Speaking of Ed Driscoll, I further noticed this post:
John J. Miller has a really interesting piece on Christmas trivia, which includes this tidbit:
What was the Star of Bethlehem?
Would you believe it’s Jupiter? That’s what one astronomer thinks. I find his theory plausible, and wrote about for NRO two years ago here.
Jupiter of course, was the destination of the spaceship Discovery in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that Kubrick and co-writer Arthur C. Clarke intended (among many other things) to be an alternate look at man’s relationship with God.
[...]
Since Stanley died in 1999, I wonder if Clarke knows about Jupiter possibly being the Star of Bethlehem, and what he thinks about it. Since Jupiter was their second choice of a destination [...], it’s certainly a fun coincidence.
Ed, whose geek credentials are generally impeccable, displays a small bit of ignorance here.
You see, Arthur C. Clarke also wrote a short story—I think it was called “The Star”—in which it turns out that the star of Bethlehem was actually a supernova that destroyed an entire intelligent species.
So that would be sort of a double–coincidence, no?