Different Sorts of “Dead”

Posted on November 11, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

Deciding who’s dead and who’s not isn’t always easy. But getting the answer right can be a matter of life or death.

  1. “Beating Heart Cadavers”
  2. Defining Life and Death

Memento Mori and Carpe Diem

I turned 65 this year, and had a routine physical exam around the same time. That included getting asked if I had questions about life’s endgame: which isn’t how the nurse put it.

I said something like ‘we live, then we die,’ and shrugged. What else is there to say? Quite a bit, actually, and I’ve been over that before.1

“Memento mori” — Latin for ‘remember your death,’ more or less — makes sense, in moderation. The phrase goes back to ancient Rome: “Respice post te. Hominem te memento,” a reality check for victorious generals.2

Recognition of approaching death can have a wonderfully focusing effect. But there’s wisdom in “carpe diem,” “seize the day,” too.

Horace said “carpe diem” in “Odes.” The idea that enjoying the ‘now’ makes sense is much older. It goes back at least as far as the “Epic of Gilgamesh” and Ecclesiastes 2:24. So does comparing folly and wind:

“…As for man, his days are numbered,
whatever he may do, it is but wind….”
(Gilgamesh to Enkidu, in “Epic of Gilgamesh;” tablet III, the Old Babylonian version; via Wikipquote)

“4 ‘What the eyes see is better than what the desires wander after.’ This also is vanity and a chase after wind.”
(Ecclesiastes 6:9)

It’s hardly surprising that the Hebrews picked up imagery from Mesopotamian cultures, and that’s another topic.

As Genesis 1:31 says, we live in a world that’s “very good.” Enjoying “good things” is okay, within reason.

“3 There is nothing better for man than to eat and drink and provide himself with good things by his labors. Even this, I realized, is from the hand of God.”
(Ecclesiastes 2:24)

“Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him.”
(Sirach 15:17)

Presumed Dead

Folks live longer, on average, now than we did in the 19th century. But sooner or later each of us dies.

Medical science and tech that’s been helping us stay alive has also makes defining “death” trickier. That’s what this week’s articles are about.

“Legally dead” and “medically dead” aren’t quite the same thing, which makes life — and death — even more complicated.

We’re very social creatures,3 so death leaves those around us with a body to deal with. Quite a few cultures bury or burn our dead. A few use exposure, like the Tibetan sky burial and Parsi towers of silence.

Edgar Allen Poe could have had a field day with the latter.

Overly-prompt burial can result in awkward situations. Quite a few patents for safety coffins date from the 18th and 19th century.

Cholera and assorted other epidemics, plus a natural skittishness about examining possibly-contagious corpses, made fears of waking up in a cozy little coffin not unreasonable. As I keep saying, I don’t miss ‘the good old days.’

What’s euphemistically called “unintentional live burial” is still possible. Police and emergency medical techs, not unreasonably, figured that a body they’d found soaking in a cold bathtub was dead. She wasn’t breathing, had no pulse, and was cold.

About three and a half hours later, funeral director John Matarese noticed that the “corpse” in a body bag was noisy. He called paramedics. As of January 25, 2005, ABC News said she was hospitalized and stable.

“Dead,” But He’s Better Now

Prospects for a merry Christmas didn’t look good for the Garza family in 1987. Their son, Alvaro, had fallen through a hole in the ice on the Red River between Moorhead and Fargo, North Dakota.

A recovery team spotted spotted his body and pulled the 11-year-old boy’s body out about 45 minutes later. He had no pulse, wasn’t breathing, and was limp as a noodle.

He was obviously dead.

When medical techs checked, his core body temperature was 77 degrees Fahrenheit — which probably saved his life. That, the mammalian diving reflex, having a hospital with a heart-lung machine nearby, and a family who wanted him to be alive. My opinion.

Folks at St. Luke’s hooked Alvaro Garza Jr. into the machine, which let them “take his blood and warm it up and put it right back in his body,” as St. Luke’s/MeritCare’s Roberta Young, RN, put it.

20 years later, Mr. Garza had four kids of his own: and a healthy respect for water.

Bodies and Health

There’s more to me than my body, but taking care of my body is important: within reason.

These days, that can include using replacement parts like cochlear implants or my hip joints.

Each of us is a body and a soul, “corporeal and spiritual.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 362–370)

“Life and physical health are precious gifts entrusted to us by God. We must take reasonable care of them, taking into account the needs of others and the common good….”
(Catechism, 2288)

Taking reasonable care of my health is one thing. Idolizing the body is a bad idea, and we shouldn’t do it. (Catechism, 2289)

I could refuse “…medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome….” (Catechism, 2278)

When I die, what’s left will still be a human body — minus my soul. I see that as a temporary situation: and I do not understand how the resurrection works. Not the nuts-and-bolts details. Happily, I don’t have to. (Catechism, 988–1014, 1016)

Treating bodies of the dead with respect is important, “…in faith and hope of the Resurrection…..” (Catechism, 2300)

That’s why Catholics usually bury our dead: which doesn’t rule out autopsies and/or organ transplants in some cases. Cremation is okay, too, provided it’s not done as a denial of the resurrection of the body. (Catechism, 2300–2301)

And, like most folks, we like to be reasonably sure our loved ones are dead before burying them. Which brings me to two articles published around Halloween this year.

1. “Beating Heart Cadavers”


(From Getty Images, via BBC, used w/o permission.)
(“The loss of heart beat was once considered a sign of death, but we now know this need not be the end”
(BBC News))

“The macabre fate of ‘beating heart corpses’ ”
Zaria Gorvett, BBC (November 4, 2016)

“Their hearts are still beating. They urinate. Their bodies don’t decompose and they are warm to the touch; their stomachs rumble, their wounds heal and their guts can digest food. They can have heart attacks, catch a fever and suffer from bedsores. They can blush and sweat – they can even have babies.

“And yet, according to most legal definitions and the vast majority of doctors these patients are thoroughly, indisputably deceased.

“These are the beating heart cadavers; brain-dead corpses with functioning organs and a pulse. Their medical costs are astronomical (up to $217,784 for just a few weeks), but with a bit of luck and a lot of help, today it’s possible for the body to survive for months – or in rare cases, decades – even though it’s technically dead. How is this possible? Why does this happen? And how do doctors know they’re really dead?…”

This BBC Future article does a pretty good job of reviewing how folks define death: from an 1846 Academy of Sciences, Paris competition to today’s discussions of when it’s okay to break someone down for parts.

Eugène Bouchut won the 1846 prize for “the best work on the signs of death and the means of preventing premature burials.” He recommended using emerging tech, the stethoscope, to check for a heartbeat. No heartbeat for two minutes meant the patient is dead.

That definition caught on, which gave us sensational headlines back when open heart surgery was newsworthy.

Transplants and “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die”

Christiaan Barnard’s successful human-to-human heart transplant in 1967 was a major international story. I trust that the donor really was “essentially brain dead” when the doctor cut her heart out.

I was in high school then: and knew enough science to realize that ‘dead patient lives again’ headlines were stretching the truth.

That brings me to organ transplants, movies like “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” and getting a grip.

Oddly enough, that 1962 horror flick was almost based on real science.

“Experiments in the Revival of Organisms” (“Эксперименты по оживлению организма”) showed a dog’s head being kept alive on a platter.

The 1940 documentary also showed the head moving, which would be impossible if it had been cut off where the film said it was. Maybe the scriptwriter goofed, or the narrator misspoke, or maybe the film is bogus. I don’t know.

Maximilian von Frey built an early prototype heart-lung machine in 1885, an early version of the Autojektor shown in that film.

Keeping a patient alive with an external pump wasn’t possible until Jay McLean and William Henry Howell discovered heparin in 1916. Practical oxygenators are yet another topic.

Skin grafts go back at least to Sushruta Samhita. Academics are still undecided on when Sushruta lived. My guess is that he was roughly contemporary with Cyaxares, and that his writings were updated about a half-millennium later.

Transplanted organs get rejected unless they’re from from the patient, possible for skin grafts; an identical twin; or immunosuppressive drugs shut down the patient’s immune system. A full-body transplant, as in “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” is — unlikely, at best.

Measuring Brain Activity

Scientists noticed that electrical impulses happen in brains in the 19th century. Richard Caton measured electrical activity on the surface of living rabbit and monkey brains in 1875. Adolf Beck did pretty much the same thing with rabbits and dogs.

Vladimir Pravdich-Neminsky published the first animal EEG in 1912, and don’t bother trying to remember those names. There will not be a test on this.

We don’t have science fiction’s ‘brain scanners’ yet. But tech like Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is getting close, and that’s yet again another topic.

We’ve learned a very great deal about how the brain works in the last few decades, which gives us a methods for defining “death,” and a lot of new questions.

2. Defining Life and Death


(From Khaled Al Hariri/Reuters, via The Atlantic, used w/o permission.)
(“The sculptor Mustafa Al’s exhibit, ‘Guillotine’ ”
(The Atlantic))

“When Decapitation Doesn’t Mean Death”
Haider Javed Warraich, The Atlantic (October 26, 2016)

“A medical debate over the definition of death has led to some gruesome questions about exactly how far life can be stretched.”

“A few years ago, I was working in the intensive-care unit when an elderly male, pale as chalk, was rushed into one of the empty rooms. He had recently been admitted to the hospital with a brain aneurysm so large that it was threatening to burst. But before he could get surgery, his heart stopped. After almost an hour of CPR failed, the man’s surgeon went to the waiting room to tell his family he didn’t make it.

“Fifteen minutes later, as I was managing a patient with a serious infection, a nurse came up to me and said that there was a problem: The dead man had a pulse. I went back to the man’s room and saw a clear, regular rhythm on the heart monitor. His wrist had a thready beat.

“The man had experienced something extremely rare: auto-resuscitation, also referred to as the Lazarus effect. Sometimes patients spontaneously recover a pulse after all resuscitative efforts have failed. It’s hypothesized this occurs because of some residual medications floating around in their sera, which provide a final push to their hearts to start beating. Whatever the cause, these patients’ resurrected heartbeats almost always fade again soon….”

Life was so much easier back when you’d figure someone was dead when they got really quiet. Then you buried them, digging them out if you heard them screaming.4

I said “easier,” not better.

The “Lazarus effect,” or Lazarus syndrome, showed up at least 38 times since 1982 in medical publications. The Atlantic article says that “these patients’ resurrected heartbeats almost always fade again soon.”

Two of the 11 cases described on Wikipedia’s Lazarus syndrome page recovered “fully.” Others died within a week or so. Judith Johnson lived at least long enough to sue the medical center where she was declared dead.

I’ll admit to having a personal bias about hasty assessments of death.

My father’s father got in the way of a collapsing crane. His body was put with others killed in the SNAFU. An alert medic noticed that one of the mangled “corpses” was bleeding, which saved my grandfather’s life.

His days as a construction worker were over. But he got an artificial leg, developed other skills, and that’s still another topic.

“Reanimated Abomination of Science?”

That’s what’s left of Lord Rudolf Selnikov in the jar. He looks happy in that panel because he’s realized that being (officially) “dead” frees him from the Storm King conspiracy. As he put it:

“…twisted and ruthless as you people are, throwing in with you is a step up.”
(Girl Genius (February 4, 2011))

His body had been obliterated, along with his war stomper — it’s quite complicated, like most of the Girl Genius comic series, and mostly irrelevant to this post.5

He was “dead” in a legal sense. But his head was essentially intact. His medical status in the story at that point was a bit like an accident victim who was unconscious when taken to the emergency room.

We can’t grow a new body for someone. That sort of medical technology does not exist. Not yet.6 We can, however, keep someone’s body running long after the brain’s higher functions go offline. Or seem to.

I see that as a good thing, since folks occasionally wake up after falling into a “persistent vegetative state.” That’s not the same as locked-in syndrome, catatonia, coma, or dozing off in the waiting room.

Alive After Brain Injury

Before today’s imaging technologies, opportunities for learning how the brain works were largely limited to studying victims of horrific accidents, like Phineas Gage; or survivors of drastic medical treatments, like Henry Molaison.

Phineas Gage lost most of his left frontal lobe on September 13, 1848. His improbable survival got called “the American Crowbar Case:” but the iron tamping rod was a pointed cylinder, three feet seven inches long. It looked like a javelin, which most likely saved his life.

We’re still working out exactly what that the frontal lobe is for: it’s apparently where we do a lot of our thinking.

Phineas Gage recovered, and lived nearly 12 years after the accident. The facts of his case, including real changes in his behavior, weren’t nearly as exciting as the stories written about him.

Doctors cut out Henry Molaison’s hippocampus and parts of his temporal lobes on September 1st, 1953. It was a well-intentioned effort to cure his epilepsy. He lived for decades after the surgery.

Being used as a lab rat and other personal experiences gave me opportunities to learn that doctors aren’t always right: but in this case, removing part of the patient’s brain worked. Mr. Molaison no longer had epilepsy.

That was the good news. The bad news was that he had serious trouble with memory after the operation. That helped scientists learn how memory works: by noting how it didn’t work for him.

“It’s For Science”

Balancing the needs and well-being of the subject with our natural curiosity may be frustrating.

Remembering that balance would help us avoid atrocities like Auschwitz, Dachau, Unit 731, Tuskegee, and Willowbrook. (October 7, 2016)

Being curious comes with being human, or should be. Science and technology aren’t transgressions. They’re what we do, among other things. (Genesis 1:27–31; Catechism, 31, 355–361, 374–379, 2292–2296, 2301)

But ‘it’s for science’ isn’t a good excuse for ignoring ethics. (Catechism, 2292–2296)

I’ve said this before, a lot:

1 Looking forward to death, in the sense of being aware that I’ve got a finite lifespan to work with and making rational use of my time, isn’t the same as having a morbid fascination with it: or shouldn’t be.

I see death in part as the end of a process that began with my baptism. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1682)

I’m not looking forward to the final review we call particular judgment, but it’s unavoidable.

What matters then is how closely I’ve conformed myself to God’s will: how well I have loved. After that, have two basic options: Heaven, likely enough with a stopover in Purgatory; or Hell. I It’s my choice: God does not drag anyone, kicking and screaming, into Heaven or Hell. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1021–1037)

2 “Respice post te. Hominem te memento,” “look around you. Man, you remember.” — Roman culture was a tad obsessed, by American standards, with death; so the victorious general would most likely remember that his death was upcoming. Turn that around, and contemporary American culture can seem curiously blind to the reality of life’s end. See Chris Grocock’s review of Catharine Edwards’ “Death in Ancient Rome,”

3 Like nearly all primates, humans are very social animals. We’re also opportunistic omnivores, like raccoons, which may be why some folks think they’re pests. Being smart critters with hands doesn’t help, I think. The raccoons, I mean, not the homeowners, and that’s another — you guessed it, another topic. Humans aren’t just animals, and I’ve been over that before. Often:

4 A coffin and two yards of dirt are effective acoustic insulation. The New York Times reported incidents in 1885 and 1886 when exhumation came far too late.

5 Selnikov is a minor character in the Girl Genius comic series:

6 Paolo Macchiarini tried growing a new windpipe for Claudia Castillo in 2008. What happened after that isn’t at all clear. Regenerative medicine was science fiction in my youth. It’s still highly experimental.

Posted in Science News | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Numbers and Nero

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

From Wiley Miller's Non Sequitur (December 31, 2011); used w/o permission.

I don’t have the ‘I’d rather be dead’ attitude of the deceased in that 2011 Non Sequitur strip. My viewpoint is more like Edison Lee’s dad in yesterday’s comic.

From John Hambrock's The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee (November 7, 2016); used w/o permission.

I figure that someone will win the 2016 American presidential election. It’ll probably a candidate from one of the two major political parties.

I think which candidate wins matters. But I also think that whoever gets the job — America will keep going. There’s a great deal more to this country than the national government.

That’s not what this post is about, though.

Whoever wins, I’m pretty sure that at least a few folks who think it’s the “wrong” candidate will make wild claims.

I’ll be talking about Satan in Sunday’s post, unless my mind wanders in another direction. That happened yesterday, which brings me to “the number of the beast” mentioned in Revelation 13:18.

And no, this won’t be a standard-issue rant. In my considered opinion, no living person is Adolf Hitler, the Antichrist, or Nero.

Triangular Numbers and Wannabe Prophets

The number is “six hundred and sixty-six” in my Bible, but a few, like the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, say it’s ἑξακόσιοι δέκα ἕξ, 616.

The number 666 is a triangular number. There’s nothing triangular about triangular numbers: 0, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, and so on.

But if you’ve got a triangular number of marbles, you can arrange them in an equilateral triangle. I’m just enough of a data geek to enjoy facts like that.1 Your experience may vary.

Enthusiastic wannabe prophets notwithstanding, I figure six hundred and sixty six is very possibly a reference to Nero, who couldn’t have played a fiddle while Rome burned.

The fiddle, or violin, started out as Europe’s 10th-century take on the Byzantine lyre, first mentioned by Ibn Khordadbeh. The lyre, I mean, not the fiddle, and that’s another topic.

Nero, Mostly

Nero actually did give public performances showcasing his musical talents, probably for mixed motives.

Tacitus says that some considered Nero’s celebrity status as a songster shameful. I see their point, but figure that if folks in leadership roles don’t fit the stuffed shirt stereotype, that’s their decision.

We’re still not sure exactly how the Great Fire of Rome in July 64 started. Tacitus says Nero helped rescue and rebuilding efforts, but others claimed that he set the fire.

Nero fingered Christians living in Rome, with painfully lethal results. For Christians, that is. There was more to the on-again, off-again, anti-Christian imperial policies than scapegoating a minority, and that’s yet another topic.2

About Nero and Revelation 13:18, I take the Bible very seriously. But I’m a Catholic, so I don’t try to believe that it’s written from a literalist Western/American viewpoint. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 133)

Revelation “…abounds in unfamiliar and extravagant symbolism, which at best appears unusual to the modern reader….” Trying to understand it is possible, but “…symbolic descriptions are not to be taken as literal descriptions….”3

As for my culture’s perennial ‘end times Bible prophecies,’ I see them as exercises in futility: at best. We’ve been getting ready for our Lord’s return for two millennia. I’d be astounded if I live at the moment we’re finally done.3

Besides, as Matthew 24:4–27 and 24:36 says; that information seems to be given on a ‘need to know’ basis. If our Lord didn’t need to know, I certainly don’t.

I’ve got my hands full, trying to act like loving God, loving my neighbor, and seeing everyone as my neighbor, is a good idea. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31, 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism, 2196)

And that’s yet again another topic.

Other posts; related, and not so much:

1 Getting a grip about numbers:

2 A really quick look at Nero, Domitian, and Dachau:

3 Making sense of Revelation, a very quick look at the Catholic view:

  • New American Bible, Revelation, Introduction
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church
    • Sacred Scripture 133
    • Apocalypse and the Lamb 1137, 2159
    • ‘Last things’
      • Death and judgment 1020-1022
      • Resurrection of the body 1038-1041
      • Heaven 1042-1050
      • Hell 1033-1037
      • Purgatory 1030-1032
Posted in Being Catholic | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Sin, Original and Otherwise

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

There’s trouble everywhere, and that’s not news. It’s not new, at any rate.

“Your princes are rebels and comrades of thieves; Each one of them loves a bribe and looks for gifts. The fatherless they defend not, and the widow’s plea does not reach them.”
(Isaiah 1:23)

“Yes, I know how many are your crimes, how grievous your sins: Oppressing the just, accepting bribes, repelling the needy at the gate!”
(Amos 5:12)

How come the world is such a mess, and has been at least since we started keeping records?

Some of our problems have seemed obvious: not enough food to go around, or someone hogging the supply; outsiders taking what we want or need; and disease.

But we’ve been pretty good, maybe effective is a better word, at making problems for ourselves.

Universities, Death, and Printing Presses

About a millennium back, European scholastic guilds formed the first universities.

Over the next few centuries folks like Hildegard of Bingen and Albertus Magnus, both Saints, were laying the foundations of today’s science. Designers worked the bugs out of Gothic architecture.

The Great Famine of 1315-1317; Black Death of 1346-1353; and Hundred Years’ War, 1337-1453; were major speed bumps in Europe’s history.

Johannes Gutenberg developed an efficient printing press using movable type around 1450 — about five centuries after Bi Sheng’s invention.

We might not know about Bi Sheng, if Shen Kuo hadn’t mentioned him in “Dream Pool Essays,” and that’s another topic.

Anyway, efficient printing tech let folks in Europe share ideas faster and in more detail: upsetting quite a few applecarts in the process.

Thirty Years’ War

I see the potential for a more egalitarian society and better-informed public as a good thing. Events like the Thirty Years’ War, not so much.

Printing presses didn’t cause the the Thirty Years’ War, but the new tech arguably made the Protestant Reformation possible.

That didn’t cause the war either. But northern political bosses arguably used the Reformation to gain increased independence from more powerful states in southern Europe.

The Roman Catholic Church was due for an overhaul — my native culture generally calls it the Counter Reformation, possibly because England ended up on the more-or-less-Protestant side. It’s also called the Catholic Reformation or Catholic Revival.

We had another one recently, much less messy, called Vatican II. Some folks are still upset by it, I’m not, and that’s yet another topic.

The Thirty Years’ War started when the Peace of Augsburg gave rulers of Germany’s 224 states a choice. They could be Lutheran or Catholic — and force their subjects to follow the ruler’s lead. The 1555 deal left Calvinists out of the power grab.

Forcing someone to “convert” is a very bad idea, and we shouldn’t do it, ever. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2104–2109)

Anyway, Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire — we’re still cleaning up the mess he made at Verden — was a collection of largely-independent states by then. Like the fellow said:

“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.”

(“This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”)
(Voltaire, via Wikiquote)

The Holy Roman Empire’s new emperor, Ferdinand II, tried forcing everyone in the empire to be Catholic in 1618 — again, that’s a very bad idea. This time it triggered a massive turf war with religious trimmings.

Three decades and about 8,000,000 unnecessary deaths later, the war was over.

The Enlightenment – – –

Decades of fighting, famines, plagues, and witch hunts had killed more than two thirds of the people in parts of the northern Holy Roman Empire by 1648.

Small wonder that some folks were reevaluating old assumptions about authority, belief, and business as usual.

Depending on who you listen to, Aufklärung, “Enlightenment,” started when applying math to observable phenomena was catching on in the 1620s; or 1715, when France’s Louis XIV died.

I’ll grant that Louis XIV’s spin on the divine right of kings made a difference1 — and helped inspire the French Revolution.

Fans of the Enlightenment didn’t coin the slogan “Sapere aude,” “Dare to know.” That’s from Horace: “Dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet; sapere aude, incipe.” — “He who has begun is half done; dare to know; begin!”

I think it fits the Enlightenment attitude, though: seeing reason as a good idea. Also pushing ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

For folks trying to recover from the Thirty Years’ War, those ideals must have seemed really good.

– – – and the Idea of Progress

The French Revolution didn’t turn out quite as well as might have been hoped.

The Fête de la Raison, a celebration of the Cult of Reason, was among the revolution’s more colorful innovations.

“Festive girls in white Roman dress and tricolor sashes milled around a costumed Goddess of Reason who ‘impersonated Liberty’.” (Wikipedia)

Sounds like a toga party, but that doesn’t make reason a bad idea.

Even after the French Revolution, quite a few folks still assumed that since each of us is a rational being, folks would get along — once obstacles like authority, superstition, and potato blight were removed.

Then World Wars I and II happened, and the Idea of Progress lost appeal. I talked about that last week. (October 30, 2016)

About reason and the French Revolution — like I keep saying, thinking is not a sin. But worshiping our ability to reason, or anything other than God, is a bad idea. (Catechism, 2112–2114)

I was going somewhere with this. Let me think.

Universities, movable type, Thirty Years’ War, toga parties. Right.

We’re rational creatures. Using our brains, asking questions and thinking about what we find, is what we’re supposed to do. (“Fides et Ratio,” John Paul II (September 14, 1998); Catechism, 32, 35, 154–159, 299, 1730)

So how come we’ve got problems even when we’re well-fed and well-educated?2

Evil and Time Bandits

This world is basically good, and so are we. (Genesis 1:1–31)

Something went wrong, obviously, but it’s not a design flaw.

Oddly enough, one of literature and drama’s most lucid discussions of evil and the Catholic idea of original sin was in a film by the Monty Python folks:

Kevin: “Yes, why does there have to be evil?”

Supreme Being: “I think it has something to do with free will.”
(“Time Bandits (1981) via imdb.com)

Like angels, that’s yet again another topic, we’re rational beings who can decide what we do. Unlike angels, we are also material beings: spiritual creatures with a body made from the stuff of this world. (Catechism, 311, 325–348, 1704, 1730–1731)

Having a body isn’t the problem.

Believing that the physical world “…is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind…” is not what the Catholic Church teaches. (Catechism, 285)

Satan, like all angels, has no body.3 That didn’t stop Satan and other angels from saying “no” to God. (Catechism, 385–395)

Saying “no” is an option for any creature with free will. (Catechism, 330, 1730)

Sin is saying “no” to God. It’s deciding that I’ll do something I know is bad for myself, or others, and doing it anyway; or deciding to not do something I should. Sin is an offense against reason, truth — and God. (Catechism, 1849–1864)

It happens when I don’t love God and my neighbors as wholeheartedly as I should, or don’t see everybody as my neighbor. (Matthew 5:43–44, 7:12, 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–27, 29–37)

Since conscience is a “law of the mind,” my reason should control my emotions and impulses, and all of the above would be conformed to God’s will. (Catechism, 1778, 1784, 1790)

I don’t exercise that control as often as I’d like.

That’s partly because we’re all living with original sin: the consequences of a really bad decision. (Catechism, 386–389)

I’m responsible for messes I make, and that’s still another topic. (Catechism, 1781)

Our account of the fall in Genesis 3 describes a real event at the beginning of humanity’s long story: told in figurative language. (Catechism, 390)

Adam and Eve are not German, and I’ve said that before. (September 23, 2016)

Genesis 1:26–27 says that we’re made “in the image of God.” We still are. As Psalms 8:6 says, we’re “little less than a god.” But “little less than a god” isn’t God. We’re pretty hot stuff, but we’re not omnipotent.

In Genesis 3:5, the serpent tells Eve that after eating the fruit “…you will be like gods…” — and we forgot that we already were made “in the image of God.”

You know the rest. Eve listened to Satan.

Adam, like a dummkopf, did the same — and then tried blaming his wife and God. (Genesis 3:12)

That did not end well.

We’ve been living with the disastrous consequences of that bad decision ever since. (Catechism, 396–412)

There’s something wrong with each of us. We’re born — figurative language here — wounded. We’re “…subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin….” (Catechism, 405)

Original sin isn’t something I’m personally responsible for. My job is trying to act as love matters, anyway. (Catechism, 407–409)

More:

1 About the divine right of kings and getting a grip: rational respect for authority is important. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897–1917, 1951–1960)

That’s not even close to believing that some king, president, or anyone else in a top position, is above the law; much less has some divinely-ordained right to unthinking obedience. (Catechism, 1902, 1960, 2155, 2242–2243, 2267, 2313, 2414)

2 It looks like there are, on average, statistical correlations between socioeconomic status, education level, and getting caught doing something criminal: along with more-or-less-significant correlations between many other factors and getting caught. But folks still act badly. More:

3 “Spiritual” and “good” aren’t synonyms, Artists have struggled to present spiritual realities in visual form, and that’s a passel of topics for other posts.

Posted in Being Catholic | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Near-Earth Asteroids

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

Scientists spotted 2016 UR36 days before it passed by Earth. “Killer asteroids” headlines notwithstanding, we knew it would miss our planet by a comfortable margin.

Sooner or later, though, something big will hit Earth: again. We still can’t prevent that, not yet.

  1. Incoming Asteroids
  2. Near-Earth Asteroids: 15,000 and Counting
  3. The Last Really Big One

Why Bother?


(From P. NASA/JPL-Caltech, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Orbits of known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) in 2013.)

I’ll be talking about the Chelyabinsk meteor, Tunguska event, and why I think we should get ready for incoming asteroids and comets well before we spot something like the Chicxulub impactor headed our way.

The odds are really good that the next major impact event won’t happen in my lifetime, or near my home; so why should I think it matters?

Like I keep saying I think loving God, loving my neighbor, and seeing everyone as my neighbor, is a good idea. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31, 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism of the Catholic Churchy, 2196)

I believe that God created and is creating a good and ordered universe, that we’re made in the image of God, rational creatures — and that we are stewards of the physical world. (Genesis 1:27–28, Psalms 19:2; Wisdom 7:17; Catechism, 1, 341, 373, 1730)

That’s stewards, not owners. We’re in charge of this world, and responsible for its maintenance: but it does not belong to us. Part of our job is managing this world’s resources for future generations. (Catechism, 373, 2415, 2456)

I don’t see the point in believing something unless I act like it matters, so ‘my end of the boat isn’t sinking’ isn’t a viable position for me.

Not that there’s much I can do, personally, about setting up a planetary defense system; apart from writing posts like this.

As an American, I’d like to see my country continue maintaining something like NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. But I’m relieved to see that asteroid impact avoidance is a very international effort.

Stone Tools and Forest Fires

It wouldn’t take a rock like the Chicxulub impactor to cause real trouble.

Something hit our planet about 800,000 years back, spraying tektites — gravel-size bits of molten glass — over much of Asia and Australia.

We’re not sure where the crater is. None of the ones we’ve found so far are big enough.

Folks were living in that part of the world before the impact, and at least some survived. We’ve found their stone tools, mixed in with charcoal from the tektite-sparked forest fires.1

We’d probably survive another impact like that, but our technology has improved considerably since the days of Oldowan tools. If we use our brains, and have time, I think we can keep the next major impact disaster from happening.

1. Incoming Asteroids


(From P. Carril/ESA, via NPR, used w/o permission.)
(“Asteroids regularly pass by Earth, as depicted here. A new NASA system called Scout aims to identify the ones that will come closest to the planet.”
(NPR))

“NASA’s New ‘Intruder Alert’ System Spots An Incoming Asteroid”
Joe Palca, NPR (October 30, 2016)

“A large space rock came fairly close to Earth on Sunday night. Astronomers knew it wasn’t going to hit Earth, thanks in part to a new tool NASA is developing for detecting potentially dangerous asteroids.

“The tool is a computer program called Scout, and it’s being tested at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Think of Scout as a celestial intruder alert system. It’s constantly scanning data from telescopes to see if there are any reports of so-called Near Earth Objects. If it finds one, it makes a quick calculation of whether Earth is at risk, and instructs other telescopes to make follow-up observations to see if any risk is real.

“NASA pays for several telescopes around the planet to scan the skies on a nightly basis, looking for these objects. ‘The NASA surveys are finding something like at least five asteroids every night,’ says astronomer Paul Chodas of JPL….”

This asteroid’s designation seems to be M.P.E.C. 2016-U84: 2016 UR36. Pan-STARRS on Maui, Hawaii, spotted it on the night of October 25-26.

A few hours later, a Web page by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Minor Planet Center published preliminary details about the asteroid. I put links to some resources and background hear the end of this post.2

NASA’s Scout did a quick analysis of data from Pan-STARRS; LPL/Spacewatch II; Tenagra Observatories; and Steward Observatory, Mt. Lemmon Station; which said that the object was headed for Earth, but would miss us by about 310,000 miles.

Those are the facts. Some of the headlines were quite colorful, and almost accurate, like “EXCLUSIVE: The killer asteroids NASA says are heading towards Earth TODAY.”3

310,000 miles, 498,800 kilometers, is close by cosmic standards: very roughly 1.3 times our moon’s distance from Earth. But that doesn’t make M.P.E.C. 2016-U84: 2016 UR36 a “killer asteroid.” Not this time around, anyway.

The NPR article says this asteroid was between 5 and 25 meters across: about 16.5 to 82 feet. That makes it very roughly the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor.

Fireball


(From Aleksandr Ivanov, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(The Chelyabinsk meteor’s fireball, frame from a dashcam video. (February 15, 2003))

A hunk of rock about 20 meters across skimmed into Earth’s upper atmosphere in February of 2013.

Traveling a little over 19 kilometers per second — nearly 56 times the speed of sound, if I did the math right — air couldn’t flow out of its way, building up ram pressure.

The fireball was brighter than the sun before exploding about 23.3 kilometers, 14.5 miles, over Korkino in southern Russia.

Nobody saw it coming, but analyzing CCTV and dashcam video let folks track its path. Before Earth got in its way, this rock had been with the Apollo near-Earth asteroids.4

When it was over, about 7,200 buildings in six cities were damaged, some 1,500 folks needed medical attention, and nobody had been killed.

We were lucky that time.

2. NEOs: 15,000 Asteroids and Counting


(From P. NASA/JPL-Caltech, used w/o permission.)
(“The 15,000th near-Earth asteroid discovered is designated 2016 TB57. It was discovered on Oct. 13, 2016, by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey, an element of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona.”
(NASA))

“Catalog of Known Near-Earth Asteroids Tops 15,000”
Jet Propulsion Laboratory news (October 27, 2016)

“The number of discovered near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) now tops 15,000, with an average of 30 new discoveries added each week. This milestone marks a 50 percent increase in the number of known NEAs since 2013, when discoveries reached 10,000 in August of that year.

“Surveys funded by NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program (NEOs include both asteroids and comets) account for more than 95 percent of discoveries so far.

“The 15,000th near-Earth asteroid is designated 2016 TB57. It was discovered on Oct. 13 by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey, an element of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona. 2016 TB57 is a rather small asteroid — about 50 to 115 feet (16 to 36 meters) in size — that will come closest to Earth on Oct. 31 at just beyond five times the distance of the moon. It will safely pass Earth….”

Finding and cataloging orbits for near-Earth asteroids like 2016 TB57 and 2016 UR36 and comets is important to astronomers: and everyone else living on Earth.5

Sometimes these things get really close.

The Tunguska event is the largest known impact event on Earth since we started keeping records, a few millennia back.

Happily, the East Siberian taiga isn’t prime real estate, and was even less populated in 1908, so property damage was light. We don’t know of any fatalities, although a few folks were close enough to see — and feel — fire in the sky, like a second sun.

The explosion flattened about 2,000 square kilometers, 770 square miles, of forest. If it had happened over a city, I seriously doubt that there would have been survivors near ground zero, and we’d probably still be rebuilding the area.

We’ve learned a great deal about Solar System debris since 1908, and can make reasonable estimates about how often rocks fall out of the sky.

Falling Rocks


(From NASA/Planetary Science, via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.)
(“Frequency of small asteroids roughly 1 to 20 meters in diameter impacting Earth’s atmosphere.”
(Wikipedia))

The Chelyabinsk, Tunguska, and 1490 Ch’ing-yang event all happened in Asia, which might suggest that someone’s taking potshots at that continent. My guess is that it’s more a matter our having more thorough documentation for that area.

Also, possibly, because a Tunguska-level event might have had a chance of obliterating a culture along with its records until recently. I think it’s easy to forget how small many ancient civilizations were, by today’s standards.

Impact events aren’t the only hazard, of course. Thera exploded somewhere around 35 and 45 centuries back, archeologists and scientists are still working out the exact time. Possibly by coincidence, what we call the Minoan Civilization ended right around the same time.

The Late Bronze Age collapse happened a century or so later, leaving us with tales of king Minos, the Minotaur and labyrinth; pottery; and a lot of questions. Plato’s story of Atlantis may or may not have been inspired in part by the eruption, and that’s another topic.

Nobody saw the Chelyabinsk meteor coming, but we’ve got a pretty good idea of where and when largish rocks fell over the last couple decades: enough to estimate how often such events happen, on average.

Stony asteroid impacts that generate an airburst6
Impactor diameter Kinetic energy at atmospheric entry Airburst energy Airburst altitude Average frequency
4 m (13 ft) 3 kt 0.75 kt 42.5 km (139,000 ft) 1.3 years
7 m (23 ft) 16 kt 5 kt 36.3 km (119,000 ft) 4.6 years
10 m (33 ft) 47 kt 19 kt 31.9 km (105,000 ft) 10.4 years
15 m (49 ft) 159 kt 82 kt 26.4 km (87,000 ft) 27 years
20 m (66 ft) 376 kt 230 kt 22.4 km (73,000 ft) 60 years
30 m (98 ft) 1.3 Mt 930 kt 16.5 km (54,000 ft) 185 years
50 m (160 ft) 5.9 Mt 5.2 Mt 8.7 km (29,000 ft) 764 years
70 m (230 ft) 16 Mt 15.2 Mt 3.6 km (12,000 ft) 1900 years
85 m (279 ft) 29 Mt 28 Mt 0.58 km (1,900 ft) 3300 years

(From Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins (2010). “Earth Impact Effects Program;” via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.)

It looks like we can expect something as big as the Chelyabinsk meteor every six decades or so, on average.

But let’s remember that “average frequency” is just that: an average. Meteors don’t come on a regular schedule. Tomorrow morning’s news might include a Chelyabinsk-size airburst: or we may not see another for a century.

I hope we’ve got at least a few decades before astronomers notice a city-buster headed for a city, and that someone starts prepping an intercept-and-deflect mission now. If not, the best we may manage is telling folks at the impact site how long they have to get clear.

Rep. Stewart:
“… are we technologically capable of launching something that could intercept [an asteroid]?”

DR. A’HEARN:
“No. If we had spacecraft plans on the books already, that would take a year—I mean a typical small mission like a Discovery class mission takes four years from approval to start to launch. Okay. Now, a really accelerated military program would be faster than that but that is a couple of years still….”
(United States Congress hearing, via Wikipedia and gpo.gov (April 10, 2013))

Prediction and Preparation

Beecher, Michigan. June 9, 1953, following the June 8 tornado. From NOAA, used w/o permissionHow successful the evacuation is depends on quite a few things: how much time we get before the impact, the impact site’s size and population, and whether folks in charge decide to issue a warning.

I’d like to think that authorities wouldn’t repeat the 1953 Worcester tornado mistake: but I also think that human nature hasn’t changed much.

For events like the 2003 Chelyabinsk meteor, my guess is that a warning few minutes to an hour or so in advance would let folks get inside and away from windows.

That might be enough to avoid most injuries and deaths. Again, nobody died that time, and I think we were lucky.

If we saw something like the Tunguska event coming, and Delhi was at the target footprint’s center — I don’t know how long evacuating the 21,000,000 or so folks who live there would take.

Emergency evacuations are chancy at best, so getting an asteroid impact avoidance system in place seems like a very good idea.

Right now, we’re doing well to notice incoming objects before they hit. I hope we’re ready when the next really big one comes.

3. The Last Really Big One


(From NASA/JPL-Caltech, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“The outer rim (white arc) of the crater lies under the Yucatan Peninsula itself, but the inner peak ring is best accessed offshore”
(BBC News))

“Chicxulub ‘dinosaur crater’ investigation begins in earnest”
Jonathan Amos, BBC News (October 11, 2016)

“Scientists have obtained remarkable new insights into the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

“They have been examining rocks from the crater that the 15km-wide space object dug out of what is now the Gulf of Mexico some 66 million years ago.

“The team says it can see evidence in these materials for how life returned to the scene soon after the calamity.

“Descendants of these small organisms are likely thriving today in amongst the crater’s smashed up materials….”

Their goal is learning more about the Chicxulub impact: how much energy was involved, and what happened to stuff were the crater is now. Drilling happened during April and June of this year. Research has started: with interesting but so far inconclusive results.

The plan is to use about half of the rock samples for analysis now, archiving the rest for study when we’ve developed better lab equipment.

The scientists found DNA which may be from “descendants of these small organisms:” or inadvertent contamination of their samples. They’re apparently still figuring out which.

They’re hoping to find “some vestige of the impactor itself,” and sediment from the enormous tsunamis that sloshed back and forth between North America and what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula.

Extinction Triggers

Learning more about the Chicxulub impact will help us understand the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Scientists still aren’t quite sure how it happened.

The Chicxulub impact was almost certainly involved, and probably played a major role.

But volcanic eruptions where the Deccan Traps are now were releasing massive quantities of sulfur dioxide and other toxic gasses, which likely enough slowed down recovery after the impact.

There may have been other impact events around the same time: the Boltysh crater impact probably happened a few millennia earlier. The Silverpit crater is roughly the right age, but may be the result of a salt dome’s collapse.

The Shiva crater is even more debatable: partly, I suspect, because that part of the world was passing over the Réunion hotspot which apparently produced the Deccan Traps. There’s been a lot of geologic change there in the last 66,000,000 years.

Earth’s sea level was falling, too, so folks who say there wasn’t just one extinction trigger have a good point.

That was a long time ago, and the odds of big rocks falling are a lot slimmer than for small fry like the Chelyabinsk meteor and Tunguska object. That’s the good news.

The unsettling news is that we apparently don’t know the exact odds, much less when the next impact disaster may happen. Different studies have been coming up with different answers. This is one of the more optimistic ones:

“…Objects with sizes greater than 1 km are considered to produce effects that would be catastrophic, because an impact of such an object would produce global effects. Such meteorites strike the Earth relatively infrequently – a 1 km sized object strikes the Earth about once every million years, and 10 km sized objects about once every 100 million years….”
(“Meteorites, Impacts, and Mass Extinction,” Prof. Stephen A. Nelson, Tulane University (December 1, 2014))

Craters and Statistics

A nickle-iron meteor about 50 meters, 160 feet, across hit North America about 50,000 years back; forming the Barringer Crater. We weren’t living near there until at least a dozen millennia or so after that.

The northwest route to Asia flooded around the start of a warm spell in the current/Quaternary glaciation.

Folks who look a bit like me started arriving a few centuries back, and that’s yet another topic.

Arizona isn’t heavily populated these days, so if another meteor like the object that formed Barringer crater hit exactly the same spot — Western civilization would survive. Folks working at and visiting the Barrihger Crater Company, not so much.

Plugging numbers into “Earth Impact Effects Program;” by Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins; Imperial College London/Purdue University; I learned that the nearest town should be comparatively safe.

Winslow, 29 kilometers east, would experience a Richter 5.2 earthquake about 5.8 seconds after the impact. Damage would range from minimal to serious, depending on construction quality, with some broken chimneys.

A 30 mile an hour wind gust would arrive a bit over a minute later. It would be a frightening and expensive event, but quite survivable at that distance.

Impacts like that are, happily, few and far between, compared to events like hurricanes and earthquakes. But they do happen.

Stony asteroids that impact sedimentary rock and create a crater6
Impactor diameter Kinetic energy at atmospheric entry Impact energy Crater diameter Average frequency
100 m (330 ft) 47 Mt 38 Mt 1.2 km (0.75 mi) 5200 years
130 m (430 ft) 103 Mt 64.8 Mt 2 km (1.2 mi) 11000 years
150 m (490 ft) 159 Mt 71.5 Mt 2.4 km (1.5 mi) 16000 years
200 m (660 ft) 376 Mt 261 Mt 3 km (1.9 mi) 36000 years
250 m (820 ft) 734 Mt 598 Mt 3.8 km (2.4 mi) 59000 years
300 m (980 ft) 1270 Mt 1110 Mt 4.6 km (2.9 mi) 73000 years
400 m (1,300 ft) 3010 Mt 2800 Mt 6 km (3.7 mi) 100000 years
700 m (2,300 ft) 16100 Mt 15700 Mt 10 km (6.2 mi) 190000 years
1,000 m (3,300 ft) 47000 Mt 46300 Mt 13.6 km (8.5 mi) 440000 years

(From Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins (2010). “Earth Impact Effects Program;” via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.)

Numbers in that table are estimates, based on what we’ve been learning over the last few decades. I’m pretty sure we’ll fine-tune them as we learn more. But I’m also pretty sure that they’re good enough for a ballpark estimate.

So — if rocks 100 meters across hit every 5,200 years, on average, how come we don’t have records of an impact like that?

Maybe there hasn’t been one since some of us started keeping records: about 5,200 years ago. Again, these are averages; so the next 100-meter impactor isn’t ‘due any time now.’

52 centuries back, the First Dynasty of Egypt was laying the groundwork of Pharaonic Egypt, and the Liangzhu culture was creating jade masks.

If something blasted a kilometer-wide hole back then, the odds are pretty good that it happened far from these comparatively high-tech centers. Besides, about three quarters of Earth is covered in water.

But with falling rocks in the 10-meter range hitting every decade or so, and 100-meter ones every few thousand years, I we should start getting ready to react before experiencing too many more surprise airbursts: or worse.

More of how I see life, the universe, and being human:

1 Stone tools and an impact event:

2 Keeping watch, getting ready:

3 Radar images from last year’s close approach by 2015 TB145 inspired nicknames like “Great Pumpkin” and “Skull Asteroid:” ‘Skull Asteroid’ passing by Earth today.” (WHIO)

4 No relation to the Apollo moon program. Apollo asteroids get their name from 1862 Apollo, the first one spotted. Why it got called “Apollo” I’m not sure. Maybe because it got closer to our star than many asteroids.

5 More about near-Earth objects:

6 From Robert Marcus; H. Jay Melosh; Gareth Collins (2010). “Earth Impact Effects Program,” Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins; Imperial College London/Purdue University; via Wikipedia.

Posted in Science News | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

Showing this picture to a few online groups, I learned that Halloween, our version, is a somewhat “American” holiday.

Today is also the feast day of St. Wolfgang of Regensberg, AKA The Almoner. He had a good reason for throwing his ax into a thicket, and that’s another topic.

In the (Roman Catholic) liturgical year, Allhallowtide starts today. It’s a three-day thing: All Saints’ Eve (Halloween), All Saints’ Day (All Hallows’) and All Souls’ Day.

I’m not sure why some folks get upset over this holiday. Maybe it’s the scary, and occasionally disturbing, costumes. Or the arguably-unhealthy opportunities to eat too much candy. Or maybe it’s where some Halloween traditions apparently came from.

I don’t doubt that my Gaelic ancestors, and their Welsh neighbors, brought some of their pre-Christian customs over here. It’d be odd if they didn’t. The autumnal equinox is important to quite a few folks, my ancestors included.

Some seasonal traditions, like divination games, are not good ideas. “Game” isn’t the problem. “Divination” is, no mater what day it is. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2116)

I’ve seen ‘adult’ costumes that are in dubious taste, and that’s a topic for another post.

But getting upset over jack-o’-lanterns, Christmas trees, or Easter eggs? I don’t see a point to that. On consideration, I could complain that my Norwegian ancestors are disrespected, because lefse isn’t part of the traditional Thanksgiving menu, but that would be silly.

Then there’s the notion that evil runs rampant tonight. More than usual, that is.

I’m not happy about destructive behavior on any day, but found this interesting:

“No fear, crime stays normal on Halloween”
Elizabeth Rembert, The Daily Nebraskan (October 28, 2016)

“Despite what some may think of Halloween’s relation to increased criminal activity, University of Nebraska-Lincoln police department’s daily crime logs from the past 10 years show that crime on the last day of October is actually below average.

“Oct. 31 has an average of 4.7 reported crimes, a number hovering just below the daily average of 5.2 in the same amount of time.

“UNLPD Captain Jerry Plessel said while daily averages of all crimes may be lacking on Halloween, statistics do indicate an increase in intoxicated persons and minor in possession charges….”

Back to Halloween here in central Minnesota — I can’t, or shouldn’t, eat candy these days. But I can enjoy seeing families having fun this evening, and I rather like the look of most jack-o-lanterns.

I hope you enjoy Halloween, too.

More of how I see faith, culture, and getting a grip:

Posted in Being an Artist, Being Catholic | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment