ because they can’t go back home and get on with their lives.

That’s understandable. Folks who lived near Chernobyl felt the same way. What’s happened to them since suggests that at least some Fukushima evacuees will develop serious psychosomatic disorders.

Technically, it’s ‘all in their heads:’ like posttraumatic stress disorder. Or brain cancer.

We’re learning, sometimes the hard way, that psychological disorders can be as real as physical ones.8

Unlike what happened at Chernobyl, radiation exposure didn’t kill anyone at Fukushima. Not yet, anyway.

Folks living in the area may eventually have a higher than average risk of developing cancer. Their exposure was and remains very slight. We simply don’t know for sure.

No wonder they’re feeling a bit stressed.

What a few ‘experts’ said didn’t help, I think.

Safety Protocols and “Tickling the Dragon’s Tail”

Folks living in Japan have more reason than most to understand why being careful with nuclear energy is a good idea.

Aside from radiation burns, ionizing radiation can damage DNA and other molecular machinery in our cells.

Some damaged cells become cancerous, malfunction in other ways, or simply die.

Ignoring safety protocols is a bad idea for folks using any technology, from campfires to nuclear devices.

Some researchers at a Los Alamos laboratory in 1946, and added “tickling the dragon’s tail” to my culture’s vocabulary.

Reasonable caution is one thing. Publishing bogus research is — less than helpful. So, I think, are overly-eager news reports. More about that in the next section.

Perhaps someday more reporters will write as if they have a basic understanding of what they’re covering. Editors showing more interest in factual articles might help, too.

I also hope that someday we will have a competent international authority that will deal with conflicts before they become wars. I’m not sure which hope may be realized first.

Understanding Statistics

Some facts about Fukushima aftermath are, by themselves, alarming.

In 2013, for example, the World Health Organization reported that “…for thyroid cancer, the estimated lifetime risk increases by up to around 70% over baseline rates in females exposed as infants….”

Scary, right? I could use that excerpt to ‘prove’ that WHO is trying to scare folks — or that we should all be scared silly.

Instead, I’ll quote the next sentence from that report:

“These percentages represent estimated relative increases over the baseline rates and are not absolute risks for developing such cancers….”
(“Health Risk Assessment from the nuclear accident after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami based on a preliminary dose estimation,” Executive Summary, World Health Organization (2013))

Women who live near Fukushima should probably make sure they get tested for thyroid cancer a bit more often than average. But the odds are very good that something else will kill them first. Like old age.

The WHO report goes on to say that the baseline lifetime risk of thyroid cancer in women is just three quarters of one percent. Being exposed to Fukushima-level radiation over a lifetime raises that by one half of one percent. One half of one percent is not much.

Fast-forward to October of 2015. Someone at Okayama University got his 15 minutes of fame by publishing research that inspired headlines like “Experts Link Higher Incidence of Children’s Cancer to Fukushima Radiation.”

Children, cancer, and the biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl: now that’s news!9

Epidemiologists, professional ones, pointed out that the fellow’s numbers were accurate. Sort of. But his conclusions were misleading, at best. He’d done an ‘apples to oranges’ comparison.

His Fukushima data was real enough. It was the result of careful screening of kids — using advanced ultrasound tech. He compared those results to exam results from old-school clinical exams: the sort I might have had back in the ‘good old days.’

Careful screening with the latest diagnostic tech actually did show thyroid “cancer” in an alarming number of kids living in the Fukushima area. Again, this is with cutting-edge tech; used by folks looking for this sort of thing.

Even if the numbers really were more than might be expected, publishing an illogical conclusion is not the way to get attention.

More accurately, it’s not how to get the right sort of attention for situations like this.

Following the usual ‘cancer — experts — radiation’ line and getting creative with a carefully-chosen excerpt, I could ‘reveal’ that a third of all adults have thyroid cancer:

“…close inspection of the thyroid by sonographic imaging shows that as many as one-third of women and one-fifth of men have small nodules in their glands….”
(Goiter & Thyroid Nodules, University of California San Francisco)

With or without all-caps and exclamation marks, that sort of thing gets attention.

But don’t rush out and demand that your doctor remove your thyroid.

Those nodules are “cancer” only in the sense that they’re abnormal growths. At least we think they are. We may learn that they’re normal but unusual. Or simply normal and previously-unnoticed.10

Getting Attention, Making Sense

We’ve been learning a lot recently, partly thanks to new imaging technology.

Low-resolution ultrasound imaging tech goes back to 1939 or 1940, depending on whose work you count.

The first medical use of industrial ultrasound tech was in 1941. That was apparently quite experimental, and didn’t catch on. Someone tried again in 1953, again using industrial testing tech.

Again, it didn’t catch on. But medicos kept trying. A contact scanner designed specifically for medical imaging was tried in the early 1960s. That, finally, caught on. Slowly.

Much more recently, we’ve developed high-resolution scanners.11

Just as important, I think, we’ve started using the tech around the world: and are learning to understand what we see.

When specialists look very carefully at high-resolution scans, they find that about a third of all women and a fifth of all men have small nodules on their thyroid glands.

The growths are, technically, “cancerous.” But they don’t do much except grow, slowly, as we age and die of unrelated causes.

Without careful examination with a specialist using advanced tech — most of us will never know we’ve got the growths. Or care. They don’t hurt us. But I suppose ‘relax, we’re okay’ wouldn’t be an exciting headline.

I think the World Health Organization got it right. That outfit said a 2013 thyroid ultrasound screening program uncovered an unexpected number of thyroid growths. But did not say we should panic.

4. Question Authority: Wisely


(From Digital Globe, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)

“Japan panel: Fukushima nuclear disaster ‘man-made’”
(July 5, 2012)

“The crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant was ‘a profoundly man-made disaster’, a Japanese parliamentary panel has said in a report.

“The disaster ‘could and should have been foreseen and prevented’ and its effects ‘mitigated by a more effective human response’, it said.

“The report catalogued serious deficiencies in both the government and plant operator Tepco’s response.

“It also blamed cultural conventions and a reluctance to question authority….”

I don’t know enough about Japanese culture to have a well-informed opinion on their conventions or general willingness to question authority.

My guess is that all countries have cultural conventions that could use review and revision. Or, occasionally, replacement.

I do remember the 1960s, when American culture was going through a major sea change.

Timothy Leary-style ‘question authority’ made more sense at the time. Even then, though, I thought it took skepticism well past reasonable limits:

“…To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself….”
(Timothy Leary, as quoted in “Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati,” p. 170, Robert Anton Wilson(1977) via Wikiquote)

I also think Benjamin Franklin had a point:

“Distrust & caution are the parents of security.”
(“Poor Richard’s Almanack,” Benjamin Franklin, (1733))

Respect for authority comes with being a Catholic. So does obedience. Within reason.

Two Saints and a King

Rational respect for authority is important.

Communities work better if someone’s coordinating things. How we choose our leaders is up to us. There isn’t one ‘correct’ method. What matters is how closely we pattern what we do on natural law.12 (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897–1917, 1954–1960)

Ideally, secular law would always follow natural law and promote the common good. (Catechism, 1951–1960)

We don’t live in an ideal world. That’s why unthinking obedience is a bad idea. No king, president, or other boss, is above the natural law. (Catechism, 1902, 1960, 2155, 2242–2243, 2267, 2313, 2414)

When someone in charge forgets that, we have trouble. Folks who think God outranks any secular leader sometimes get killed. That’s what happened to Thomas More and John Fisher.

A bit shy of five centuries later, they’re recognized as Saints. England’s Henry VIII is often remembered chiefly for his many wives. I think they made the right decision. Not an easy one, though.

Hindsight and Preparing for the Next One

Some ‘I told you so’ claims that TEPCO and Japanese official ignored obvious dangers may come from frustration and anger.

Even adjusting for 20-20 hindsight, I strongly suspect that TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant could and should have been much less vulnerable to disaster.

What I don’t know is how much information TEPCO executives had, and when they received it.

And how much of it they understood.

Geologists have been learning that earthquakes are sometimes periodic, with major ones happening at fairly regular intervals in a given area.

The Tōkai earthquakes, for example, come every 100 to 150 years: roughly. The last one was in 1854.

It’s not a question of whether there will be another. It’s when it’ll happen. It’s already due. Maybe a bit past due. The Japan Meteorological Agency is trying to predict just how much time folks in cities like Nagoya have to get ready.

The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake gave them more data, but it’s not exactly reassuring. There’s a good chance that the next big quake near Japan will be another in the Tōkai series.13

Putting a nuclear power plant near the coast makes sense. For one thing, there are precious few places in Japan that aren’t near the ocean. I am pretty sure there are good logistic and technical reasons for the plant’s location, too.

However, building a seawall that was so dramatically inadequate seems shortsighted. So does putting generators in a low-lying part of the plant. Again, with 20-20 hindsight.

It’s starting to look like TEPCO leadership knew, or should have known, that what happened in 2011 was likely: sooner or later.

If they knew, and did not act on that knowledge, that’s a problem.

If they weren’t told because someone was too in awe of their authority to say that their plant was badly designed, that’s also a problem.

If government officials or inspectors wouldn’t act for similar reasons: more problems.

That’s all speculation, of course. My point is that respect for authority is a good idea: but only within reason.

Authority: Three Quotes

Context counts.

Timothy Leary’s ‘question authority’ remark came as America was recovering from McCarthyism. I quoted him earlier.

More accurately, I quoted someone who quoted him. That’s as close to the original as I got.

I remember when quite a few Americans acted as if patriotism and unthinking support of their views were the same thing. That attitude still colors my perceptions. Not positively.

Now, about the folks I’ll quote next.

Albert Einstein was writing about an editor’s rejection of a young Einstein’s criticism of the editor’s electron theory of metals. The editor apparently hadn’t bothered to read, or think about, Einstein’s critique.

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt delivered his Lincoln Hall speech while negotiating for his people’s right to settle near their homeland. The powers that be apparently respected him. But they went along with what ‘civilized’ folks who had taken over the territory wanted.

Claudius Claudianus wrote in the days of Flavius Honorius Augustus, an emperor with the dubious honor of being in charge during the first sack of Rome. He composed many of his poems for either the Emperor or the Emperor’s chief general.

“Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit.
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
(Albert Einstein, from “The Private Lives of Albert Einstein,” quoting a letter to Jost Winteler (1901))

“I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.”
(Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, “Chief Joseph;” Lincoln Hall Speech (1879)

“…Peragit tranquilla potestas
quod violenta nequit; mandataque fortius urget
imperiosa quies….”
“…Quiet authority accomplishes what violence cannot, and that mandate compels more which comes from a commanding calm….”
(Panegyricus dictus Manlio Theodoro consuli, lines 239-241; Claudius Claudianus, Claudian (lived c. 370 – 404))

My reasoned respect for authority includes the Pope’s authority. That doesn’t mean I think popes never make mistakes, and that’s yet another topic.

Dangerous Technology

Anti-nuclear protests have been a recurring news item for decades.

Oddly enough, despite the obvious dangers of using fire, and disasters like the 2009 Beijing Television Cultural Center fire or the recent incident in London, I’ve yet to hear or read of folks protesting another dangerous technology: fire.

Fire-related disasters, particularly the avoidable ones, produce protests often enough. Particularly when folks feel that nobody’s trying to fix the problem.

But I don’t think we’ll see protesters chanting “freeze fire now” or “ban the burn.” I suspect that’s partly because we’ve been controlling exothermic chemical reactions for a very long time. Cooking and camp fires don’t seem artificial.

More exotic or indirect applications, like coal-burning power plants, seem to be perceived apart from their underlying fire tech. But the simplest cooking fires are technology, practical application of knowledge to a practical use. (oxforddictionaries.com)

What’s changed recently is how much energy we use. I don’t see that as a problem.

Not using our brains? That’s as potentially lethal as it ever was.

The Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters both involved explosions. Neither were nuclear explosions.

The Chernobyl explosion happened when too much steam formed in the reactor’s pressure vessel. Prototypes of Denis Papin’s steam digester had the same problem, on a smaller scale. That’s why today’s steam cookers have safety values.

Descriptions of the Chernobyl disaster generally use more technical language, but the blast was basically a boiler explosion.

That photo shows the results of a boiler explosion in Strømmen, Norway, around 1889.

We learned that using redundant valves, pumps, and instrumentation, was worth the additional expense.

I think we’re on a similar learning curve with the newer tech.

The steam explosion at Chernobyl started fires that burned for about nine days, producing updrafts that spread about as much fallout as the original explosion. That helped make the 1986 Chernobyl disaster the worst nuclear accident we’ve had.

The Chernobyl disaster happened after a late-night test of reactor number four’s safety systems.

Periodic testing is a necessary safety procedure. So is making sure folks running the tests know how the equipment should be run.

The lesson from Chernobyl and Fukushima is not, I think, that technology is evil. I’ll get back to that.

It’s certainly not that periodic safety tests are Satanic plots, or that reactors should never be assigned the number four.

What we should learn, I think, is that any technology can be useful: or harmful. What matters is how we use it, and whether we use our brains.

Power Plants and Pedal Power

Most power plants generate electricity by converting kinetic energy into electricity by spinning magnets inside closed loops of conductive material.

It doesn’t matter what’s spinning the magnets. Interaction of moving magnetic fields in the loops is what counts.

It’s the same principle that runs a bicycle’s ‘light generator.’ That’s the little gizmo often mounted near the rear wheel.

Water running downhill can provide the power. The Hoover Dam generators work that way. It takes a lot of water, so hydroelectric power plants can’t be built anywhere.

Chemical fuels like coal will burn anywhere we live, so coal burning power plants were an obvious choice for most places.

Burning coal produces its own problems, like London’s death fog. That’s why we’re looking for alternatives.

I’m a little surprised that someone hasn’t insisted that we generate electricity by making everyone sit on bicycle generators and pedal until they produce their quota.

My guess is that too many folks know about Northern Arizona University’s Bicycle Generator Project. Or something like it. It’s a good learning tool for high school students.

The project takes a modified bicycle, belt, scooter motor serving as a generator, battery, display, and peripherals like a phone charger.

Folks get hands-on experience, learning how much energy it takes to power gadgets like a light bulb or leaf blower. Feet-on, actually.

Living in Tomorrow’s Yesterday

Like I said, technology isn’t our problem.

It’s whether we use our brains while using it. Learning about this universe and using that knowledge is part of being human. (Catechism, 2292–2295)

Most Americans probably wouldn’t be like the inventor’s neighbor, “…a local clergyman in a state of considerable distress who had mistaken his carriage …. for the devil….” (February 5, 2017)

Steam engines are now nostalgic technology, symbols of a bygone era.

A few centuries from now, some may daydream about ‘simpler times,’ when many a horizon was graced by the gentle curves of a power plant’s cooling towers.

This photo’s of the Ohaaki Power Station, by the way. Its generators are run with geothermal power, and that’s yet again another topic.

Vaguely-related posts:

1 About earthquakes:

2 Two Fukushima power plants and TEPCO:

3 Fukushima Daiichi disaster:

4 Reactors and a little history:

5 The March 2011 quake:

6 When radio was new:

7 (March 17, 2017) The Parkes Observatory break room and all that:

8 Risks, physical and psychological:

9 Radiation, informed-and-otherwise news, a WHO report, and my opinions:

10 Goiter nodules:

11 New tech:

12 Natural law, ethical principles written into reality’s source code:

13 Looking back and ahead:

Posted in Science News | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Jesus, the Parable Teller

Posted on July 23, 2017 by Deacon L. N. Kaas

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2017:

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2017

By Deacon Lawrence N. Kaas July 23, 2017

Deacon Dick Folger writes a simple little footnote to the readings of this day: he writes, that Dolly Parton was probably not thinking about today’s Gospels when she said “the way I see it, if you want a rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.” In the first parable today the farmer planted good wheat in his fields. His enemy tried to sabotage the crop by sowing weeds in the fields. The wise farmer decides to put up with the weeds until the harvest. Then he had the weeds removed. Afterwards, with full barns he enjoyed the rainbow of the good harvest.

The gospel teaches us that at the end of the world the evildoer will be hurled into a fiery furnace. The Saints will shine like the sun in their father’s kingdom. So writes Deacon Dick.

Today’s readings can be seen as part two of last week’s passages. This is the clearest in the gospel, as Jesus explains the parable of the sower and the seed that we heard last week.

The first reading reminds us that God “has the care of all,” which surely means all of God’s creation, not just humans. Paul again speaks of groaning, but this time he refers to the spirit groaning within us. Since the God Spirit is in all things, this could also remind us to care for all that God has made. So, if you didn’t address creation’s care last week or if you want to make it a double-header, you could easily focus on it this weekend.

On the other hand the stronger message of these texts calls attention to God’s mercy and the need for repentance. The first reading ends by reminding us that God gave God’s children good ground for hope permitting repentance for their sins. The Psalm proclaims God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and fidelity.” Paul speaks of the Spirit coming to the aid of our weakness and the gospel includes a call to repentance for “all who cause others to sin and all evil doers.”

This might be a good time to think about summer penance because now it has been months since Lent and there are moths before advent. Because those two seasons are close to each other the bulk of the year can go by with no invitation to repentance and reconciliation. Can we find effective ways to invite people to gather to celebrate God’s mercy together outside these two seasons?

Getting back to the subject at hand: storytelling was a good part of the life of Jewish families and clearly a means to instruct members of one’s family, and was often used at meal time, I’m sure in much the same way as we would have table-talk today. These stories became known as parables and Jesus was an expert at them. Through familiar, parables, and Jesus’ culture, they were not meant to be entertaining children’s stories or moralistic fables. Instead Jesus’ first listeners would have known that parables and tellers of parables were there to prompt them to see the world in a different way, to challenge, and at times to indict, (meaning to charge with an offense). Today’s Gospel offers three such parables.

In the gospel, Jesus begins each parable by saying “the kingdom of heaven is like….” It is important for us to remember that this mystery that Jesus speaks about, the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, cannot be reduced to just one image. It is a mystery so fast and incomprehensible as to require a multiplicity of similes to explore as we grapple with what it might mean. Unlike proclamations or definitions, which can be passively received, teaching through parables requires active participation on the part of the listener. In the parables, answers and insights aren’t doled out in neatly packaged portions, instead we have to work for them.

What might be the meaning today as we listen again to the familiar words of the wheat and weeds, the mustard seed, and leaven? All three parables speak of a slow, silent growth. Almost in secret, wheat and corn and mustard seed planted in the ground crack open to allow a sprout of new life to take hold in the soil.

By the time the tiniest green shoot is visible to a passing human, a vast system of roots has already firmly established itself below the ground. Nourished by the roots the plant grows and grows, day by day transforming itself into something that can bring forth fruit and offer shelter. What might this every day transformation tell us about the kingdom of heaven’s silent growth in the here and now? By the way right now I’m thinking of our cornfields.

The fast majority of Jesus’ parables that deal with everyday occurrences such as a merchant buying pearls, a woman searching for a coin, or a traveler in need of help. Instead of pointing to the fantastical, Jesus calls attention to reality. As he tells the crowds in Luke’s gospel, “the kingdom of heaven is among you.” In order to live in this kingdom we need only eyes to see it and ears to hear it.

To enter into a parable we must be willing to let go of the security offered by answers and definitions. What might we discover if we dare to open ourselves to the incomprehensible mystery of the kingdom of heaven? Perhaps like the seeds of mustard and wheat, we will also experience transformation. The only way to find out is to trust Jesus, the parable teller, as he gently causes us to become a “parable people.”

So you all be Good, be Holy, preach the Gospel always and if necessary use Words!

(‘Thank you’ to Deacon Kaas, for letting me post his reflection here — Brian H. Gill.)

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Adam and the Animals

Posted on July 23, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

I think pursuing knowledge and truth is a good idea. That’s probably why Tennyson’s “Ulysses” is one of my favorite poems.

It’s the source of my Google Plus tagline: “To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” (March 26, 2017)

I’ll be talking about science, faith, and why I see no problem with admiring God’s work. Also the Flat Earth Society’s origin, and my own silly notion: a doughnut-shaped Earth.

But first, an excerpt from Apollodorus that reminded me of the pottery metaphor in Genesis 2:7:

“…Prometheus moulded men out of water and earth and gave them also fire….”
(Apollodorus, The Library, Book 1, 1.7.1; via The Theoi Classical Texts Library)

Bible translations I grew up with often called the material in Genesis 2:7 “clay.” The Hebrew word is אדמה, adamah/adama. It means ground, land, or earth — dirt.

I use the The New American Bible these days, where Genesis 2:7 says that God formed Adam “out of the dust of the ground.” Dust, earth, or dirt: the meaning seems clear enough. We’re made from the stuff of this world and God’s breath.

‘My Name is Mud’

My Bible’s translation of the Hebrew word אָדָם, adam, is “the man” in Genesis 2.

It’s not shown as a name, “Adam,” until Genesis 4:25. The original adamah-Adam play on words doesn’t work in my language. Not unless I check the footnotes.

Anyway, instead of telling Adam what to call each critter, God hands that off to “adam.”

“So the LORD God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each living creature was then its name.”
(Genesis 2:19)

It looks like God lets us work out some details ourselves. That’s hardly surprising, since we’re made “in the image of God,” and in charge of this creation. (Genesis 1:26–27)

The second creation story, in Genesis 2:4–7, doesn’t agree with the one in Genesis 1:1–2:4.

Not if I assume that an American wrote both; or at least someone with no sense of poetry. I’m a Catholic, so that’s not necessary. Or a good idea. (April 21, 2017)

Getting back to Genesis, you know what happens next. We break the lease on Eden, the man tries blaming his wife and God. We’ve had trouble ever since. Genesis 3:1–24 describes the debacle. No wonder Eve’s husband’s name is “Mud” in the next chapter.

Our problems don’t happen because God is smiting us for something done uncounted generations before our time. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 386–390; Gaudium et spes, 13, Paul VI (1965)

We were made “in the image of God,” “in a state of holiness,” as Blessed Pope Paul VI put it. We were basically good. We still are.

The first of us decided that acting on an impulse was more important than what God wanted. That was a massive lapse in judgment. Our problems aren’t God’s fault. They’re consequences of that decision. (Catechism, 390, 396–401)

Original sin, for Catholics who understand our faith, isn’t the notion that we’re rotten to the core. It’s recognition that consequences happen. We can’t ‘go back’ to the way we were. But we have the option of moving forward with hope. (March 10, 2017; April 16, 2017)

About Adam, Genesis, and all that: I take the Bible seriously.

I have to. It’s ‘Catholicism 101,’ sort of: Catechism, 101–133.

I think Genesis is true. I also know it wasn’t written by an American. I don’t expect the Bible to be a computer manual or science textbook.1

Genesis 3 describes a real event in figurative language. (Catechism, 390)

I think we are made “in the image of God,” matter and spirit, body and soul. Each of us is a person — someone, not something — made from the stuff of this world and filled with God’s ‘breath.’ (Genesis 1:26–27, 2:7; Catechism, 355, 357, 362–368)

That’s not even close to thinking Adam and Eve were German. (September 23, 2016)

Zeal and Cosmology

A doughnut-shaped Earth like the one over that ‘cosmic coffee cup’ would look like the real one. Near where where I live, that is. If you don’t look up and to the north.

I’m pretty sure nobody’s going to think our home is really shaped like that. But there are some downright odd notions about our universe in my culture’s background noise.

Some are several centuries past their expiration date. Millennia, in at least one case.

I knew someone who was a Christian and insisted that our sun goes around Earth, not the other way around. His proof was that ‘it said so in the Bible.’ From his other remarks, my guess is that he had Joshua 10:12–13 in mind. Maybe Job 9:7, too. (December 2, 2016)

What’s a bit odd, from my viewpoint, is that he apparently did not try to adjust his cosmology to include the pillars beneath Earth. Those are mentioned in Job 9:6.

In a way, I admire the young Christian’s zeal in upholding Aristotle’s cosmology as described in Ptolemy’s “Almagest.”

Happily, I did not assume that all Christians had similar views, or that Christianity was founded on the principle that ancient Mesopotamians knew everything there is to know about this universe. (March 24, 2017)

Judging from my experiences, however, someone could easily get the idea that Christianity and reality don’t mix.

I’ve met Christians who don’t approve of science, or what we’ve learned in the last few centuries.

I don’t expect everyone to have my enthusiasm for humanity’s growing knowledge of the universe.

But the actions of folks who seem to have trouble dealing with the reality we live in are sometimes embarrassing.

A flat Earth crackpot might be harmless. Folks with similarly-inaccurate beliefs who seem convinced that they must defend ‘their’ country from folks like my ancestors can be anything but. Sadly, there can be some overlap of the two sets. (February 1, 2017; November 29, 2016)

Faith, Catholic Style

I could be upset over cartoonists who poke fun at the wacky side of American Christianity. Sometimes I am. But mostly I sympathize with those who see humor in “creation science.” (March 31, 2017)

Anti-evolutionists are easy enough to notice. Sometimes they even run billboard campaigns.

Although some American Christians may believe that Earth is flat, I’ve yet to meet one. That’s a bit surprising, since Samuel Rowbotham released his 16-page pamphlet, “Zetetic Astronomy,” in 1849. His 430-page book, “Earth Not a Globe,” followed in 1881. It was republished online in 2016.

Rowbotham had fans in his day, including the loudly-Christian John Hampden and the more discrete Lady Elizabeth Blount.

But he didn’t gain Darwin’s lasting name-recognition. That could be because he wrote under a pseudonym, Parallax. Flat Earth cosmography’s failure to get entangled in Victorian-era politics probably didn’t help, either. (March 10, 2017; October 28, 2016)

I’ll get back to Rowbotham, the Flat Earth Society, and evidence that scientists are human.

Evolution seems to be a big hot-button topic for many tightly-wound Christians. I don’t know how many there are, but they’re often quite vocal.

Again, I admire their zeal. The impression they give of my faith is another matter.

I’ve met Christians who insist that evolution mustn’t happen. Generally because it’s not in the Bible.

Some also declare that Earth must be many orders of magnitude younger than scientists have determined.

Maybe we’ll learn that radioactive decay rates changed dramatically, and recently. That could make samples like zircons found in Australia’s Jack Hills much younger than we think.

Maybe erosion rates changed too, and all the other evidence we’ve been analyzing for the last few centuries is a sort of divine practical joke. That seems a trifle unlikely to me. (January 13, 2017)

I figure God has a sense of humor: we get that quality from somewhere, and our creator is the most obvious source. But planting intellectual land mines? That seems a bit extreme.

The Copernican principle, the idea that this universe works the same way everywhere, still seems like a pretty good match with reality. (June 23, 2017)

That hasn’t stopped scientists from discussing unlikely and unprovable ideas. Discussing, not insisting that the ideas must be true. (June 2, 2017)

One of these is that the gravitational constant and Sommerfeld’s constant may have changed since this universe started. At the moment, it’s intriguing academic speculation and little more.

Inconstant constants might fit the Lambda-CDM model. That’s the standard model of cosmology we’ve developed in the last few decades. Or maybe astronomers and other scientists will learn that this universe is — different.

Which reminds me; physicists and mathematicians have worked out hypothetical models of continua that are very unlike the space-time we live in.

The math works fine. Whether or not there are ‘universes’ with more or fewer dimensions than ours is another question. And that’s another topic.

I can almost understand Christians at one end of America’s beliefs insisting that evolution is bad, and that science threatens their religion. If their faith is based on unyielding allegiance to a 17th-century chronology — my view is that science isn’t their problem. (August 28, 2016)

I think faith and science are both pursuing truth, from different directions; so I don’t see conflict between their goals.

Being Catholic helps. We’re told that science gives us opportunities for admiration of God’s work, and that faith is a willing and conscious embrace of “the whole truth that God has revealed.” (Catechism, 142–150, 283, 341)

Now, time for some fun and quotes.

Flat Earth, 1849-2014

Rowbotham’s research was based on the Bible and the Bedford Level experiment: the 1838 one.

Newspaper editor Ulysses Grant Morrow conducted his own experiments elsewhere in 1896. He did even better than Rowbotham. Mr. Morrow got results showing that Earth has a concave curvature: like the inside of a bowl.

If I was serious about my ‘cosmic coffee cup’ cosmology, I’d claim that every Bedford Level experiment and Mr. Morrow’s claim were exactly accurate.

The different results are, ‘obviously,’ due to the doughnut-Earth’s surface moving along the doughnut’s surface. Never mind the distortions in horizontal scale that’d involve.

I’d also say that similar experiments, done elsewhere, get their varying results for the same reason. If any still didn’t fit my claims, I’d say this was proof that an international cabal of non-dairy creamer manufacturers is even more powerful than I feared.

The cabal may even be in league with Mondelez, the multinational conglomerate behind aerosol cheese. The very name craftily conceals “mond,” the Latin word for “world.” Suspicious!

There are several other conspiracy theories waiting to be hatched there, and maybe a new religion or two. All thoroughly bogus.

I trust that my cheesy cabal will be taken as a lighthearted spoof.

I also hope that nobody will wonder if I’m being serious about the cosmic coffee cup and aerosol cheese machinations. Considering some wackadoo notions that get believed, that might be a reasonable concern. Or not. Moving on.

I see flat Earth beliefs as silly, and potentially funny.

By themselves, they’re arguably harmless, except possibly for the ‘believers.’

When politics and ‘God agrees with me’ beliefs get into the mix, I’m not so sure.

The International Flat Earth Society, founded in 1956, recruited members by denouncing the U.S. government, particularly NASA.

Reasoned consideration of government actions is, I think, a good idea. Encouraging unreasonable fears, not so much. And that’s yet another topic.

The 1956 Flat Earth outfit apparently became the International Flat Earth Research Society of America and Covenant People’s Church in California in the 1970s. They had several thousand members in their prime.

The last two folks maintaining the membership database died around 2001. An online Flat Earth Society started in 2004, and by 2014 had grown to a global membership of 500.

My guess is that some folks join ‘flat Earth’ outfits because it amuses them. Others may well be devoted to the “extreme Biblical-literalist theology” Eugenie Scott discussed.

I might take both, or all, sides of the debate more seriously — if they didn’t seem to have about as much influence on national and world affairs as believers in Icke’s lizard men. The state of their minds concerns me a bit, but there isn’t much I can do about that.

I think experiments like Rowbotham’s and Morrow’s are the sort of thing that happen when folks are overly focused on getting a particular result, and less on uncovering truth.

Some scientists have acted that way, too. I think it shows that scientists are human, not that science is a fraud. (April 28, 2017)

“Pursuit of Truth”

I can’t reasonably be afraid that I’ll learn too much, or that my interest in science offends God.

Being human includes being curious, thinking, and — for some of us — studying this universe. We’re supposed to notice the order and beauty surrounding us. It’s one way we can learn about God. (Catechism, 31–32, 35–36, 301, 303–306, 311, 319, 1704, 2293–2296)

“…It’s something too many of us forget, that reality has layers. Occasionally people ask me how I can be Catholic and a science journalist. The answer is simple: Truth does not contradict truth. Both science and religion are pursuit of truth. They’re after different aspects of truth, different layers of reality, but they’re still both fundamentally about truth….”
(Camille M. Carlisle, Sky and Telescope (June 2017))

“…faith must be there first, if one wishes to see God in Creation.”
(Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican Observatory, in a Zenit interview (May 2017))

“No matter where and how far we look, nowhere do we find a contradiction between religion and natural science. On the contrary, we find a complete concordance in the very points of decisive importance. Religion and natural science do not exclude each other, as many contemporaries of ours would believe or fear. They mutually supplement and condition each other. The most immediate proof of the compatibility of religion and natural science, even under the most thorough critical scrutiny, is the historical fact that the very greatest natural scientists of all times—men such as Kepler, Newton, Leibniz—were permeated by a most profound religious attitude.”
“Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against scepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and always will be: ‘On to God!’”
(“Religion and Natural Science,” Lecture about the relationship between religion and science. Originally entitled Religion und Naturwissenschaft. (1937) Complete translation into English: “Max Planck: Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers” (1968); via Wikiquote [emphasis mine])

“…Even if the difficulty is after all not cleared up and the discrepancy seems to remain, the contest must not be abandoned; truth cannot contradict truth…”
(“Providentissimus Deus,” Pope Leo XIII (November 18, 1893))

Pursuing truth occasionally lets us see “wonderful things.”

“Lord Carnarvon: “Can you see anything?”
Howard Carter: “Yes, wonderful things!”
(First look into Tutankhamen’s tomb (1922) via Wikipedia)

I think the pursuit is always worthwhile, within reason:

1 Background:

“…Know what the Bible is – and what it isn’t. The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with the people he has called to himself. It is not intended to be read as history text, a science book, or a political manifesto. In the Bible, God teaches us the truths that we need for the sake of our salvation….”
(“Understanding the Bible,” Mary Elizabeth Sperry, USCCB)

From “10 points for fruitful Scripture reading:”

  1. Bible reading is for Catholics
  2. Prayer is the beginning and the end
  3. Get the whole story!
  4. The Bible isn’t a book. It’s a library
  5. Know what the Bible is – and what it isn’t
  6. The sum is greater than the parts
  7. The Old relates to the New
  8. You do not read alone
  9. What is God saying to me?
  10. Reading isn’t enough
    (From “Understanding the Bible,” Mary Elizabeth Sperry, USCCB)
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Using Vaccines Wisely

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

Using drones to deliver vaccines seems reasonable for places like Vanuatu.

But vaccines won’t help if folks don’t know how to use them correctly, or can’t.

Others avoid vaccines because they believe warnings from dubious sources.

Health, Illness, and Getting a Grip

Being healthy isn’t a mark of holiness. Neither is being sick. What counts is how we deal with what we’ve got. There’s a great deal more to say about that, but not today. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 828, 1509, 2211, 2288–2291, 2292–2296, 2448)

We’re reasonably sure that folks have been getting polio for millennia. Polio epidemics weren’t a problem until 1907.

I could blame the 1907 outbreak on the American Congress. They passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

I think that was a good idea. But let’s say that I don’t, and have ‘old fashioned values.’ (October 16, 2016)

Applying an earlier century’s all-to-common spin on Christianity, I could claim that food poisoning “is a visitation from God.”

The early, and mid, 20th century had it’s oddball notions too. We’ve got a slightly different set today. They make just as much — or little — sense.

The last time a case of polio started in my country was in 1979.

Polio hasn’t been eradicated yet, so someone could catch the disease before entering the United States. That hasn’t happened since 1993,1 but I think routine vaccinations are still a good idea.

Polio isn’t the only serious disease, of course. But apparently some folks remember that it’s something to avoid. That makes sense. Panic? Not so much.

Researching this post, I learned about what one outfit called the “The Great U.S. Polio Panic of 2015.”

The disease acted like polio, but wasn’t. Several enterovirus D68 cases had been diagnosed, mostly in the Midwest, in 2014. I missed that “panic,” so it may have been limited to folks with specific reading preferences.

Polio in History

When I finally started walking, it was with a limp. I’ve talked about hip dysplasia, doctors, and why I take medical ethics a bit personally, before. (October 7, 2016)

This was the 1950s, so at least one person figured I’d survived a polio infection. It was a reasonable guess at the time.

Folks my age are among the last Americans whose parents might have reasonably feared another polio epidemic.

Polio epidemics started in the 20th century.2 The disease is much older.

Now that we know what to look for, scientists and historians have traced polio back several millennia.

I’ll grant that a retrospective diagnosis on someone who died three millennia back can be debatable. And often is. Debated, that is.

We don’t have photos or oligonucleotide mapping from Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty.

But we do have pictures. I think it’s likely that the priest pictured on that stele had polio, and survived.

We also have Siptah’s mummy, and some records from his time. He’s a pharaoh you may or may not have heard of, who lived during the Nineteenth Dynasty.

Something left him with a severely deformed left foot. A little over 32 centuries later, we’re reasonably sure that he had polio: or something that acted like polio.

The first clinical description of poliomyelitis, polio, was published in 1789. That’s when Michael Underwood described “a debility of the lower extremities.”

The disease had quite a few names in my language during the early 19th century: Dental Paralysis, Infantile Spinal Paralysis, Essential Paralysis of Children, Regressive Paralysis, Myelitis of the Anterior Horns, Tephromyelitis, and Paralysis of the Morning.

Jakob Heine wrote a medical report on Lähmungszustände der unteren Extremitäten in 1840. It’s pretty clear that the “paralysis of the lower extremities” he described was polio.

The disease wasn’t common. Outbreaks were scattered and small. We didn’t have polio epidemics before the 20th century. (August 21, 2016)

Iron Lungs: Not Missing the ‘Good Old Days’

Some folks recovered with no serious aftereffects. Some were crippled.

Some died because paralysis hit systems we use to breathe. By the 1950s, we’d figured out how to keep folks who couldn’t breathe on their own alive with tech like iron lungs.

It was an improvement on the ‘good old days,’ but not by much.

In 1952 the first practical polio vaccine was developed in a lab.

We’d learned, the hard way, that careful testing makes sense. I’ll get back to that.

Nobody died this time around, and the vaccine worked. Mass inoculations started in 1955. An average of about 20,000 folks were catching polio each year by then.

I went through an immunization sequence, and didn’t mind at all when an oral vaccine replaced injections.

Rio, 1904


(From Leonidas Freire, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Brazil’s Old Republic picked its first president the old-fashioned way. Deodoro da Fonseca led a military coup that removed Emperor Pedro II.

Elections started a few revolts later. Women couldn’t vote, and the Política dos Governadores made sure unsuitable candidates didn’t get elected.

It wasn’t all bad news. President Francisco de Paula Rodrigues Alves apparently thought smallpox inoculations would be a good idea. I think he was right about that.

However, if half of what I’ve read about the program is accurate, it could be a case study in how not to conduct a public immunization program.

The 1904 Rio de Jainero ‘Vaccine Revolt’ was the high, or low, point.

Depending on who you believed, folks like the chap wielding a scalpel in that cartoon were to blame; or the broom-and-hatchet brigade.

My guess is that official attitudes hadn’t changed much since 1891, when the Inspector of Public Health reported that Rio promoted a “complete absence of moral virtue” among its inhabitants, who practiced “horrendous nudity and licentious behavior.”

A much more recent, and academic, publication’s author says that the problem was clashing cultural norms.

Government doctors didn’t see a problem with going into someone’s home and getting up close and personal with the missus and daughters. The folks with a “complete absence of moral virtue” didn’t have the same ‘doctor knows best’ attitude, and did see a problem.3

Rodrigues Alves caught influenza during a pandemic, and died in 1919.

Fears and the 50s

An Anti-Vaccination Society of America leader’s daughter died from sepsis after being exposed to smallpox vaccine.

I’m not unsympathetic, but think working to convince doctors that washing their hands was a good idea would have been a better idea. (October 30, 2016)

The Anti-Vaccination Society of America got started after a visit by William Tebb. He was for social reform, against vaccination, concerned about premature burial, and paid for a drinking fountain in Burstow, England.

The fountain was dedicated to memory of the 400,000 horses killed and wounded during the Boer War. Tebb was also gung-ho about physical purity, food reform, and teetotalism. A colorful chap, in a colorful century. (April 9, 2017; November 11, 2016; July 10, 2016)

America in the 1950s was colorful, too.

Rock and roll was getting popular, a particular brand of Christianity was on the move, and the House Un-American Activities Committee was hunting commies.

I said “colorful,” not praiseworthy.

That 1955 Keep America Committee flyer wasn’t, I think, mainstream.

But a decade later, I was running into folks who took such claims seriously. Some probably still do, with other vaccines on the ‘fear it’ list.

The third item of “the unoly three” was almost certainly a warning against the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act.

Congress said the Act would improve mental health care in Alaska. Land allocated to a mental health trust would generate funds for the programs.

The Keep America Committee’s story was much more interesting.

“…Mental Hygiene is a subtle and diabolical plan of the enemy to transform a free and intelligent people into a cringing horde of zombies….”
(Keep America Committee (May 16, 1955))

Zombies? Maybe they meant that metaphorically.

Other folks seemed equally convinced that the Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act was an international conspiracy masterminded by Jews, the Catholic Church, or psychiatrists.

Alaska’s legislature passed a law in 1978 that allowed selling the Alaska Trust land. I’m quite sure they weren’t thwarting an un-American plot.

They said the land would be more useful in the hands of municipalities, and individuals; or as forests, parks or wildlife areas.

Claiming that mutant grizzlies enslaved Alaskan legislators with brainwaves from HAARP is tempting. But someone might believe me. That kind of trouble I don’t need.

A 1982 lawsuit led to a 1985 ruling that selling the land was illegal. A lot of different folks and outfits owned much of the land by then. The snarl got sorted out in 1994.

Some folks were still stirring the anti-Alaska Trust pot in 1992. Maybe that conspiracy theory will be revived, if the Alaska Trust gets into the news again.

I think the best conspiracy claims, in terms of entertainment value, are the ones involving space aliens.

David Icke’s lizard-men are among my favorites. As an example of such things, at any rate. He started warning folks that shape-shifting space-alien lizard-men rule the world in the 1990s.

Reasoned concerns about new medical technology, including vaccines, makes sense. The trick is sorting out facts and fears. (August 21, 2016)

1. UNICEF Drones


(From Getty Images, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Drones are already being tested for commercial deliveries in many countries”
(BBC News))

“Drone vaccine delivery trial for island nation Vanuatu”
(June 14, 2017)

“Lifesaving vaccines in the island nation of Vanuatu will soon be delivered to remote areas by drone.

“A partnership between the government and the United Nations children’s fund (Unicef) will see a trial on drone medical delivery next year.

“The country is made up of a string of more than 80 islands – once known as the New Hebrides – many of which do not have airstrips or good roads.

“Most of the people live in rural areas and farm their own food.

“Vanuatu’s director general at the ministry of health said the test was a milestone for the small island nation….”

Getting vaccines to folks who need them makes sense. So does letting recipients know what the vaccines are for, and how to use them. Better yet, having someone with a little training on site to answer questions and at least supervise inoculations.

I’m pretty sure folks at UNICEF have thought of that.

This looks like a good idea. Part of a good idea, at least.4

These ‘drones’ are unmanned aerial vehicles, aircraft that fly without anyone aboard. Some are updated versions of model airships used in 19th century music hall acts and radio-controlled model airplanes flying at least since my younger days.

The last I heard, fully-autonomous drones are still in the research and development stage.

‘Good Enough for a Story’

Given the human capacity for silliness, I’m pretty sure that someone’s going to have unreasonable fears of what UNICEF is ‘really’ up to.

The fears would make sense, in a ‘good enough for a story’ way.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, is part of the United Nations Development Group. For some, the UN connection alone would be enough for heebie-jeebies.

Add news like The Register’s “flying robot killer death machines” article, and stand back. The new world order conspiracy theory could rise from its unquiet bed and — here we go again.

I think UNICEF, and the United Nations, aren’t perfect. But at the moment they are part of what we work with. If we’re doing our job. (June 18, 2017; May 28, 2017; May 21, 2017)

2. Measles: Avoidable Deaths


(From SPL, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)

“Measles ‘tragedy’ kills 35 across Europe”
James Gallagher, BBC News (July 11, 2017)

“Thirty-five people have died in the past year from measles outbreaks across Europe, the World Health Organization has warned.

“It described the deaths – which can be prevented with vaccination – as an ‘unacceptable tragedy’.

“A six-year-old boy in Italy was the latest to die from the infection. More than 3,300 measles cases have been recorded in the country.

“The most fatalities – 31 – have been in Romania.

“But there have also been deaths in Germany and Portugal since June 2016….”

Measles isn’t as scary as the Black Death. It’s also a fairly new disease. Scientists figure it evolved from the rinderpest virus, about a thousand years back.5

Rinderpest was an often-fatal disease for cattle, so dealing with that virus was a priority. It’s now one of two diseases we’ve managed to eradicate.

Most folks who catch measles recover, if they can rest and don’t develop any of several occasionally-fatal complications. But since a few folks will die after getting measles, we’ve developed MMR vaccine.

The notion that MMR vaccine causes people like me6 comes partly from a fake 1998 article in The Lancet.

Result? A remarkable number of folks are scared of keeping their kids healthy. Not that they’d put it that way.

Bogus “scientific” research ranges from honest but stupid mistakes, through professional fraud, to crackpots and ethically-challenged journalists. Whatever the cause, it’s a bad idea. (April 28, 2017; December 16, 2016; August 26, 2016)

What’s sad is that the MMR vaccine works, and should be available anywhere in Europe. Those folks didn’t have to die.

3. Congo Polio Outbreak


(From AFP, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Polio can only be prevented through immunisation”
(BBC News))

“DR Congo polio outbreak ‘from poor vaccine coverage’”
(June 14, 2017)

“Two outbreaks of polio have been identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a blow to the goal of wiping out the disease from the world.

“The World Health Organization said there was a high risk the vaccine-derived virus could spread.

The strain of polio involved comes from areas with poor vaccine coverage.

A similar outbreak, linked to low immunisation rates, was confirmed last week in Syria….”

Karl Landsteiner and Erwin Popper isolated the poliovirus in 1909. Since then we’ve learned that it’s an RNA virus, a bit of RNA in a protein shell.

Some RNA viruses, like the ones causing the common cold, are more of a nuisance than a threat. Others, like poliovirus and the measles virus, are occasionally lethal.

A little over a century after Landseiner and Popper’s work, we have comparatively safe and effective vaccines that can protect folks from the disease.

But like any other technology, the vaccines won’t work unless they’re used properly.

Some vaccines, including those used in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, use viruses that are weakened, but not dead. Inactivated vaccines, where the viruses are dead, are not necessarily safer.

Fear and Marketing

An emotionally-convincing tale could still be spun about the evils of vaccine, based on experiments done in the mid 1930s.

Decades after two disastrous experiments, McCarthyism enthusiasts included “polio monkey serums” in their “sign of the unholy three” marketing flier.

Their “polio monkey serums” probably depended on memories of Dr. Maurice Brodie’s and Dr. Dr. John A. Kolmer’s experiments for emotional impact.

New York University’s Dr. Brodie had tried a dead-virus vaccine on himself and several thousand children.

They didn’t die, but many developed severe allergic reactions to the vaccine. They didn’t have immunity to polio, either.

Dr. Brodie’s career was essentially over. He died a few years later, in his late 30s. I don’t know why, although rumors of suicide are plausible.7

Dr. John Kolmer tested a weakened-virus vaccine on several thousand children, the same year as Brodie’s experiment. With sketchy preparation and without a control group. They didn’t acquire immunity. Several caught polio. Several died.8

Happily, other researchers kept working. I talked about that earlier.

Medical research is a good idea, if it doesn’t expose folks “to disproportionate or avoidable risks.” (Catechism, 2292–2295)

We’ve learned a great deal since 1935. My guess, and hope, is that Dr. Brodie thought his vaccine was safe for human testing. Using himself as a test subject certainly suggests that. The results were still tragic.

Vaccines used in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, weren’t experimental. The problems in that case were — complicated.

Disease: One of Many Problems


(From Julien Harneis, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Folks in that photo, taken on the Congo River in 2008, were refugees. They were living on abandoned barges. The barges had once hauled agricultural and industrial products.

Polio outbreaks are just one of the problems folks in the DRC face.

Folks have lived there for — a very long time: 90,000 years, at least. My guess is that it’s a whole lot longer. ‘It happened earlier’ seems like a common theme in our growing knowledge of Earth’s past, and ours. (June 16, 2017)

Folks living in the Congo basin should be prospering. Their land has abundant mineral resources, good farmland, a nice climate, and the Congo River. The Congo is one of Earth’s major rivers.

I think, and hope, the Congo will eventually be as filled with commerce as my continent’s Mississippi.

That is in a hoped-for future.

Today, the territory is a mess.

The 2016 Human Development Index ranked the DRC’s level of human development at 176 out of 187.9 There are worse places to live, but not many.

Appalling ‘Philanthropy’

“Congo” is the name European sailors used for the river. It was the Kingdom of Kongo and Kongo people’s major river.

“Congo” was arguably easier for Europeans to pronounce than the regional name, Nzadi O Nzere, River Swallowing Rivers.

“Mississippi” is what happened when Frenchmen tried saying Mshi-ziibi, “Big River.” And that’s another topic.

I won’t blame all of the Congo basin’s problems on Belgium. But Leopold II’s rapacious rule was a bad idea, and conditions haven’t been much better since.

From roughly 1390 to 1891, Kingdom of Kongo was a semi-independent nation, a sort of junior partner of Belgium.

Non-European slavers like Tippu Tip didn’t make life easier for folks living there. Neither did Portuguese merchants who were major clients of the slavers.

On top of that, the kingdom’s internal politics seem to have been rather intense.

In 1885 Belgium’s King King Leopold II told other European leaders that he’d be doing humanitarian and philanthropic work in Kingdom of Kongo. They apparently believed him, so until 1908, Leopold’s “Congo Free State” was the king’s personal property.

His notion of ‘uplifting’ folks living there was to relieve them of all the ivory, rubber, and minerals he could ship out. Even by the period’s standards, his conduct was appalling.

International pressure convinced Belgian’s government to rename Leopold’s Congo Free State as the Belgian Congo.

That lasted from 1908 to 1960. It wasn’t quite more of the same.

The territory has been independent since then, endured a succession of dubiously-ethical leaders, and has been renamed a few times. It is currently not the worst place on Earth to live. By a narrow margin.

Why Pay Attention?

Africa is a long way from Minnesota.

Why should I pay attention to what’s happening there?

I’m interested in the science involved in sorting out the polio outbreak.

And I must not pretend that my neighbors are limited to folks I know personally. (Matthew 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; Matthew 5:43–44; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–30; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1825)

I think the World Health Organization’s polio eradication efforts are a good idea. We’ve got a pretty good chance of succeeding, too.

Not “soon” by American standards, maybe. But we’re down to a few dozen known cases a year. My guess is that we’re no more than a few decades from putting polio on the “eradicated” list, along with smallpox and rinderpest. Or could be, if we keep working.

This would be a good thing. (October 16, 2016; August 21, 2016)

Finishing the Job

I don’t have a problem with polio vaccine, partly because I’ve long since gone through the process. So have many other folks.

I also looked into how a vaccine-derived poliovirus happens.

Vaccines with weakened live viruses are safe and effective. That’s true only if enough folks in an area get immunized. Having creature comforts like water and sewage treatment tech helps.

Folks living in many, most, parts of the DRC don’t. Many didn’t get immunized.

Inadequate sewage treatment isn’t a problem by itself. Not where poliovirus is concerned. It’s still a good idea, for other reasons.

Where was I? polio, vaccines, sewage treatment. Right.

If everyone in an area is immunized, it won’t matter that kids get exposed to the attenuated poliovirus. The viruses will die if they don’t promptly reinfect another person. End of problem.

Even if an unimmunized kid gets infected with the weakened vaccine virus, the results are the same as if he or she took the vaccine normally.

The weakened virus will trigger an immune response, the kid acquires immunity, and the viruses die. When everyone’s immune, all viruses are dead. End of problem again.

However — viruses, including the one that causes polio, mutate and evolve rapidly.

With enough unimmunized folks around, a vaccine-derived virus strain will keep moving from host to host. There’s a chance that it’ll change into a fully active virus. Then we have a polio outbreak. Big problem.

Getting polio vaccines to folks is a good idea. So is making sure that enough folks get immunized. This is a job that, once started, should be finished.

I put links to a range of technical and non-technical resources below. I strongly recommend the Rotary’s “Understanding the recent polio outbreaks.”10

Dealing With Disease

I talked about medical history’s highlights recently, from the Ebers Papyrus and Hippocrates of Kos to Saint Hildegard of Bingen. (May 12, 2017)

St. Hildegard’s “Physica” and “Causae et Curae” helped lay foundations for the branch of philosophy we call science.

Nearly a millennium after St. Hildegard’s work, we’ve learned quite a bit. We’ve also acquired some very odd notions.

Some, not all, Christians act as if using the brains God gave us is sinful.

Some, again not all, scientists act as if they think a core value of Christianity is avoiding knowledge. Considering the antics of some Christians, I can understand their attitude: but don’t agree.

Some scientists, like Gregor Mendel, have been unequivocally Christian and Catholic.

Mendel’s experiments with peas and mice were much later recognized as groundbreaking genetics research. He was also an Augustinian friar and abbot, so his religious beliefs are fairly obvious.

Others, like Louis Pasteur, weren’t quite as blatantly Catholic.

In Pasteur’s case, I think some assumptions about his beliefs may come from his refusal to mix religion and science. Mendel didn’t either; but like I said, he was an Augustinian friar and abbot.

My culture’s recent history might make imagining someone rejecting either faith or science easy enough. Attempting a ‘scientific’ faith or ‘Biblical’ science is another option. But not, I think, a good option.

Trusting God, Within Reason

America’s ‘Bible thumper’ subculture was developing ‘creation science’ during my youth. Small wonder so many Americans assume that religion and reality don’t mix. (March 31, 2017)

My experience suggests that thumpers started losing their penchant for ersatz Elizabethan English around the time ‘creation science’ hatched.

Their ‘faith-based science’ details were new, but the basic ideas remind me of Hawkins’ imaginative effort to wrap new facts around his preferred reality:

“…Such is the Basis of Scripture, and such also is the legitimate deduction of History. But incontinent Liberality deceiving Faith, Reason, empty with the fumes of that same flattery by which we originally fell, cometh of the unhallowed embrace, and finding in the crust of the Earth certain animal Types….”
(“The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri,” Thomas Hawkins, Thomas; p. 1 (1840))

Embarrassing as ‘creation science’ is, I don’t see it as a physically dangerous belief. Faith healing’s far end is another matter. It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard of someone dying because their religion was against medical treatment, so maybe it’s on the wane.

Getting and staying healthy is a good idea. Within reason. So is prayer. And science. (Catechism, 1506–1510, 2288, 2289, 2292)

The idea that God has anger management issues, and smites folks with disease? I suspect that was more common in the 18th century than now.

“for a man to infect a family in the morning with smallpox and to pray to God in the evening against the disease is blasphemy; that the smallpox is a judgment of God on the sins of people, and that to avert it is but to provoke him more; that inoculation is an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite.”
(Contemporary reaction to inoculation experiments by American physician Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, circa 1720)

“Smallpox is a visitation from God; but the cowpox is produced by presumptuous man; the former was what Heaven ordained, the latter is, perhaps, a daring violation our of holy religion.”
(A physician’s reaction to Dr. Edward Jenner’s experiments in developing a vaccine for smallpox, (1796) via Psychological Sciences, Vanderbilt University)

Repeating what I’ve said before, and probably will again, I take my faith seriously.

Reading the Bible, frequently, is important. So is trusting God, and God’s truth. (Catechism, 101–133, 215–217)

Faith means willingly and consciously embracing “the whole truth that God has revealed.” (Catechism, 142–150)

“The whole truth” means just that: all truth. Not just the bits and pieces I like, or what we learned before some arbitrary date.

Since God created everything, including this universe, science and religion should get along fine. The same goes for faith and reason. (Genesis 1:1; “Fides et Ratio;” “Gaudium et Spes,” 36; Catechism, 159)

Living in Yesterday’s Tomorrow

The RCA Whirlpool “Miracle Kitchen” went on tour, starting in about 1956. It included a microwave oven: one of the more accurate ‘world of the future’ predictions.

Quite a few folks were talking about ‘miracles’ then, the futuristic kind.

“…’Miracles You’ll See in the Next Fifty Years’ pretty much summed up the attitude of the day. We weren’t just going to see advances or novelties; we were going to see miracles….”
(“Life in 2000 AD,” Tales of Future Past, David S. Zondy)

I can get nostalgic about the era’s silly ‘world of tomorrow’ enthusiasm.

I don’t think it made any more sense than today’s equally-silly pessimism. But imagining a future “where jetpacks were as common as galoshes,” as David S. Zondy put it, was fun.

Now that I’m living in ‘the future,’ it’s not as shiny as some folks expected. I like it, on the whole, and that’s yet another topic. (June 23, 2017; October 30, 2016)

The “Miracles You’ll See…” article in a 1950 Popular Mechanics magazine was, I think, overly-optimistic.

But folks who were my current age at the time, born in 1885, had reason to be enthusiastic about the next half-century. Particularly if they were like me, and remembered what living in ‘simpler times’ was really like.

Cholera and Miasma

The first cholera pandemic ran from 1817 to 1824. We don’t know how many died.

The second cholera pandemic, from 1829 to 1849, was probably just as bad.

Cholera went international again in 1852. That pandemic ran until 1860. The fourth cholera pandemic lasted from 1863 to 1875.

Details of the fifth cholera pandemic are debatable. Debated, anyway. What’s more certain is that it lasted from 1881 to 1896, and killed a lot of folks. Again, we don’t know exactly how many.

The sixth and seventh cholera pandemics, 1899-1923 and 1961-75, were more of the same. We haven’t had another one since. Outbreaks and epidemics, yes. Pandemic, no. That’s progress. Stopping cholera is also part of a job we haven’t finished yet.

I’m not surprised that we don’t have exact numbers for how many folks died in those global disasters. Survivors of an epidemic or pandemic understandably focus more on burying bodies and rebuilding their society, less on compiling records.

Another priority would be healing folks who are still sick. Or, better yet, keeping folks from getting sick in the first place.

Folks from Europe to China had noticed that disease was more likely near fetid swamps and other smelly places. Common-sense prevention, like not touching sick people, wouldn’t keep you healthy.

The most obvious common factor was contact with foul-smelling air.

Vitruvius, a 1st century Roman architect, noticed a connection between the “heavy, unhealthy vapors” of the Pontine Marshes and illness. (“De architectura,” Book I)

Miasma theory was the consensus scientific explanation for disease until about 130 years back. Other theories. like contingent contagionism, had been suggested. The contagionism-miasma debate was big among doctors in the 19th century.

The idea that disease was spread by tiny “seeds” was over two thousand years old, but ‘bad air’ seemed a more reasonable explanation. That, we could smell. And correlations between ‘night air’ and disease were well-documented. Causation seemed plausible.

Certainly more plausible than the idea that tiny little critters we can’t see are bad for us. That idea took a long time to catch on.

‘Magic Bullets’

Agostino Bassi found a tiny fungus that made silkworms sick. In 1844, he said that maybe tiny organisms caused diseases in humans, too.

John Snow traced the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak to a specific well. Meanwhile, scientists in Italy ignored Filippo Pacini’s isolation of Vibrio cholerae, the cholera bacillus. Miasma theory was really popular.

Eventually, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch produced evidence that couldn’t be ignored. My guess is that today’s germ theory of disease isn’t the whole story.

I keep saying this: we have a great deal left to learn.

Paul Ehrlich’s 1900 Zauberkugel, magic bullet, isn’t “magic.”

It’s his name for a then-hypothetical agent that could be ‘aimed’ at disease organisms. I think naming something makes thinking about it easier.

In this case, it arguably helped Ehrlich study human immune systems and develop Salvarsan, the first effective treatment for syphilis.

That was in 1910. And this Paul Ehrlich is the physician-scientist, not the famous biologist-author.

We’d used antibiotics for millennia, along with other ‘folk medicine’ cures.

What made some ‘medical miracles’ of the 20th and 21st centuries, including eradication of smallpox and rinderpest, possible was learning how some folk remedies worked.

It’s not ‘magic,’ and antibiotics aren’t ‘miracles.’ All they did was make it possible, after millennia of suffering and death, to finally cure — and prevent — many diseases.

Folks living in the 1950s had reasons for their enthusiasm and optimism.

They had problems, too; some of them very serious. So do we. But we have cause for enthusiasm and optimism, too. Reasonable optimism:

1 Polio; nearly gone, but shouldn’t be forgotten:

2 Polio history:

3 Rio de Janeiro, 1904:

4 Delivery drones and all that:

5 Measles background:

6 Autism spectrum disorder and me:

7 Dr. Brodie, polio and suicide:

Posted in Science News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“A Writer Who is Catholic”

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Brian H. Gill

My #3 daughter has some of my qualities, and attitudes.

About four years back now, she vented frustration about writers, faith, and assumptions. She wasn’t nearly as loud as I’ve often been during ‘vents.’

When folks learned she’s a writer, they’d often say something like ‘oh, good: we need more Catholic writers.’

She’d say something like “I’m a writer who is Catholic, not a ‘Catholic writer.'”

I know what she means. She isn’t writing another ‘lives of the Saints,’ or book of prayers. She’s a Catholic who writes.

Another time, she said that Catholics doing ‘normal person’ stuff was a good idea. I think she’s right.

Being ‘in the world but not of the world’ includes being in the world. The idea shows up in John 15:18–19 and 17:14–16, and Romans 12:2.

What got me thinking about writers and being Catholic was something Fr. Robert Carr wrote recently about the ministry of presence.1 He was discussing urban priests, and the importance of simply being in the neighborhood.

I figure the principle applies to laity, too. We won’t do much good if we’re not around. Acting like we’re a few cards short of full deck doesn’t seem reasonable, either.

I’m not sure how ‘normal’ being a writer is. But for me it’s about as natural as breathing. And nearly as unavoidable. I suspect my daughter’s the same way.

Telling Stories

She’s writing a series of fantasy stories. Or maybe they’re science fiction.

These stories are not “Catholic” or “Christian.” Not overtly.

Religion isn’t part of their fictional landscape. Like the fellow said, “the book has not been baptized.”

That doesn’t bother me.

Having characters shouting “hallelujah” at intervals, or saying ‘dost thou’ instead of ‘have you,’ doesn’t make a story ‘religious.’

I can’t say that I miss the Biblese in films like “Samson and Delilah” and “The Prodigal,” and that’s another topic.

My daughter’s stories are set in a sub-creation2 that’s different in physical detail from the real world. But it works the same way on other levels.

I’ve known a few folks who don’t like fiction, particularly fantasy and science fiction. As long as readers don’t have trouble telling the difference between ‘real’ and ‘make-believe,’ I don’t see a problem with imaginary tales.

The ‘good guys’ in her stories often mean well, but sometimes do bad things: even by their standards. Her ‘bad guys’ do emphatically bad things, but at least one of them had been forced to behave badly.

She’s writing about human, and other, beings who are not perfect. Her fictional characters cope, or fail to cope, with that ancient wound we call original sin.3

I think there’s value in telling stories where folks act like people, decisions influence actions, and actions have consequences. A story can show how reality works without getting preachy. Or being “realistic.”

I think there’s also value in discussing sin, God, and cultural quirks, and that’s yet another topic. (April 23, 2017; November 13, 2016; July 10, 2016)

Doing What Seems Reasonable

I don’t think being a ‘Catholic writer’ is wrong. That attitude would be as silly as saying everybody must speak in tongues.

As 1 Corinthians 12 says, we’re not supposed to be cookie cutter Christians.

Being distinct, unique, individuals and cultures is a good thing. Forgetting that we all have equal dignity, not so much. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897–1917,1934–1938, 1957, 2334)

There’s more to ‘Catholic writing’ than prayer and devotional books, or collections of pithy and edifying sayings.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of thing. But there’s a lot more, like William May’s “An Introduction to Moral Theology,” 2nd edition (2003). Light reading it isn’t.

I’d be a ‘Catholic writer,’ if I saw that as the best use of my abilities.

Instead, I’m a writer who is Catholic. Writing isn’t what I ‘live for.’ That sort of misplaced priority is a bad idea. (Catechism, 2112–2114)

But I love language, enjoy digging up facts, and sharing what I find. Writing seems like a reasonable thing to do. It’s pretty obviously part of my vocation.

Having a vocation doesn’t make me a priest or a monk. Everyone’s got a vocation. (August 14, 2016)

My daughter decided that writing a still-growing tale about folks living in an imaginary world was a good idea. I think she’s right.

I’d like to create something along those lines. I also enjoy writing about faith and reason, science and truth.

Science? In a ‘religious’ blog? I’ve talked about religion, reality, and why I think using our brains is okay, pretty often. (March 31, 2017; December 23, 2016; August 28, 2016)

Constants and Variables

I think it’s too easy for folks to assume that being Catholic and being old-fashioned are the same thing.

As I keep saying, faith and nostalgia aren’t synonyms. And the ‘good old days’ weren’t. (July 4, 2017; June 18, 2017)

‘We’ve always done it this way’ doesn’t make something a good idea. On the other hand, some things don’t change:

“Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong.”
(“Life Is Worth Living” (1951-1957), Program 19, The Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, via Wikiquotes)

Stealing was wrong when Nebuchadnezzar II had the Ishtar Gate built.4 It still is, and it will be when the 46th century begins.

It’s not true because it’s an old idea. It’s true because taking something unjustly violates natural law. (March 30, 2017; February 5, 2017; November 21, 2016)

Natural law doesn’t change. Theft is always wrong. (Exodus 20:15; Leviticus 19:11; Deuteronomy 5:19; Catechism, 1954–1960, 2408)

What’s stolen and how we deal with the issue? That changes.

Hammurabi’s law code, 125, talks about theft of property left in another person’s care, but doesn’t mention how copyright applies to DRM. The WIPO Copyright Treaty does. The WIPO treaty almost certainly doesn’t deal with all property disputes of the 5740s.

That sort of thing is positive law, rules we make up. They change as our cultures change. They should change, at any rate. Positive law works best when it’s based on natural law. (June 18, 2017; February 5, 2017)

Style, Substance, and Steampunk

Diehard fans of the King James Bible notwithstanding, there’s nothing ‘Biblical’ about antique English. Take this career advice from Lady MacBeth, for example:

“…Glamys thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be What thou art promis’d: yet doe I feare thy Nature….”
(Lady Macbeth, “The Tragedie of Macbeth,” William Shakespeare (1st performed ca. 1606, published 1623))

Better yet, don’t take her advice.

Imitating a bygone era’s language can be fun. It’s helped writers draw readers into historical settings.

Writers and artists dealing with imaginary worlds can get material by mining another era’s design aesthetic. Studio Foglio’s Girl Genius serial epic introduced me steampunk before I learned it was a new(ish) sub-genre, one the Foglios call “gaslamp fantasy,” and that’s yet again another topic.

I was going somewhere with this. Let’s see. Writers, the “Alice” books, Girl Genius. Got it!

Stories, the ones folks read when they’re not assigned reading for some class, reflect reality: even if the setting is far from ‘realistic.’

One of these days I may buckle down and write about Castle Dampthorn, or do more excerpts from Otha Sisk’s “Notes of a Traveler.” Meanwhile, I’ll most likely keep writing the sort of things you see here.

Surrounded by Beauty and Wonders

We live in a vast and ancient universe, surrounded by beauty and wonders.

It’s pretty much the same as it was a few centuries back. What’s changing is how much we’ve learned about how it works.

We’re also learning how very much more we have left to learn. I don’t see a problem with that. (June 30, 2017; June 16, 2017)

Each time we learn something new about Earth’s long story, spot a planet circling another star, or get closer to understanding how reality works on subatomic scales, it’s an opportunity for greater admiration of God’s work. (Catechism, 283, 341)

Truth and beauty is everywhere. Noticing it, or not, depends on whether we decide that paying attention is worth the effort.

It’s expressed many ways: in words, “the rational expression of the knowledge;” “the order and harmony of the cosmos;” and “the greatness and beauty of created things.” (Catechism, 32, 41, 74, 2500)

God’s infinite beauty reflected in “the world’s order and beauty” tells us a little about God. Being curious is a good idea. A thirst for truth and happiness is written into each of us. If we’re doing our job right, it’ll lead us to God. (Catechism, 27, 31–32, 341)

And that’s still another topic.

Posts, some more obviously related than others:

1 A priest’s view of being present:

2 Thinking about make-believe worlds:

3 Each of us is basically good, but we deal with fallout from a really bad decision. We’re out of harmony with creation and God. (Catechism, 374, 396–412)

Oddly enough, one of the most coherent non-Catholic discussions I’ve run across on the topic was in a Monty Python movie. More of my take on reality and original sin:

4 Quite a few scholars figure the core of Deuteronomy was written in Jerusalem during the 7th century BC. That would make what we call Deuteronomy 5:19, “You shall not steal,” fairly new around Nebuchadnezzar II’s day:

Posted in Being a Writer, Being Catholic, Creativity, Series | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments