Argument Deconstruction: “Ban on Assault Weapons”

In “A Deadline For Grandfathered Weapons”, in the April 15, 2014 New York Times, the New York Times Editorial Board argues that:

“Experts, like those in law enforcement who understand firearms, tell us that each of the features on an assault weapon serves a specific military combat function. Civilian assault weapons retain specific design features that make them so deadly. Those features are not cosmetic but are what distinguish assault weapons from traditional sporting rifles.”

            Maxim Lott, Producer of “John Stossel” on the Fox News Channel, objects to this in his February 16, 2014 “FoxNews.com” article “Cosmetic Tweaks To AR-15 Thwart New York’s “Ban” On Assault Rifles” [4], as do The Guardian’s U.S. Reporter and video Editor Adam Gabbatt and video Journalist Mae Ryan in their Tuesday April 1, 2014 article “New York Assault Weapons Ban Circumvented With Simple Modification” [3].

“The Safe Act was billed as the nation’s toughest, but a surprisingly easy loophole makes the weapons legal to sell.” Write Gabbatt and Ryan. “But while pro-gun campaigners continue to argue that the law is too strict—and are due to protest outside New York’s statehouse in Albany on Tuesday—gunmakers, gun shops and gun owners have found a remarkably simple way to make their assault weapons legal.” [3]. “Simple design tweaks are allowing gun makers to get around restrictions New York put in place following the 2012 school shootings in Connecticut, prompting some critics to say the laws were merely window-dressing.” Lott writes. He explains that the law introduced a stricter definition of an assault weapon as any semi-automatic rifle that accepts a detachable magazine and has any one of a list of ten features, such as a “protruding pistol-like grip”, a “flash suppressor”, a “bayonet mount”, and a “grenade launcher”. “To avoid that, some owners of old AR-15’s are modifying them so that they no longer classify as “assault weapons.” Lott writes. “One company, S and B Products, offers a “spur” to replace the pistol grip.” [4]. “But many gun shops in New York are offering to replace the grip on a banned weapon to make it compliant with the law.” Add Gabbatt and Ryan. “These modified weapons do not have to be registered with the state. Just Right Carbines a gun manufacturer in Rochester, has gone one step further. It builds modified semi-automatic rifles specifically for the New York market—and specifically to comply with the New York gun law.” [3]. “The gun is being marketed by Stag Arms as a “New York Compliant AR-15”, and features a slightly modified stock and no bells and whistles.” Lott adds. “The gun does not have a pistol grip, for instance—one of the features banned by the act.” [4]. “The modified gun still fires at the same rate and with the same power;” Gabbatt and Ryan write; “The shooter just holds it slightly differently.” [3].

            Lott quotes American Political Action Committee President and American Conservative Union Board Member Alan Gottlieb as stating that: “This just shows that the gun prohibition lobby uses symbolic gestures over substance to push their anti-gun rights agenda. Banning guns based on cosmetic features proves that point.” Lott also said that S and B Products President Steve Byron thought that: “the triviality of the modifications shows that the law is not productive.” [4].

            In his Wednesday April 9, 2014 New York Daily News article “Black Rain Production Demonstrates the Governor Cuomo’s Gun Regulations Are Modest And Reasonable” [6], State University of New York College at Cortland Political Science Department Chairman and Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Cornell University Visiting Professor Robert Spitzer takes a different angle from Lott [4] and The Guardian [3]. 

“The production of Black Rain, in fact, proves that the Safe Act is not only no actual threat to gun rights, but is a perfectly reasonable law.” Spitzer writes. “And putting it together made clear that Cuomo’s goal is reasonable: to make prolific firing more difficult by having a permanently attached magazine, and limiting the number of bullets it can hold without reloading.” “In fact;” He writes; “The only surprise about the manufacture of a New York-compliant assault rifle is that it didn’t come sooner.” [6].  

            In her April 15, 2014 Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, “Ban On Assault Weapons”, Leah Barett, Assistant Dean of Columbia University in the City of New York and Adjunct Lecturer at the Columbia University School of International And Public Affairs, argues that:

“Law-abiding gun owners should comply with a law that was passed by a bipartisan legislature is supported by a broad majority of New Yorkers and has been in effect for fifteen months.” [1].

            In his Monday April 21, 2014 article “New Yorkers Protest Assault Weapon Registration Law”, The New American Magazine [2] contributing editor Warren Mass objects to the premise of Barett’s argument, that “law-abiding gun owners should comply” with New York’s ban on assault weapons [1]. Mass quotes Springville, New York “range safety officer” Timothy Sedenhjelm, 59, of East Concord, New York as stating that: “Nobody is going to comply with this.” He quotes Erie County, New York Sheriff Timothy Howard as saying that he would not force his deputies to comply, and to enforce registration under the new law: “I am not encouraging them to do it.” [5].  

            Associated Press freelance newsperson Michael Virtanen takes a somewhat less hypothetical approach to this same objection in Syracuse Post-Standard Regional Editor David Figura’s April 7, 2014 article “Will New York’s April 15 Deadline To Register Assault Weapons Be Disregarded?”

            Figura and Virtanen write that: “Many New York gun owners expect the April 15 deadline to register assault weapons under the state’s strict new law to be largely ignored.” [2] This agrees with Mass when he writes on April 21 that: “As of April 5, only 3,000 to 5,000 New Yorker had registered their guns, and defenders of the Second Amendment estimate that compliance will be less than 10 percent.” [5]. Figura and Virtanen quote Buffalo, New York graphic artist Tutuska of West Seneca, New York as saying that he wouldn’t register the AR-15’s he’s owned legally for years: “I refuse to comply.” [2].

1,182 Words

1. Barrett, Leah. “Ban On Assault Weapons”.  The New York Times. April 20, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/opinion/ban-on-assault-weapons.html?_r=0
2. Figura, David. “Will New York’s April 15 Deadline To Register Assault Weapons Be Disregarded?” The Associated Press. April 7, 2014. http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/04/new_york_state_gun_owners_expect_few_to_register_law.html
3. Gabbatt, Adam and Ryan, Mae. “New York Assault Weapons Ban Circumvented With Simple Modification”. The Guardian. Tuesday April 1, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/01/new-york-assault-weapons-ban-circumvented-modification
4. Lott, Maxim. “Cosmetic Tweaks To AR-15 Thwart New York’s Ban On Assault Rifles”. Fox News. February 16, 2014. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/16/cosmetic-tweaks-to-ar-15-thwart-new-york-ban-on-assault-rifles/
5. Mass, Warren. “New Yorkers Protest Assault Weapon Registration Law”. The New American. Monday April 21, 2014. http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/18096-new-yorkers-protest-assault-weapon-registration-law
6. Spitzer, Robert. “An Assault Weapon Gambit Backfires: Black Rain Rifle Production Demonstrates The Governor Cuomo’s Gun Regulation Are Modest And Reasonable”. The New York Daily News. Wednesday April 9, 2014. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/assault-weapon-gambit-backfires-article-1.1749862

Book Analysis: “The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge For Strategic Investing”. By Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat Oxford University Press March 6, 2009

The idea of a “fat tail” originated with Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Department of Economics Littauer Center Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics, and Stanford University Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace Senior Fellow, Robert Barro.

In his February 5, 2009 New York Times article “Fat Tail”, Pulitzer Prize winning Washington-based syndicated political columnist William Safire credits New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering Research Center for Risk Engineering Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering Nasim Taleb with popularizing the term [12].

Taleb first predicted the notion of fat tails in his 1996 book “Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla And Exotic Options”, and then in a December 1997 interview with The Economist Managing Editor Joe Kolman [8].

Safire describes that in a probability distribution in which the majority of events occur in the middle of the distribution, there is an “unexpectedly thick” end or tail toward the “ends of a distribution curves”, indicating an irregularly high likelihood of catastrophic events [12].

“Fat tails don’t mean more variance; just different variance.” Taleb writes in Volume 1 Section 9.3 of his January 2014 textbook “Silent Risk: Lectures On Fat Tails, Antifragility, Precaution, and Asymmetric Exposures: In which is Provided a Mathematical Parallel Version of the author’s 2013 “Probability and Risk In The Real World”, with Derivation, Examples, Graphs, Theorems, and Heuristics, with the Aim of Offering a Non-BS Approach to Risk and Probability under the Euphemism “The Real World” . “For a given variance, a higher chance of extreme deviations implies a lower chance of medium ones. ” [10]

JP Morgan Vice President Leslie Lammers explains: “You can look at…a graph of  “normal” probability distribution, or the “bell curve”, as it is known…as a representation of the probability of  finding a data point in a certain place—or in broader terms for this discussion, an event occurring… Instead of tapering off, our bell curve unexpectedly swells at one of its tails…when we have an unexpectedly high occurrence of what we thought were—or what should have been—statistically improbable events.” [9]

In his review of New York University global research Professor Ian Bremmer’s March 6, 2009 book, “The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing”, for Forbes, lawyer and author Gordon Chang writes that: “The Title of the work, of course, refers to statistically improbable events, which are plotted at either end—known as a “tail—of a bell curve. When these freak incidents occur, the normally thin tails bulge, or, in the parlance of today, they become “fat.” [4]

“Briefly, a fat tail is the fatter than expected tail end of a distribution of occurrences that are presumed to be random and therefore thin.” Bremmer writes for The Washington Post in a Wednesday March 25, 2009 interview. “When major risk events happen with much greater frequency than expected, you have a fat tail.” [2]

In “Silent Risk: Probability and Risk in the Real World”, Taleb lists the three causes of fat tails as “Randomness at the level of the scale of distribution”, “model error in all its forms”, and “Convexity of probability measures to uncertainty” [15]. 

In Chapter 1: “Introduction” of “The Fat Tail”, Bremmer notes that “storm of the century” events that appear unlikely to occur but are earth moving when they do “represent the risk that a particular event will occur that appears so catastrophically damaging, unlikely to happen, and difficult to predict, that many of us choose to simply ignore it.” In Chapter One of “The Fat Tail”, he addresses this:  “Too many corporations and organizations ignore political risk until it’s too late. These risks are either assumed to occur rarely or to someone else or to be entirely unpredictable.” [1]

“Basic human psychology prompts us to ignore outliers, even if they dwarf all else. Averages are easy to grasp.” Write Columbia University Scholl of International and Public Affairs Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs and Harvard Kennedy School research Associate Gernot Wagner and Harvard University Faculty of arts and Sciences Department of Economics Professor of Economic Martin Weitzman. “Outliers are in a league of their own…Humans are bound to brush aside such possibilities.” [16]

“We are hard-wired to find order in randomness, to turn scattered points into a coherent narrative, and to expect identified patterns to last forever. We become emboldened by our successes, and we think that we achieved control or at least can see what is coming next…….Too many of us are caught up in routine, or a “status quo bias”, as it is labeled by economists and psychologists.” George Mason University College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Center for Study of Public Choice Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics, and Chairman and General Director of the George Mason University Mercatus Center, Tyler Cowen writes in his review of Taleb’s April 17, 2007 book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” for Slate. “The search for patterns can be a dangerous trap, distracting us from the impact of the highly improbable…It is disquieting to think we might be making bad choices, so we close off options and we shut down self-critical reasoning, whether subconsciously or by active choice.” [5]

            “Yes, fat tails can be “catastrophically damaging”, and…they are also, by definition, “unlikely” and “difficult to predict.” Writes Chang. “Therefore, many of us ignore them until they actually happen. That, of course, is a mistake.” [4]

Lammers goes further: “In short, Fat tails are statistically unusual events…this year’s term for “black swans”…popularized…by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book of the same name.” [9] Lammers’ fellow JP Morgan Chase Senior Vice President Jane Kim explains: “The term black swan…derives from the ancient belief, once widespread in the West, that all swans are white—a notion that was proven false when European explorers discovered black swans in Australia.” [7] “Before the discovery of Australia, it was generally assumed that swans we always white.” Cowen elaborates. “Suddenly, black swans turned up, unsettling people’s expectations.” [5]  “The gist: Anything is possible.” Kim concludes. “In fact, big surprises are more common than people think.” [7]

In an interview with Hofstra University Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law and Columbia Law School Lecturer in Law Scott Horton in the March 25, 2009 Harper’s Magazine, Bremmer himself acknowledged that Taleb’s has book “a lot common” with his own book, “The Fat Tail”, saying: “Both books argue that these events occur more often than we think.” [6]

“Call them “black swans”, “unknown unknowns”, “fat tails”, or “10-foot women”. Whatever you call them, they’re bizarre events.” Write Wagner and Weitzman. “They shouldn’t happen. Usually they don’t happen, but every once in a while they do happen, and then their impact makes daily events mere noise.” [16]

 “We never see black swans coming, but when they do arrive, they profoundly shape our world.” Taleb writes. “In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.” [13]

“Another human failing stems from the nature of happiness. In the short run, people’s happiness is often shaped more by how many “positive events” occur in their day than by the arrival of one important piece of good news.” Cowen writes. “We therefore look, consciously or not, for small but repeated successes when we should be shooting for “one large win”. It’s easy to see why: Big payoffs come only rarely, and perhaps late in life; in the meantime, who wants to keep on feeling like a loser?” [5] “There are government entities and the economic entities that they own and influence that radically change who the winners and losers. So the one thing that we need to do is understand as a consequence of this changing world, how do we thing about who the winners and losers are?” Bremmer told Forbes Magazine journalist and editor Michel Maiello in a March 31, 2009 New York interview. “Because we probably can’t affect who the winners and losers are very well. But we want to bet with the winners.” [11]

“100-year floods happen far more than once a century.” Writes Bremmer in “A Fat Tail”. [1] In a March 16, 2009 interview with the Chicago-based “RealClearPolitics”, founded by Loyola University Maryland affiliate adjunct instructor John McIntyre, Bremmer explains: “A fat tail is the storm of the century that now seems to appear once every six months. It’s the low probability, high-impact risk that occurs more often than we think.” [3] “The concept of “The Fat Tail” itself is that we increasingly live in a world where these one-in-100-year storms actually seem to happen every 15 minutes.” Bremmer told Maiello “So, what you expect is a normal distribution with really severe consequences that happens only a tiny, tiny percentage of the time. All of a sudden, they’re happening a lot.” [11]

“A 1-in-100-year event is indeed rare, by definition. But it may well dwarf all else in impact.” Wagner and Weitzman write. “And by now we know that 1-in-100-year storms—the hallmark often used for infrastructure—may be showing up much more frequently.” [16]

In the Harper’s interview, Bremmer says of his and Taleb’s books: “We also agree that risk managers too often fail to include these kinds of events in their risk models. In some cases, the risk is considered too unlikely to occur to devote substantial time and money to studying it. In others, there’s simply a fatalistic attitude toward catastrophe.” [6] “But he move from that point into the notion that fat tails can’t actually be anticipated or effectively managed.” Bremmer tells The Washington Post. “Where the point of my book, “The Fat Tail”, is that these risks increasingly stem from political factors.” [2] “The purpose of this book is that increasingly, those fat tails or big risks that are out there that really can savage the global economy and our own personal pockets are about politics.” Bremmer told Maiello in Forbes. [11] In Harper’s, he elaborates to Horton that: “An increasing number of the fat tails now roiling markets around the world are driven by political factors.” “But the books disagree on a crucial issue.” He tells Harpers. “Preston Kent and I believe that a good number of these risks can be measured and managed.” [6]

In “RealClearPolitics”, Bremmer repeats: “These risks are not necessarily unpredictable or unknowable—though some are. But too many companies and investors think they don’t need to worry about “extreme” events or that, especially when it come to politics, it isn’t worth analyzing risks that don’t neatly fit into standard statistical models.” He says, of “The Fat Tail”: “The central idea of the book is that fat tail political risks have become increasingly important for government, companies, and investors—and that they’re both more predictable and more manageable than other sort of fat-tailed risks.” [3]

 “I’m saying that unlike the black swan, where they recognize that there are lots of fat tails that happen but say that you can never asses them, you’ll never know where they come from.” He tells Maiello of Forbes. “Increasingly, you can.” [11]

“In these times of heightened geopolitical risk, political knowledge has become a hard currency.” Adds Emory University board Trustee Mutar Kent. “The ability to keep an open mind while being both rigorous and creative is necessary in order to successfully mitigate political risks.” Bremmer writes in the conclusion: “Mitigating Political Risks In An Uncertain World” of “A Fat Tail”. “Balancing this combination of skills is, at the end of the day, as much art as science.” [1]

 “Even science itself has a hard time grappling with fat tails. The scientific process largely works through repetition, which by definition does not apply here.” Wagner and Weitzman write. “Still, science can help us model fat tail that reach far beyond human imagination. Statisticians and economists have discovered patterns confirming the existence of fat tails in everything from stock market returns to extreme weather events.” [16]

In Chapter 3: “Geopolitics” of “The Fat Tail”, Bremmer writes that: “Globalization, economic integration, trade and capital mobility, and the free exchange of ideas across borders have not rendered politics obsolete.” [1] “When our concept of “normal” must be stretched so far as to include unanticipated natural disasters, wars, government shakeups and scandals, and so on, then normal goes by the wayside.” Writes Lammers. “When we try to squeeze life underneath a bell curve, then fat tail events…surprise us.” [9] “Unlike economic risks, political risks also tend to be more heterogeneous: Their causes vary greatly.” Bremmer writes in Chapter 4: “Political Risk and Capital Markets” of “A Fat Tail”. “The way politics impacts economic assets can be equally varied, from a government imposing currency controls, to a mob rioting and burning down a business, to panic starting among traders.” [1]

International Institute for Strategic Studies trustee Bill Emmott agrees: “Economics produces cycles and even crises, but it is politics that has the power to turn crises into profound and lasting dramas.” He says of “The Fat Tail” that it: “Should be essential reading for anyone involved in international business even—perhaps especially—in places that seem politically stable.”

 “What at first might appear an irrational choice might not be. Those who assume that Presidents, Prime Ministers, and members of Parliament care more about sound economic policy than their political fortunes are doomed to the occasional surprise, because political leaders sometimes make market-moving even market-crashing economic decisions to satisfy their political needs.” Bremmer writes in Chapter 5: “Domestic Instability—Revolution, Civil War, State Failure” of  “The Fat Tail”. “War, terrorism, expropriation, violent changes of government, politically motivated lawmaking and civil strife are not going away. Government will continue to change both national and international regulatory regimes, often dramatically.” [1] “Political risks are usually about political decision makers. There are actions taken by political actors.” Bremmer tells Maiello. “Government state leaders who make decisions that have negative economic consequences that are rationally political. If you can understand what’s behind that political decision-making process, you can have a much better sense of what these big risks are.” [11]

“Virtually by definition, the bulk of what goes on is ordinary events determined by ordinary processes—mixed in, of course, with some extraordinary influences.” Cowen writes in a criticism of Taleb’s work and, by extension, Bremmer’s. “Elevating the importance of the extraordinary alone is more rhetorical posturing than insight.” [5]

1.     Bremmer, Ian and Keat, Preston . “The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge For Strategic Investing”. Oxford University Press. March 6, 2009. http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-fat-tail-9780195328554;jsessionid=E2924AB7E860CBAFF645A650EBD9AA69?cc=us&lang=en&

2.     Bremmer, Ian. “Books: The Fat Tail”. The Washington Post. Wednesday March 25, 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/03/20/DI2009032002854.html

3.     Bremmer, Ian. “Political Risk, the Financial Crisis and Strategic Investing”. RealClearPolitics. March 16, 2009. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/political_risk_the_financial_c.html 

4.     Chang, Gordon. “How To Expect The Unexpected”. Forbes. March 3, 2009. http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/02/fat-tail-risk-opinions-book-review_ian_bremmer.html

5.     Cowen, Tyler. “Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition—Or Do They? A Look At Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan”. Slate. June 13, 2007. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2007/06/nobody_expects_the_spanish_inquisitionor_do_they.single.html

6.     Horton, Scott. “Six questions for Ian Bremmer, Author of Fat Tail”. Harper’s Magazine. March 25, 2009. http://harpers.org/blog/2009/03/six-questions-for-ian-bremmer-author-of-_fat-tail_/

7.     Kim, Jane. “Preparing for the Next “Black Swan”. The Wall Street Journal. August 21, 2010. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703791804575439562361453200

8.     Kolman, Joe. “The World According To Nassim Taleb”. Derivatives Strategy Magazine. December 1997. http://docs.finance.free.fr/Options/Dynamic_Hedging-Taleb.pdf

9.     Lammers, Leslie. “Are Fat Tails And Black Swans Related?” Riverstone Advisors. April 2012. http://riverstoneadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/What-is-a-Fat-Tail.pdf

10.  Lehe, Lewis and Powel, Victor. “Normal Vs. Fat-Tailed Distributions”. University of California—Berkeley Blum Center For Developing Economies. 2013. http://vudlab.com/fat-tails.html

11.  Maeiello, Michael. “Transcript: Ian Bremmer”. Forbes. March 31, 2009. http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/31/ian-bremmer-transcript-opinions-business-visionaries-g20.html

12.  Safire, William. “Fat Tail”. The New York Times. February 5, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/magazine/08wwln-safire-t.html

13.  Taleb, Nassim. “Learning to Love Volatility: In A World That Constantly Throws Big, Unexpected Events Our Way, We Must Learn To Benefit From Disorder, Writes Nassim Nicholas Taleb”. The Wall Street Journal. November 16, 2012. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448

14.  Taleb, Nassim. “Probability and Risk In The Real World”. 2013. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_31K_MP92hURjZxTkxUTFZnMVk/edit?pli=1

15.  Taleb, Nassim. “Silent Risk: Lectures On Fat Tails, Antifragility, and Asymmetrical Exposures”. New York University Polytechnic Institute School of Engineering Department of Finance and Risk Engineering.  February 19, 2014. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/FatTails.html 

16.  Wagner, Gernot and Weitzman, Martin. “Was Hurricane Sandy the “Fat Tail” of Climate Change?” The Wall Street Journal. November 1, 2012. http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/11/01/was-hurricane-sandy-the-fat-tail-of-climate-change/

17.  Weitzman, Martin. “Fat Tails And The Economics of Climate Change: Fat-Tailed Uncertainty In The Economics Of Catastrophic Climate Change”. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Volume 5, Issue 2 Pages 275-292. Summer 2011. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/weitzman/files/fattaileduncertaintyeconomics.pdf

Hopefully Michael Keaton won't show up on your doorstep after you read this

“Betelgeuse” [Alpha Orionis]
 
 

Name

As American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in his speeches “The Perimeter of Ignorance”; at the Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion and Survival symposium on November 5, 2006 at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California; and “Adventures in Science Literacy or the Brain Dropping of a Skeptic”; at the Amazing Meeting: I, Skeptic—Modern Skepticism in the Internet Age on June 19-22, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada:

“Of all the stars that have names, two thirds of them have Arabic names… While the constellations are Greek and Roman, the names are Arabic.”

The ten brightest stars in the sky are no exception. Ninth on that list is the second-brightest star in the constellation of Orion [30]. It’s Latin name in Alpha Orionis, but in English we call it “Betelgeuse”.

As with those of other stars, the name “Betelgeuse” is derived from Arabic. The Arabic word “Ibt” [transliterated as “Abet”] means “Armpit”. The Arabic word “Jwz” [“Jauz”] means “Middle” or “The Center of Anything”, and “Al-Jawza” means “The Central One”, an Arabic word for the constellation of Orion. “Al-Dshauza” means “The Giant”, another Arabic word for Orion. So the Arabic “Ibt Al-Jauza” means “Armpit of Orion”.

Elsewhere, Alpha Orionis was known as “Yad Al Jawza”, meaning “The Hand of Orion”. [The Arabic “Al Yad Al Yamna” means “The Right Hand”.] In his 1944 Popular Astronomy article “The Pronunciations, Derivations, and Meanings of a Selected List of Star Names”, George Davis puts forward an alternative English translation for the Arabic phrase “Yad Al-Dshauza”: “The Forefoot of the White-Belted Sheep” [21].

During the middle Ages, the “Y” [“Ya”] was misread as a “B” [“Ba”] in a mistranslitertion to Medieval Latin, and so during the Renaissance  “Yad Al-Jawza” became “Bed Al-Gueze”. In his 1899 book “Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning”, polymath and amateur naturalist Richard Hinckley Allen traces this through late 16^th century German orientalist Jakob Christmann and early 17^th century English writer and translator Edmund Chilmead, whose Arabic translations changed from “Bet Al-Gueze” [translated as “Armpit of Orion”] to “Bed Al-Gueze” [“Orion’s Hand”], to “Led Elgueze” [“House of Orion”] and finally to “Betelgueze” [1].

Other ancient civilizations also had names for the eighth brightest star in the celestial sphere. In Sanskrit, it is “Ardra” [“The Moist One”]. To the Persians, it was “Basn” [“The Arm”]. In Coptic, it was “Klaria” [“The Armlet”]. To the Macedonians, it was “Orach” [“The Ploughman”]. To the Inuit, Betelgeuse is “Ulluriajjuaq” [“Large Star”], and together with Bellatrix are “Akuttujuuk” [“Those Two Placed Far Apart”]. In Hawaii, it is “Kaulua-Koko” [“Brilliant Red Star”], and in Tahitian it is “Ta’urua-nui-O-Mere” [meaning “Great Festivity in Parental Yearnings”].

Classification and Color

In his March 20, 2000 Astrophysical Journal article “Betelgeuse and its Variations”, University of Western Ontario Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy David Gray estimated the mass of Alpha Orionis at five to thirty times the mass of our sun [25]. In “Weighing Betelgeuse” in the September 21, 2011 Proceedings of the Pacific Rim Conference on Stellar Astrophysics, East Tennessee State University Research Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Hilding Neilson and University of Sydney Research Only Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Xavier Haubois determined a mass for Betelgeuse of 11.6 times the mass of our sun by measuring a mass of 7.7 to 16.6 solar masses [28].

Forming ten to twelve million years ago as a fifteen to twenty solar-mass star, a member of a high mass multiple system within its birthplace, the Orion OB1 Association, Alpha Orionis was ejected from Ori OB1a, which includes the stars in Orion’s Belt. [11] Betelgeuse is now a Spectral Class M Intermediate Luminous Red Supergiant, one of the largest, most luminous and most ethereal observable stars known. The age of Class M Supergiants with an initial mass twenty times the mass of our sun is 10 million years.

According to 20^th century German-born astronomer Hermann Alexander Bruck, 19^th century Italian astronomer Pietro Angelo Secchi considered Betelgeuse the prototype for his orange-to-red Class III stellar classification [13].  According to early 15^th century Persian astronomer and mathematician Mirza Muhammad Taraghay Bin Shahrukh, in his 1437 star catalogue “Zij-I Sultani” [32], the second-century Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer and geographer Claudius Ptolemy described the color of Betelgeuse with the Latin words:

“Stella Lucida in umero dextro, quae ad rubedinem vergit.”

[“Bright star in right shoulder, which inclines to ruddiness.”]

However, observations by Chinese astronomers, who called Betelgeuse “Shenxiusi” [“The Fourth Star of the Constellation of Three Stars”], around the beginning of the Common Era suggest that it was then a yellow supergiant [36].

Brightness, Luminosity and Temperature

Though it emits 16,000 times more visible light than our sun, only thirteen percent of Alpha Orionis’ radiant energy is emitted in the form of visible light. Most of its light comes in the infrared, making it the brightest near-infrared source in the sky [14].

Early 17^th century German uranographer and celestial cartographer Johann Bayer, in his 1603 star atlas “Uranomeria: Omnium Asterismorum Continens Schemata, Nova Methodo Delineata, Aereis Laminis Expressa” [“Measuring the Sky, Containing Charts of All the Constellations, Drawn by a New Method and Engraved on Copper Plates”] [32], designated Betelgeuse “Alpha”, as it rivaled the brighter Rigel, which he designated “Beta”.

The surface temperature for the outer layers of an M-Class Red Supergiant is 3,100 degrees Kelvin. In April 2001, University of Dublin School of Physics Director of Teaching and Learning Undergraduate Physics Graham Harper reported a surface temperature for Betelgeuse of 3,300 degrees Kelvin, by estimating temperatures of 3,140 to 3,641 degrees Kelvin [12]. In the May 2012 Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Bonn Argelander Institute for Astronomy astrophysicist Dr. Norbert Langer reported a temperature for Alpha Orionis of 3,300 degrees Kelvin and a luminosity of 120,000 times the luminosity of our sun [33]. In the November 1998 Astronomical Journal, Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics [CFA] Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory [SAO] senior astrophysicist Andrea Dupree and Pennsylvania State University Eberly College of Science Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Professor of Practice Ronald Gilliland indicated a region in the Southwest quadrant of Alpha Orionis that is 2,000 degrees Kelvin hotter than the surface [23]. 

Alpha Orionis rotates at five kilometers per second at an axis inclination of 55 degrees from celestial North and twenty degrees to the direction of Earth. It takes 25 to 32 years to rotate on its axis [38]. Alpha Orionis has a period of 5.7 years, and has been observed moving through the interstellar medium at a supersonic speed of thirty kilometers per second, or 6.3 Astronomical Units per year. This produces a bow shock four light years wide [33][34].

Distance from Earth

In the May 1921 Astrophysical Journal, German-born American physicist Albert Michelson, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, and American astronomer Francis Pease measured a distance from the Earth to Alpha Orionis of 180 light years, or 56 parsecs [39].  In October 1995, the Yale University Observatory published a distance of 330 light years, or 102 parsecs [2]. In July 1997, the European Space Agency’s High Precision Parallax Collecting Satellite [HIPPARCOS] estimated a distance of 430 light years, or 131 parsecs [3].  In the April 2008 Astronomical Journal, Trinity College Lecturer Graham Harper; using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array [VLA] near Magdalena on the Plains of San Augustin in the Middle Rio Grande Valley American Viticultural Area [AVA] in Socorro County, New Mexico; produced a distance from Earth for Alpha Orionis of 643 light years, or 197 parsecs [11].

On its projected pathway, Alpha Orionis will not intersect with the 25 Ori Subassociation, or Ori OB1d Orion Nebular Cluster [ONC], at a distance of 389 to 414 parsecs [11].

Size

In the May 2004 Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Paris Observatory’s Guy Perrin produced a measurement of the radius of Alpha Orionis of 3.4 Astronomical Units, or 730 times the radius of the sun [18]. According to University of Cambridge Institute of Astronomy Technical Director of Space Projects Dr. Floor Van Leeuwen in the February 1, 2008 Astronomy and Astrophysics, HIPPARCOS estimated the radius of Alpha Orionis at 3.6 Astronomical Units [35]. In the December 1, 2000 Astrophysical Journal, University of California—Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory [SSL] Mission Operations Center Lead Scientist and Director of Operations Manfred Bester produced a radius measurement for Alpha Orionis of 5.6 Astronomical Units, or 1,200 times the radius of the sun [20]. In May 1921, Michelson and Pease measured the diameter of Alpha Orionis at 3.84 x 10^8 kilometers, or 2.58 Astronomical Units [39]. In February 2008, HIPPARCOS estimated a diameter for Betelgeuse of 1,500 times the diameter of our sun [35].

If Betelgeuse were Empire Stadium in Wembley Park in London, England, then our Sun would be the size of a mango, and the Earth would be a pearl one-millimeter in diameter. If Alpha Orionis were to replace our sun at the center of our solar system, it would engulf Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars at 1.5 Astronomical Units, and its surface would extend past Ceres in the asteroid belt at 2.7 Astronomical Units and past the orbit of Jupiter at 5.5 Astronomical Units, not quite reaching Saturn at 9.5 Astronomical Units.

In the April 20, 2001 Astrophysical Journal, Graham Harper estimated Alpha Orionis’ mass loss to be 0.03 solar masses every 10,000 years [12]. However, in the June 1, 2009 Astrophysical Journal, University of California—Berkeley Professor of the Graduate School of Experimental Astrophysics Charles Townes, the Nobel-Prize-winning inventor of the laser, reported that Betelgeuse had shrunk by fifteen percent, or 0.9 Astronomical Units [equal to the orbit of Venus] in the last fifteen years, from 5.5 Astronomical Units in 1993 to 4.6 Astronomical Units in 2009 [19] [27] [40].

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