Barack Obama used to be a Muslim

It's a fair guess that Michelle Obama will vote for her husband this fall, assuming he does clinch the Democratic Nomination. And I'd be rather surprised if Maya Soetoro-Ng didn't vote for her half-brother as well. As it happens, he is the candidate who best represents their political will.

But in a situation unprecedented in American politics, it's highly unlikely that any of his other immediate family members will even be able to vote for him. Malia and Sasha are both about a decade shy of being old enough to vote for their father; his mother and ex-brother David are dead; and none of his five African-European siblings are American citizens. He doesn't have any American first cousins. Of even his extended family, that leaves just his aged grandmother (in Hawaii) and his ex-brother Mark--who has spent almost all his life outside America and is now a permanent resident of China.

In short, Barack Obama is the least American presidential candidate since I don't know when. He was barely even born in the United States; Hawaii had been a member of the Union only two years when he was born as Barack Hussein Obama II at 7:24 pm on August 4, 1961. He was actually born a British subject--making him potentially the first such American president since William Henry Harrison, his fatherland not becoming independent until he was two years old.

Family has been something of an unknown entity to Barack Obama. Of his father's six wives, two of them were American, but he's never been anything but a stranger to his two half-American ex-brothers (who, unlike him, actually grew up in Africa). It wasn't until he was an adult that he finally met some of his Kenyan half-siblings (only one of whom still lives in Kenya), and he didn't even live in the same country as his half-Indonesian sister Maya for much of their brief shared childhood.

Yes, Barack Obama is the product of a broken home--and how. His mother was a pregnant teenage college dropout when she married his father--a fraudulent marriage under Hawaiian law, as his father already had a wife and two children back in Kenya (that marriage later produced two more offspring). Their marriage broke up not long after Barack was born, leaving no time for any full siblings to come along. His father went on to add another four wives to his collection: one American and three Kenyans. This is more wives than most Kenyans could ever hope to afford, putting Barack Sr. in the upper crust of Kenyan society and imparting Barack Jr. quite a bit of status should he ever chose to enter Kenyan politics. But if Barack has any idea of adding wife to wife, I would suggest he stay with Kenyans; none of his father's Kenyan wives ever divorced him (although his Barack Sr.'s mother did divorce his father, leaving him to be raised by another one of the Obama wives).

When Barack was about six years old, he finally got a poppa who would be part of the family circle: Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian Muslim who raised Barack as a Muslim son in a Muslim nation. Four years later--just about the time his only maternal sibling was born--Barack left that home for good to spend the rest of his childhood being raised by his American grandparents in Hawaii. They weren't known for going to church, but at least in their home he was finally free from the Islamic influence under which he had been raised for nearly half his life.

When he went off the the Mainland for college, Barack made a conscious decision to identify with his African heritage, but not to embrace the Muslim religion as had his African grandfather. Instead he worked at identifying himself as an African-American, eventually cementing that identity by joining a black church and marrying a black lawyer. But his staunch Muslim half-brother Malik served as best man. And ironically for the first African-American major-party presumptive presidential nominee, Barack is descended not from a line of American slaves*, but from a line of American slave owners.

For now, Barack Obama consistently denies that he is or ever has been a Muslim; it is obviously not in his best interests politically to do otherwise. But that his ancestry, upbringing, and family composition are significantly--if not overwhelmingly--Muslim, is undeniable.

*UPDATE: Barack Obama turns out to be possibly descended from one American slave.

Barack Obama is a Muslim

I got an email today that brought to mind something I hadn't thought of: Barack Obama is on track to become America's first ethnically Muslim president. This is rather astounding, when one considers that although ethnic Jews are considerably overrepresented in Congress, not one has ever made it to the presidency; yet with Congress significantly underrepresented by ethnic Muslims, the front runner for the presidency is not only a Muslim by birth, he continues to go by his Islamic name.

This is much more significant than most Americans would realize. According to Islamic law, under which over a billion people live to one extent or another, a son into whose newborn ear his father breathes the shahada is a Muslim for life. Should he ever apostatize he is under penalty of death unless and until he recants. Obama's recent repudiation of his membership in a Chicago church--the only church to which he has ever belonged--could certainly be read by a billion Muslims as the first step in his return to the faith of his fathers. Should he ever need to make a state visit to an Islamic country, this step could end up saving his life.

I should add that it is nothing to the point that Obama's mother never embraced Islam, despite her marriages to two Muslim men. The mother's religion counts for nothing in Islamic law, and it is by no means uncommon for a staunch Muslim to have a mother who came from infidel stock. It was reported that the Sultan of Turkey who unleashed genocide on the Armenians in his country was himself the offspring of an Armenian member of his father's harem.

One other thing. This is what John McCain is reported to have said about Ted Sampley, who alerted America to the fact that it faced a serious threat from Muslim terrorists in its infancy, and found that the only effective response was "through the medium of war." Considering the source, I find Sampley to be all the more credible:
"I am well familiar with Mr. Sampley, and I know him to be one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit. He is dishonorable, an enemy of the truth, and despite his claims, he does not speak for or represent the views of all but a few veterans. The many veterans I know would think it a disgrace to be considered a comrade or supporter of Ted Sampley."

John McCain obviously doesn't know this veteran.

Myth: surfing in boiling water

When I got married, I was astounded to discover that my wife didn't realize that it is impossible to heat anything wet above the boiling temperature of water, which is usually no more than 212 degrees Fahrenheit (or 100 degrees Celsius, but since this story takes place in one of the United States, we'll use Fahrenheit. Or at least try to . . .). I eventually realised that this was nothing unusual; most cooks express surprise that food could overcook at a setting of only 200º, or that it so easily burns to a black crisp at a setting of 350º.

So for the benefit of miseducated cooks, let me explain how it works:

Temperature is a way of measuring the rate at which molecules knock into each other. The faster they vibrate, the higher the temperature that can be measured. Also, the more furiously they knock into each other, the faster some of them are knocked loose. As a part of this process, crystalline and amorphous solids break down into liquids, and eventually liquids break down into gasses. At a high enough temperature, the only possible state of matter is known as plasma, and all molecules are energised.

Adding heat to a substance has one of two effects on it: it either makes its molecules vibrate faster (raising the temperature), or it breaks down the molecular bonds holding the substance together (thereby melting a solid or evaporating a liquid).

At sea level, this means that adding heat to ice warms it up, but only to 32º; at that point, all heat transferred into ice converts it to 32º water (It shouldn't be too hard to convert the realisation that ice can never be any hotter than 32º to one that anything wet--hence, containing water--can never be any hotter than 212º). Once all the ice has become water, the water itself begins to warm up from 32º. The water continues to absorb heat as its temperature approaches about 212º (slightly more if it is in solution), at which point it stops getting hotter and begins converting to 212º steam. Once all the water has become steam, then the steam can begin to heat up again; 600º steam is common in high-pressure turbines.

To apply this principle to food, take the example of making maple syrup from sap. It takes a tremendous amount of heat to raise the temperature of the sap from freezing to around 218º, during which time the sap evaporates at a faster and faster rate. Turning up the heat makes it boil all the more furiously, but it won't raise the temperature of the sap any higher. Since the goal is to remove all water from the sap, this is good. Once the water is gone, however, the sap starts heating up again, and unless it is taken off the fire, will quickly climb past 250º, past 300º, past 350º, and soon burst into flame. This is not good. Thus one who watches his boiling pot carefully will know that the syrup is done by the time it reaches 218º. Better yet, a thermostatic cutoff can accomplish the same thing without the need for such vigilance.

If the cook, however, wants to retain any amount of moisture in the food being cooked, it is counterproductive to heat any portion of it above about 212º. Even in the best-case scenario, the center of the dish may be stewing along at only about 180º, while the outer edges boil off all their moisture and rapidly shoot up to a black-crust-forming 350º. All this can happen even with the thermostat set at a lower temperature. For a cook who has lots of time and would rather have overcooked food than burnt food, a setting of 200º to 250º is best. The other alternative is to use a pressure cooker, which keeps the moisture from boiling off until a considerably higher temperature is reached. Since the goal is hot food, not dehydrated food, this is the most effective option, with the happy benefit of also being the fastest one.

This, by the way, is why microwave ovens can cook food without burning it; they heat up the entire substance, not just the outer surface. Thus by the time the outer surface reaches 212º, the inner portion is already long done. It takes a lot of work to burn something in a microwave oven, unless the substance needs a temperature of 212º to be fully cooked--popcorn being a prime example. Popcorn will not pop until the moisture inside the kernel reaches 212º, which is why it is usually cooked in oil. No other food ever needs to be heated that high; even maple syrup can be safely (but more slowly) made at temperatures as low as 140º.

One more thing to note, is that a pot of water will start to boil at temperatures a lot lower than 212º, but only because the flames (or heating coils) below the pot are transferring their over-1000º-heat into the base of the pot. The inside base of the pot reaches 212º long before the water above it does, forming steam bubbles on its surface that gradually start to break loose and rise to the top faster than they can collapse. While the water itself may still be 180º, the bubbles forming on the bottom are around 212º (actually a little hotter, since the water pressure at that depth has some effect).

Now, to the myth of 200 degree waves, as reported by Laura Clout in The Telegraph. The lava entering the Pacific at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii is around 2000º. It instantly gives up a lot of heat into the water washing over the face of the lava flow, quickly forming 212º water and even hotter steam. As the lava cools, it stops glowing red and turns dark, being constantly pushed farther into the water by the hotter lava behind it. The water, in turn, is constantly losing its heat to the vast ocean behind it, so the water temperature drops rapidly with distance from the lava.

Laura quotes surfer CJ Kahuna as saying:
"I was tentative to get too close at first, and for good reason, the boiling water there is well over 200 hundred degrees in some spots, super hot, and it quickly melted the wax on the surfboard."

While water will melt wax at temperatures considerably below 200º, its boiling point at sea level (which this obviously was) is always pretty close to 212º--even given the dissolved salt level of ocean water, not any higher than 213º. CJ is exaggerating a bit in claiming that the "boiling water" was "way over 200º in spots." It was, in fact (at the surface anyway), no more than 213º where it boiled away in contact with the lava, and progressively cooler (and not boiling) as its distance from the lava increased. Since CJ never got closer than 20 feet from the lava, it's safe to say he never encountered water even as hot as 200 degrees. Certainly the water that splashed over his feet was significantly cooler than that, or he would have been speaking from a hospital bed. And Laura was exaggerating even more in claiming that CJ was "surfing in boiling water."

Update April 1, 2009
This just in:
"Tentative at first, the adrenalin-junkie paddled to within 20ft of the lava, before moving back from water that reached 200C in places, melting the wax on his surfboard and burning his feet in the process."

Yah, 200ºC. Must be the day of the year, eh?

That's right. Our reporterette used a temperature setting DOUBLE that of boiling water, when she failed to recognise the use of Faherenheit in America.

Badgers, porpoises, or sea cows?

"And thou shalt make a covering for the tent of rams skins dyed red, and a covering above of badgers skins."

Reading verses like Exodus 26:14, one might wonder just what animal is in view, especially when comparing various other translations:

RSV: goatskins (no linguistic or historical grounds whatsoever)
NRSV: fine leather (based on the ancient Egyptian word ths, stretched or woven leather)
NLT: fine goatskin leather (following the RSV even when the NRSV didn't!)
JPS, ASV: sealskin (based on the colloquial Arabic word tuhas)
NIV: sea cow hides (Same as above)
KJVII: dugong (Same as above)
NEB, NASB: porpoise skin (imaginative interpretation of the above)

There seems to be an interesting history behind the KJV reading; it seems to be a translation (from Latin!) of the word Taxus, first used in the Bishop's Bible as a transliteration of the Hebrew word. Earlier versions had "doe skins" or followed the Latin Vulgate, which followed the Septuagint, to read "hyacinth." Obviously this is a word that was already obsolete when the Bible was first translated--and why would this be the case, unless the object itself had also passed from use?

Seals, dugongs, and porpoises may produce durable leather that might be handy for a tent, but would be very expensive for the Israelites to procure, either in Egypt or in the wilderness. Why would God specify such an exotic material for covering the entire tabernacle, as well as many of its furnishings? More to the point, why on earth would God prescribe the hide of an unclean animal to cover the articles most closely associated with his holiness?

Given that it has now been established as a clean animal, it seems most likely that the 'takhas' of Numbers 4 was the giraffe.

Giraffe skins would have been common in Egypt, as giraffes populate the upper Nile in great numbers. They would have been taken from Egypt as part of the booty that the Israelites later donated for the tabernacle (Exodus 25:5), and as being both large in size and derived from clean animals, they were eminently suitable for use in covering both the tabernacle itself, and its holiest furnishings.

After entering Canaan, however, the Israelites were no longer able to procure giraffe hides in numbers sufficient for their sacred use, so both the object, and an understanding of the name for it, fell out of use hundreds of years before the Bible was first translated into another language.

They were wrong about the camelion

A certain creationist organization, which has been mentioned previously on this blog, was wrong.

When confronted concerning the two giraffes in a large painting of Noah's Ark that they were offering as a premium to supporters, the Answers Department claimed that they were following rabbinical law in depicting giraffes as unclean (if clean, there would have been seven of them).

Well, the rabbis were wrong in the first place; they'd never bothered to check any giraffes to see if they could be kosher. Once they did--no surprise--the number of giraffes on Noah's Ark jumped to seven.

The Creationists were wrong to follow the rabbis. Had they read Deuteronomy 14:5 in the first Bible published in English, they would have already identified the camelion (giraffa camelopardalis) as a clean animal:

"a capret, a wielde oxe, tregelafun, Þat is, a beeste in parti lijk a buk of geet, and in parti liik an hert, a figarde, an ostrich, a camelioun, Þat is, a beeste lijk in the heed to a camel, and haÞ white spottis in Þe bodi as a parde, and is lijk an hors in Þe necke, and in the feet is lijc a wilde oxe."
--Revised Wycliffe Version, c. 1395