Orion and the right to insult

You may notice a few Orionid meteors in the after-midnight sky any time from about October 2 to November 7, but they should be at their best in the night between October 20 and 21.

See the end note about enlarging illustrations.

Our scene is for about local midnight.  Actually it’s 11 by natural (mean Sun) time, called 12 y Daylight Shifted time.

The radiant – the point or small area from which the meteors seem to diverge – is in the “club” wielded by giant hunter Orion, but it shifts slightly westward from day to day – into the “feet”of Gemini – as Earth continues its curving course through the meteor stream.

The radiant is rising into view – Orion has kicked his leading leg up over the eastern horizon.  As the night goes on, the radiant swings higher and more meteors tend to be above the horizon.  In other words, we meet the meteors roughly head on; they strike the front or morning side of the Earth.

In this picture, a broad arrow shows the advance of Earth in 3 minutes.  The time is 3 by Universal Time, 9 PM by Central Standard time, 8 by the shifted time.  America is coming around into better view of the meteor stream.  (The dotted line represents only meteors coming from the zenith; the stream is really millions of miles wide.)

Orion is opposite in the celestial sphere to Scorpius (they are 12 hours of right ascension apart, but both lie south of the ecliptic), and myth has a reason for this: the scorpion caused Orion’s death.  So the hunter, after being translated to the sky, keeps as far away from the scorpion as he can.

There are various versions of Orion’s end.  To synthesize a few of them:  He went out hunting with huntress Artemis.  And he bragged that he was a better archer even than her brother Apollo, and would bag every wild beast in the world.  Apollo, disapproving of the fellow’s relationship with his sister, who was supposed to be the virgin goddess, and horrified by the threat to exterminate animals, and offended by the insult to himself, sent into Orion’s path a giant scorpion, on which Orion stepped, so that he was stung and killed.

Home planet department

Nobody insulted Apollo and got away with it (witness Marsyas, flayed for being a better musician), but if you are less than a god you may have to eat insults.

The first case taken up by my Amnesty International group was that of a Spanish student, Carlos Emanuel Sorlí Peña, who was charged with “insulting the armed forces” (under Franco).

Insulting the military.  Insulting the state.  Insulting the President.  Insulting Turkishness.  These were crimes we were often to hear of.

China requires loyalty to President Xi Jinping; by a law of September 2019, all journalists would, to renew their credentials, have to sit examinations proving their loyalty by proving their knowledge of Xi’s book of “Thoughts.”

Indonesia at around the same time proposed a criminal code that would punish not only extramarital sex but insults to the president.

Also in 2019, five Burmese students (Kay Khaing Tun, Zayar Lwin, Paing Ye Thu, Di Yay, and Pho Thar) took part in the Thangyat, a traditional “slam poetry” performance at the Burmese New Year.  They were sentenced to five years in prison with hard labor for cracking jokes about the military.

“Thousands of people are arrested for online posts every year in Turkey, usually over allegations of insulting Turkey, Turkishness or the president,” or for jokes about the Ottoman sultans of the past.

This month, street protests have broken out in Thailand against undemocratic government and the wealth and powers of the king, who lives in Germany.  A state of emergency was declared and protest leaders were arrested under a severe law against defamation of the monarchy.

I think there is not only a right to free speech but a right to insult.

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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.

Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after positing it.  If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.

This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.