Michael Flynn's Blog, page 54
May 2, 2011
Mission Accomplished Moment??
Red Alert: Osama bin Laden has been killed
Stratfor says: The United States has killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and recovered his body, according to numerous media reports May 1 citing U.S. officials.
Read more: Red Alert: Osama bin Laden Killed | STRATFOR
May 1, 2011
Pricing Strategies
What do you get when you charge more for something?
Less of it, right?
http://omaha.com/article/20110427/NEWS01/704279887
April 30, 2011
Thomistic Foresight
Tardiloquum te esse iubeo et tarde ad locutorium accedentem;
(I bid you be slow to speak and slow to approach the chat-room.)
-- Thomas Aquinas, Epistola de modo studendi (A Letter on the Method of Study)
Found at FideCogitActio
A word on "chat-room". That is a more or less literal translation of "locutorium." If an auditor-ium is for auditors (for those-who-listen), a locuto-ium is for locutors (those-who-talk). It referred to a room in people's homes in Late Imperial times that was reserved for amiable gathering and chatting. It is usually translated as "parlor" or "salon." However, Tom tended toward the colloquial and concrete in his imagery, and the sense of the locutorium is actually well-captured by "chat-room." Well, except for being physically present and all.
April 26, 2011
April 23, 2011
Announcement
A novelette scheduled for release on April 27th by Tor.com in Kindle format for the princely sum of $0.99 each. But early and buy often.
Product Description In a world in which horses survived to flourish in 13th-century America, the wars and rivalries of thirteenth-century Ireland have new players: the mysterious warriors from across the Western Sea, called by some the “ó Gonklins.” They and their Irish hosts have much in common—enough to misunderstand one another far more than utter aliens ever could.
Revolving Sciences
T he Far-Seeing Looking Glass Goes to China
Toby Huff has written a fascinating book: Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution in which he studies the spread of the telescope following its invention in Holland and its effect on science in Europe, China, and the two main muslim regions: the Ottoman Middle East and Mughal India. What follows is a summary of how the telescope went to China and what did not happen as a result.
Astronomy in China
Astronomy in China is a state monopoly conducted by the Bureau of Mathematics and Astronomy within the Ministry of Rites, under the Third Minister reporting to the Grand Secretary. The Ministry of Rites is responsible for state ceremonies, rituals, sacrifices, licensing Buddhist and Daoist priests, etc. The Bureau of Mathematics and Astronomy has the main task of preparing the annual calendar (and its regional spin-offs) and identifying lucky and unlucky days. This is the sole purpose of Chinese astronomy, which is why astronomers are called “calendar-makers.” Scientific investigation of the natural world is outside the box. The annual calendar is presented to the Emperor in a grand public ceremony. It includes ephemerides giving meteorological forecasts for each region. Since a failure of the calendar reflects the Mandate of Heaven, it can be dangerous to get these forecasts wrong.
The Datong methods are purely arithmetical; China has not invented geometry, esp. spherical geometry. Signs in the Heavens are assumed to reflect doings on Earth – in both directions. The misbehavior of officials, esp. the Emperor, can cause earthquakes, floods, etc. (The Chinese have evidently not come up with causality, either.) Astronomers study the Heavens for signs to be made known only to the Emperor. Astronomical observations are thus reports from Heaven to the Emperor, just as the observations of the Censorate are reports from the provinces to the Emperor.
1618 In Europe, Cardinal Borromeo gives Schreck a new Keplerian telescope, which he takes to China.1619 Trigault, Schreck, and the others arrive in Macau with 7000 science books only to find entry into China is barred. They sneak in anyway.
1623 The Jesuits are released and restored just as Schreck and Schall reach Beijing. While in China, Schreck corresponds with leading astronomers in Europe. Kepler responds by sending his Rudolphine Tables. Galileo, as usual, does not help.
1626 Schall writes Treatise on the Telescope and reviews all of the discoveries of “a celebrated Western astronomer.”
1627 Wang Cheng (a.k.a. Dr. Philip) writes Diagrams and Explanation of the Marvelous Devices of the Far West. He points out the telescope’s usefulness in navigation, warfare (you can count enemy horses at a far distance), painting, the camera obscura, etc. Dr. Phil has a hard time explaining about lenses because there are then no words in Chinese for concave or convex. China does not have the technology to grind lenses for eyeglasses or telescopes, and their understanding of optics has not yet reached that of al-Haytham (d.1038).
1629 21 June. Chinese, muslim, and Jesuit astronomers have a face-off conducted by Xu Guangqi in which they make predictions for the next day’s solar eclipse. The Chinese method predicts a 10:30 start and 2-hour duration. The Jesuits, using Tycho’s system and the telescope, predict an 11:30 start and 2-minute duration. They are right on the money. Impressed, the Emperor puts Xu in charge of a huge Calendar Reform Project.
1630 Schreck dies and is succeeded by Schall.
1630 Schall writes Brief Description of the Measurement of the Heavens, introducing the Tychonic geo-helio system. From the observational POV it is not yet possible to choose between the Tychonic and the Copernican system. Xu agrees with Schall that the Ptolemaic system is dead.
1630 Schall presents the translated works and (possibly) the Keplerian telescope to the Emperor.
1631 27 August. Giacomo Rho’s Complete Treatise on the Measurement of the Heavens describes all the Tychonic instruments and includes some of Kepler’s Optics. These are followed by a series of other manuals, summaries, and translations.
1632-34 More face-offs establishes the superiority of the Tychonic system over the Datong system. On 1 November 1634, the Chinese prediction of the conjunction of Venus and Mars is off by eight entire days.
1633 In Europe, Galileo stands trial for violating the injunction of 1616 and propounding heliocentrism as if it were established fact.
1633 Xu Guangqi dies; succeeded by Li Tiánjing.
1638 Giacomo Rho dies. Schall is named Mandarin and head of the Board of Mathematics.
At this point China was up to speed on telescopes, Tychonic astronomy, and Kepler’s optics, and could have had a Scientific Revolution – but did not.
You Think Galileo Had It Bad?
1644 Mandate of Heaven is taken from the Ming and given to the Manchu.
1659 The anti-Christian Yang Guangxian begins his campaign against the Jesuit astronomers, bombarding the Emperor with memorials against them. These memos are ignored until….
1664 The Shunzhi Emperor dies of smallpox and the new Kangxi Reign starts reading Yang’s memos. “The Westerner Adam Schall was a posthumous follower of Jesus, who had been the ringleader of the treacherous bandits in the Kingdom of Judea. In the Ming dynasty he came to Peking secretly and posed as a calendar-maker in order to carry on the propagation of heresy.” Schall is accused of unauthorized use of a telescope and with choosing an inauspicious time for the burial of a Qing prince. Yang extended that to causing the death of the prince, his mother, and the Shunzhi Emperor himself through the choice of inauspicious times and places. Schall and others were bound in “nine long and thick chains of iron, all with iron locks; three around the neck, three on the arms, and three on the feet.”
1664 Schall suffers a stroke, and is sentenced to death by dismemberment. Others are sentenced to exile following 40 blows with the bamboo. But…
1664 An earthquake the following day convinces the judge and the Council of Deliberate Officials to modify the sentences. (Remember: such events were thought to be caused by misbehavior on the part of ministers and officials.) The princess dowager intervenes to absolve the Jesuits. Schall is sentenced to house arrest. Two non-Christian astronomers in the Bureau are pardoned. The Christian Chinese officials are beheaded for treason.
1665 Johann Adam Schall von Bell dies in house arrest. Yang is appointed to succeed him although he knows nothing of astronomy and math. He relies on Wu Mingxuan, his muslim assistant. Yang says “the methods of calendar-making are profound and subtle; it is very difficult to tell the difference (between the two systems). Evidently, the face-offs of the 1630s have been forgotten. But it is also the case that Yang (and his party) do not regard accuracy as paramount. Chinese tradition is the important thing.
1669 Ferdinand Verbiest (Flanders) has to do it all over again, and holds a series of face-offs against Yang and Wu, defeating them soundly. The Kangxi Emperor also turns out to be curious and interested in science and Verbiest becomes his tutor; but this does not outlast the emperor himself.
In the end, nothing came of it. China did not have a scientific revolution. In fact, as Nathan Sivan once wrote: “China had sciences, but not science.” We might say that China never had an Aristotle. They never had formal logic, Euclidean geometry, optics, lens-grinding, either.
In Europe, the telescope led to
a) Instrumental: Rapid dissemination and improvements of the instrument
b) Observational: Discoveries and improvements to star charts and catalogs
c) Theoretical: Progress toward the unified mechanics and theory of universal gravitation
In China, none of these three things happened. The only telescopes were those brought from Europe and all were under government control (as was astronomy itself). Astronomy remained primarily calendar-making and divining lucky and unlucky days.
Whys and Wherefores
Aside from government control of telescopes and astronomy and a remarkable lack of intellectual curiosity, the distinctive factors can be linked to the medieval revolutions in Europe, specifically the legal revolution and the educational revolution.
In the legal revolution, law recognized self-governing chartered corporations: guilds, professional societies, towns, universities, etc. And with the corporations, the concept of jurisdiction, of elected officials, “what affects all must be considered by all.” This never happened in China, where every aspect of life came under the imperial government.
The educational revolution occurred with the invention of the self-governing university and the standardized curriculum not only emphasizing logic, reason, and natural philosophy, but also employing the method of disputation in which lectures were followed by debates covering both sides of a Question. This led to “a culture of poking around” (as Edward Grant put it), that is, of inquiry. In China, education remained confined to the Imperial College, which covered only what we might call “the humanities” and which taught by utter memorization of the classics in preparation for the triennial Examinations. In the intervening two years, “teachers sat idle” for lack of students. In the prefectures, the “cram schools” were exactly what they sound like.
The unchallenged assumption was that “wisdom exists vouchsafed from the past” and the scholar’s task is to learn what that wisdom is. There was no debate. Even in the brief period when, under Xu and the Jesuits, astronomy was included in the exam, the questions still had to be answered in the strict format of “the eight-legged essay.” The student was given a quotation of say six characters. The eight-legged essay consisted of three sentences of preliminary statement, four legs addressing the first half of the quote, a four sentence transition, four legs addressing the second half of the quote, a four sentence recapitulation, and a grand conclusion. Each four-legged section had to be in paired antitheses (pro/con, false/true, shallow/profound, etc.) with each half of each antithesis being balanced in length, diction, imagery, and rhythm. This has been compared to writing a fugue based on a few introductory notes.
April 21, 2011
Complexity and Nuance
The Renaissance Mathematicus cites a post by Prof. Christoper Graney: In his Almagestum novum from 1651, the Jesuit scientist Giovanni Battista Riccioli "provides a list of 126 arguments pro and contra heliocentricity (49 for, 77 against). ... Seen through Riccioli’s 126 arguments, the debate over the Copernican hypothesis appears dynamic and indeed similar to more modern scientific debates. Both sides present good arguments as point and counter-point. Religious arguments play a minor role in the debate; careful, reproducible experiments a major role. To Riccioli, the anti-Copernican arguments carry the greater weight, on the basis of a few key arguments against which the Copernicans have no good response. These include arguments based on telescopic observations of stars, and on the apparent absence of what today would be called “Coriolis Effect” phenomena; both have been overlooked by the historical record... Given the available scientific knowledge in 1651, a geo-heliocentric hypothesis clearly had real strength, but Riccioli presents it as merely the “least absurd” available model – perhaps comparable to the Standard Model in particle physics today – and not as a fully coherent theory."
Recall that Pope Urban had encouraged Galileo to write a book comparing the systems of the world, listing the strengths and weaknesses of each. What he got was an advocacy for the Copernican system that ignored some vital objections and a satire of a Ptolemaic model which had already been abandoned by Aristotelians. The phases of Venus had decisively falsified the basic Ptolemaic model, but were equally well explained by the Copernican and the Tychonic models. The Tychonic model (and the related Ursine model) were the most popular among scientists by the time Galileo wrote the Dialogue, but he does not so much as mention them, let alone refute them. As it turned out, it was the Keplerian model, with its elliptical orbits, that turned out to be correct. Riccioli's book is more like what the Pope had in mind. Not until there was empirical evidence to choose one model over the other could you say it was fact; and that evidence was not forthcoming until the late 1700s and early 1800s.
April 17, 2011
Adventures
The other day my father was attracted by a commotion outside his house. He went to the living room window and looked out on the street. This is a small town, with small streets down which few cars venture; but there were two cars stopped in the middle of the street.
Two men were beating up on a third man with their fists and feet. They were really lambasting him. So Pere whips out his cell phone which, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, he does know how to use and prepares to call 911. Then he notices two things. First, that two people from a house across the way are standing on their front porch watching without any sign of agitation. Second, a flash of handcuffs in the afternoon sun. The third man is clapped in irons and escorted into one of the cars. The men who had been beating on him a moment before solicitously guide his head into the backseat so he does not bump it against the door frame. This strikes him as a cop gesture, and he wonders if the two, garbed in plain clothes, are federal agents of some sort. (They are not local fuzz.)
A day or two later, he asks a neighbor, who is also my cousin and who has Asked Around. The two men were bounty hunters, not cops, and the man was a bail jumper from somewhere or other. It was all the sort of thing you expect to see on TV, he said.
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About a week or so later he gets a call. We haven't seen you around the detachment lately, he is told. The detachment is the local Marine Corps League drinking establishment meeting house. When he arrives at the meeting, he is told, "Past Commandant Flynn, front and center." Once he is in the center of the front, they give him a certificate from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania congratulating him for winning World War II. At least that is how the effusion of praise strikes him; so for his acceptance speech he says, "Actually, guys, I had a little help." He also finds out that he is also the sole WW2 veteran in the detachment. This does not sit well with him for a variety of reasons. There must be others, he supposes, but they are not members. In any case, he now has the official thanks of the Commonwealth, even though he was a native and resident of New Jersey at the time. Perhaps he wonders what took them so long. Had they waited until they could save on parchment for the certificates?
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Adventure in Coventry
Meanwhile, your obedient servant has been On the Road in Coventry RI (Motto: Come Grow With Us), to service a client interested in statistical methods. Margie went along since the locale was half an hour from Mystic CT, from the Newport mansions, and even somewhat from Boston. However, it rained one of the three days, and we went to a restaurant named Flare. When I paid the dinner bill, the waitress returned bemused: it seems her name was also M.F.Flynn, but the Flynn was by marriage and the M stood for Margaret. Then it was Margie's turn to be bemused.
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Adventure in Writing
Just before departing for Coventry, I sat down and in the white heat of creativity, inspired by my Muse, I churned out the soon-to-be classic SF yarn "The Return of the Zombie Sea Monster." It is a massive epic of 1100 words length and has already been dispatched to its no-doubt dimal fate at the hands of cruel and uncaring editors. ANALOG now accommodates electronic submissions, which I suspect will lead to an uptick in half-baked stories prematurely ejaculated into the skiffy-sphere.
A taste of the epic can be had from this opening passage, full of pathos and simmering with tension:
I was sitting on the broad, wooden front porch, listening to the ocean breakers at dusk when I saw the gnarled, stooped, leathery, grizzled, salty old sea dog hobble across the beach. A cold hand of fear gripped my heart. That was way too many adjectives. That was when I knew. I was a character in a badly-written story.
April 16, 2011
More on life unworthy of life
Anent our little item on state marriage bureaus (or for that matter their private enterprise Scientologist or Planned Parenthood versions), the following quote swam across our visual field.
[T]he problem with eugenics is eugenics itself. It’s not just that the eugenics practiced by the Nazis was coercive. The idea predated the Nazis. The book Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life) was not written by the Nazis. It was written by German progressives in the Weimar period, Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, who were, respectively (as I recall), a jurist and a medical doctor. And they weren’t thugs like the Nazis; they were well-educated, well-intentioned, polite people—the kind of people that you’d be pleased to have dinner with.
-- Robert George, in an interview with Arthur Caplan conducted by Sherif Girgis
Caplan disagreed and replied that only coercive eugenics was wrong, and so we get a sense why it continues in polite circles even today.
Quantitative Thinking
The Wall Street Journal weblog reports that:
CNN.com has a "gallery" of the "meanest budget cuts" in the legislation Congress approved this week. One is the Administration on Aging:
This agency, which helps senior citizens navigate the maze of federal bureaucracy and maintain independent lives, saw its budget of over $2 billion cut by $16 million.Mathematically, this is a budget cut of 16/2000 = 0.008 = 0.8%, just south of a whole percentage point. This is well and truly "mean"
mean . adj. lacking distinction or eminence, humble; of poor shabby inferior quality or status, worthy of little regardHowever, like the company that diligently reduced errors in handling customer complaints, CNN and others seem to have missed the point. Just as improving the customer complaint process is secondary to eliminating customer complaints, so to is helping elders "navigate the maze of federal bureaucracy" secondary to eliminating the maze of federal bureaucracy. IOW, here is a federal program whose task is to deal with the frustrations and inefficiencies of other federal programs. First give us a wad of money to set up unconscionably complicated rules; then give us a bunch more money to guide people through those rules. It is the gift that keeps on giving. I look forward to the program that will help people with the intricacies of dealing with the Administration on Aging.
CNN reporters may be too incurious to have noticed this, inasmuch as much "news" reporting is actually the reprinting of press releases from interest groups.
It is one thing to help those in need. We used to do that one-on-one before we lost our courage. But most of this money seems to go to "approved" contractors and mid-level bureaucrats before a pittance trickles back to those in genuine need to use in "approved" manners. (As Bill Clinton once said during a speech in Buffalo NY regarding the then dot-com budget surplus: "We could give it back to you; but you might not spend it the right way.")
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