Galileo's ship

I've seen debates about whether Galileo actually conducted certain experiments or not.  On page 297 of The Tuscan Artist, Greco says that the ship experiment, in which an object is tossed straight upward on a steadily moving ship, only to fall at the feet of the person who tossed it, was performed in 1624. I hope it's true.  He cites some works be L. Conti (1990), which were written in Italian.

A few more observations on Galileo

I'm about 40% of the way through this biography. A few things I hadn't realized before:
1) Galileo wasn't actually working for Cosimo Medici when he discovered the moons of Jupiter and dedicated his article to them. He just wanted to work for them, because they could give him a job as Court Mathematician that would be 100% research, zero teaching. Some things never change.

2) I knew that Galileo did not invent the telescope, and that he based his work on that of Lippershey in the Netherlands. What I didn't realize is just how many people besides Galileo and Lippershey were making telescopes, and even pointing them at the moon.

3) Galileo made telescope eyepieces for the Republic of Venice (he was a professor in Padua) and signed an agreement not to disclose his secrets to anyone else.  Then he turned around and gave some eyepieces to the Medicis.  He really wanted to work for them

4) This makes perfect sense now that I've read it, but making telescope objective lenses was not the hard part, because those lenses have long focal lengths and hence small curvatures (large radii of curvature). The eyepieces were the tricky part because of the short radii of curvature.

5) The Republic of Venice was independent of Vatican authority and willing to protect his academic freedom. The Medicis?  Not so much. Had he realized the implications of this fact, I'm sure that he would have stayed in Padua.

Next book: Biography of Galileo

I'm reading Galileo Galilei, the Tuscan Artist by Pietro Greco. Two quick thoughts:
1) I learned that before Galileo dropped out of med school he invented a simple proto-watch to improve pulse measurements.

2) I didn't realize how much of the 16th century medical curriculum was based on Arab authors. The "Western" canon was more diverse than I realized.

The conservatism of progressives

Related to yesterday's post, a recent media spectacle shows just how conservative the modern progressives are. Last week in Toronto, a woman was being interviewed on TV about her nonchalant attitude toward public wearing of masks [note: I do NOT endorse her views about masks! I repeat: I do NOT endorse her views about masks!] when a man suddenly came up and kissed her on camera.  The woman was apparently quite happy with what happened. Nonetheless, the television station faced substantial criticism for airing this incident, and subsequently issued an apology. Some of the reporting on the matter has even opened with a "trigger warning."

Now, let me start by saying that I do NOT encourage men to go up and spontaneously kiss women that they barely know.  I repeat: Do NOT kiss women that you barely know!

Oh, and just in case I wasn't clear, I should add that men should NOT go up and kiss women that they barely know!

That said, as inadvisable as his conduct was, I have to note that in subsequent interviews it turned out that they'd spent some time interacting earlier that day.  We don't know exactly what transpired in their interactions, but apparently there was some romantic chemistry there, and when he acted on that romantic chemistry it was reciprocated. He wasn't doing this blindly, he was following up on interactions, making judgments based on how she had responded to him thus far. In most cases his actions wouldn't be well-received, but the competent adult woman that he kissed responded positively to a kiss from a man that she'd been interacting with and was clearly interested in. I can't bring myself to condemn a kiss between two people who had already interacted with each other and developed some romantic chemistry. That has to mean something, that a real, live, and apparently* competent woman responded enthusiastically to a kiss from a guy that she'd been interacting with.

Nonetheless, because so much of the context was off-camera, it looks like something else, a kiss out of the blue with no interaction that would suggest it's welcome.  I get why that would be off-putting to people, and I get why they wouldn't want young people (especially young men) to see kisses like that without crucial context.  I get that it could send the wrong message.

I guess what I would say is that expressing disapproval of public sexual displays that lack crucial relationship context is a fundamentally conservative stance.  And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with being conservative. There are many situations in life where I think a conservative approach is good, just as there are situations in which I think a liberal or progressive approach is good. Frankly, I think it's good to be conservative when it comes to telling young men to get consent (if not verbal consent then very strong non-verbal cues) before kissing. But let us not fool ourselves: Lamenting a media portrayal of a kiss that "sends the wrong message" is a conservative stance.

I harp on this because we need to get past the idea that nominal progressives are the heirs of 1968. They aren't.  Maybe that's a good thing. I mean, I wasn't around (or even conceived) in 1968, I have no stake in defending that year. But we need to get past the idea that the people we call progressives are heirs of an older counterculture. They aren't. Maybe they are wise to reject that counterculture. Or maybe not. But, wise or foolish, there is nothing counter-cultural about a cultural faction that can get a TV station to apologize for erring a spontaneous kiss without the prelude of a romantic relationship.

Yes, at this point somebody will say that the issue is consent, and I will say that consent also requires context, and emotional preludes are the appropriate context for seeking consent. Suppose that a man briefly interacted with a woman, and that there was no emotional or romantic chemistry in their interactions.  Suppose that he then formally, explicitly asked for consent to kiss. Even if he respected her inevitable "no", would anybody say "Yeah, this was an OK interaction"?  I think not.  Everybody would recognize that it is creepy and inappropriate to seek a kiss without strong signals of romantic interest. "Yes" may be the only thing that means "yes", but "yes" should not be sought out of the blue.

So, let us not kid ourselves: If we had seen the romantic prelude to this kiss, it's likely that many people would be less bothered by it, because they'd see an interaction with context that would make it seem plausibly consensual beforehand, not just afterward.

The woman and man in that video are the real bohemians. Maybe it's fine to be a bohemian. Or maybe they are playing with fire and unwittingly encouraging others to do likewise. Think of them as you will, but know that they are the bohemians, however good or bad you deem them to be. If you approve, well, maybe you're a bohemian. Or maybe you at least wish you were one. But if you disapprove, you are not a bohemian, no matter how outlandish the hairstyle that you wear while drafting codes of conduct.

Finally, since I didn't say it enough, men should NOT go up and kiss women that they barely know!

*I mean, I'm not a psychologist, I haven't conducted an interview and neurological exam to verify that she is of sound mind, but I'm going to make an assumption.

I am NOT a company man! I am an empowered creative with a non-conformist outlook that is valued in our diverse workspace!

This essay in American Affairs Journal is full of insights into how educated professionals conduct themselves as corporate bureaucrats while portraying themselves as non-conformists. For instance:

A key benefit of any prestige university is the social network. In order to take full advantage of this, students must participate in party culture without losing control of their appetites. Fiction often con­fronts open secrets, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt follows a group of eccentric college students who destroy their lives after taking their professors’ Dionysian stories too seriously. This might point to obvious truths about moderation: self-control accompanies success. Yet vices and virtues are not doled out equally, and when leadership training is done in a hyper-permissive atmosphere, we narrow the type of character who emerges.

When I think back to the rituals of certain honor societies in my senior year of college, I think about various rituals that involved long, sleepless nights, hard work and hard celebration, and the bonds that were forged.  And I get it. It's a balancing act of work and play reminiscent of Daniel Bell's observations in Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Not everyone can pull it off, but it's a badge of honor for those who do.

Also, regarding why so many in the professional classes eat up the dumbest pop psychology like it's pita chips and humus from Trader Joe's:

Forty years ago, Christopher Lasch wrote that “modern industry condemns people to jobs that insult their intelligence,” and today employers rub this insult in workers’ faces with a hideously infantilizing work culture that turns the office into a permanent kindergarten classroom. Blue-chip companies reward their employees with balloons, stuffed animals, and gold stars, and an exposé detailing the stringent communication rules of the luxury brand Away Luggage revealed how many start-ups are just “live, laugh, love” sweatshops. This humiliating culture dominates America’s companies because few engage in truly productive or necessary work. Professional genre fiction, such as corporate feminism, is thus often told as a way to cope with the underwhelming reality of working a job that doesn’t con­tribute anything to the world.

There is another way to tell the story of the young career woman, however. Her commute includes inspiring podcasts about Ugandan entrepreneurs, but also a subway stranger breathing an egg sandwich into her face. Her job title is “Senior Analyst—Global Trends,” but her job is just copying and pasting between spreadsheets for ten hours. Despite all the “doing well by doing good” seminars, the closest thing she knows to a community is spin class, where a hundred similar women, and one intense man in sports goggles, listen to a spaz scream Hallmark card affirmations.

Regarding genuine non-conformity:

Trump’s antics are indicative of his different route to power. Forget everything else about him: how would you act if you never had a job outside a company with your name on the building? The world of the professional managerial class doesn’t contain many characters, and so they associate eccentricity with bohemianism or ineptitude. But it’s also reliably found somewhere else.

Indeed, the more ostensibly bohemian a professional pretends to be, the more adamant they are about the Code of Conduct. I can recall sitting in a seminar where a speaker with a distinctly "alternative" appearance was introduced, and the host made sure to mention that this speaker had been quite active in developing codes of conduct for professional organizations. I'm old enough to remember when this person would have been denouncing the Code of Conduct, not writing it. I have never been a hippie, punk, or bohemian, and the only time my skin gets pieced by metal is during medical procedures. Still, I miss the days when deviating substantially from some "normie" expectation meant a person was probably harder to offend, not easier to offend.

Now, to be sure, I think conservatives have lately drifted too far away from codes of conduct, as evidenced both by the Tweeter-in-Chief and also some chance encounters with conservatives. At the same time, I think there has to be a middle ground where we keep our hands to ourselves and avoid the dirty talk while at work, but also don't elevate the perpetually-offended to the highest moral pedestals.

I miss the days when it was the right-wingers who wanted the kids to turn down their music and stop watching those blasphemous movies. The other day I was watching Monty Python's Life of Brian, and partway through I realized that this movie would be roundly condemned for blasphemy today, but the condemnations would come from the left.  The right has (mostly) learned how to deal with jokes about religion.  Or, at least, they know they can't bankrupt a theater chain. But the left would go ballistic over the punching down, never mind that Monty Python also punched up, sideways, diagonally, and into the fifth dimension. And never mind that Eric Idle's Loretta character actually had her name and pronoun preferences respected, snide remarks from Reg not withstanding.

This is NOT a test! I repeat: This is NOT a test!

The University of California, possibly in collaboration with the California State University, as well as anyone else who would like some roasted unicorn with a side order of rainbows and fairies, is going to devise its own admissions tests.  These tests will be totally better than the SAT/ACT, will do a better job of predicting college performance, and will NOT perpetuate inequities, because they will only test what REALLY matters.  So all groups will score equally well and all of our problems will be solved.

These tests will be made from scratch and available by 2025 (really, 2024 if they want to admit freshmen freshpersons people of freshness with it in the fall of 2025). Whereas so many other educational measures reflect disparities in American society, these tests will not show disparities, and so they will be much fairer than the SAT/ACT, and will get buy-in from all ethnic groups.  (Except for Asian Americans, who are doing great on the SAT/ACT and will lose spots from this.  But I'm told that Asians aren't diverse, so I guess that's OK.)

Look, if it is true that a test of what REALLY matters for academic performance is blind to all of the disparities and inequities in our k-12 system (not to mention the wider societal context in which k-12 students are reared and prepared) then those equities don't actually matter.  Years of under-preparation?  Irrelevant! None of it mattered.  The preparation that other kids got wasn't an advantage, and the preparation that some were denied was not a disadvantage.  Everything is the same for all people in all context so who cares about anything? Inequality of opportunity is just a lie. (And, well, yes, it springs from falsehoods, but falsehoods can do real harm.) If we accept these premises, then everyone is off the hook for the first 18 years of life, and all responsibility now rests on the shoulders of college professors.

Sadly, under-preparation is real.  Some of it can be remedied, because people are (to some extent) adaptable.  Some of it can't be, because what happens early in life is (to some extent) of lasting consequence.  But pretending that it's irrelevant, and everyone can just be admitted to the same programs that start from the same place and proceed at the same pace, that's insanity.

Let us not talk falsely now.  Everybody knows what this is about. Everybody knows what they want.  So let's do it.  Let's replace the admissions tests with neural nets that infer race.  It's what they want.  It's illegal under Prop. 209, but it's nonetheless ethically defensible (at least from certain premises), so do it, and let the righteous battle be joined.  Fight for principles and premises that you believe in, rather than demanding that we all tell lies about preparation and tests. My 100% sincere opinion about affirmative action is that it is far more honest than anything else we do in higher ed, and I hate lying more than anything else. So let's do it.

The inevitable consequence of egalitarianism

A syphilitic Roman Emperor recently mused on whether doctors should inject disinfectants into people in order to cure the COVID-19 virus, and now companies that make cleaning products are issuing statements warning people not to do that.

It's easy to mock him, but what on earth did my colleagues think would happen if we spent decades proclaiming that everyone is equally smart and every perspective is equally valid? Did they think that Marcus Aurelius would rise from his grave and usher in a new era of philosopher-kings?  Did they think that after we knocked the sages from their stages the demos would find enlightenment and start proclaiming sublime truths? Did they think that the products of these school systems would engage in skeptical, careful examination of hypotheses and demand sound statistical evidence?

What happened is that the American people selected a game show host who's failed at every endeavor in his life (except reality TV) to be their king, and a critical mass of the American people would push their Senators to acquit him when he inevitably conflated public and personal interests. That's what happened.  And now this idiot stands over doctors and makes them genuflect while he prattles on.

And every kool-aid-drinking liberal can say that this isn't what they intended, but isn't it?  Didn't they want to stop elevating the smart and accomplished?  Didn't they want every idiot out there to feel comfortable expressing their views?  Didn't they want to flatten society and diminish the importance of expertise? Didn't they want the smart kids to twiddle their thumbs while the teacher kept pace with the slowest?

You can't make it a moral imperative to hand a college degree to everything that floats to the surface of the k-12 toilet bowl and then scratch your head and wonder how an idiot is standing up there talking over America's most accomplished infectious disease specialists. This was inevitable.