In February the planets are all over on the sunward side of Earth.
In the solar-system diagrams like this in Astronomical Calendar 2022, gray covers the half of the sky that is below the horizon around 10 PM at mid-month. Or, you could say, Earth faces outward into the white area. Maybe in next year’s book I should do it the other way around, with gray or black in the outward area; do you think that would be clearer?
Down to Earth Department
I feel like “publishing” the most recent couple of letters I’ve sent to papers that didn’t publish them.
Jan 20
There are many issues more important than “partygate.” Politicians should be attending to these rather than their personal ambitions. For instance:
The suffering of refugees. Bring them to Britain by safe routes so that they can apply for asylum.
The suffering of Yemen. Stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Dumping of sewage into our rivers. Restore funding to the regulators.
Looming over all, climate doom. Have the guts to raise tax on fossil fuel.
(The first half dozen of the Guardian’s “top stories” had been about the parties-during-lockdown scandal, and the politicians eager to take Boris Johnson’s place if it leads to his downfall.)
Feb 2
China’s atrocities against Tibetans and Uyghurs are vast enough that the IOC should have drawn a line (Guardian, “Spectre of 1936 and 1980 haunts Games as repression breeds silence,” 2 February).
Seldom mentioned is a third huge non-Chinese region that China rules repressively: Inner Mongolia, or Southern Mongolia as its natives call it.
Mass killings, mass immigration of Han Chinese, suppression of Mongolian culture, and environmental destruction were documented in articles and a book by a bookshop owner named Hada. He was sentenced, in a closed-door trial with no right to speak, to 15 years in a prison 400 miles from his home. The mistreatment of this frail scholar fills many pages of my notes. On the day in 2010 when he was due for release, he was instead re-imprisoned.
Does China uphold the Olympic spirit of tolerance between peoples?
This was greatly stripped down from my first draft, by Tilly’s advice; the shorter, the more chance of acceptance. Ten percent of what remains is the lengthy title of the article. I cut out reference to our Amnesty International’s long years of appealing for Hada. I also left out “(many Mongols use a single name”). Maybe that was one cut too many: the letters editor may have thought “This is unreliable, why isn’t the full name given?” If so, this is an example of what I call chaotic determinism, the almost infinite network of small causes that shape human affairs. Suppose I had included the phrase, and the letter had appeared, and the plight of Southern Mongolia had become more widely known…
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I would leave the solar system diagram as it is, grey below the nighttime horizon and white above. It’s a convention I’ve gotten used to.
Your map of China makes vividly clear how much of the land area is Xinjiang, Tibet, and southern Mongolia.
Your comments bring to mind the Jimmy Carter’s principled decision to boycott the Soviet-hosted Olympics of 1980.
I think the gray is appropriate because that represents the field of view made up of the soil of the Earth, whereas the white area represents the brightness of the stars.
China’s 1,000 member Communist party and Dictator XI are quite evil. In addition to the atrocities that you mentioned, they took over Hong Kong, they are doing joint military exercises with Russia, destroying coral reefs to build naval bases, and probably did gain of function research on the Covid virus.
The free world should outlaw the purchasing of goods manufactured in China and should have their own “freedom games” to replace the Winter Olympics. But I don’t see that happening with the Biden administration., who just gave them a billion dollars to buy at home Covid tests to pass out to U.S. citizens.
I am a fan of Richard Buckminster Fuller who famously wrote, “You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense, because the two are mutually exclusive.” Richard Buckminster Fuller, 1895 – 1983, Critical Path, 1981, p.225. The situation in Tibet is past critical and the country has basically collapsed due to the actions and tactics of China. I support and keep up with the situation there through the ICT. I follow several wicked problems such as the plight of American Indians, African Americans, Tibetans, environmental quality generally, endangered species, and global warming. We cannot solve these problems by throwing money at them. It may make them worse in the long run. It seems to me that the root of these problem is lack of respect for others coupled with the desire to have more material things regardless of the long run cost.