The Charm of Circulated Silver

It never costs too much over spot.  I like to think about the things they bought in their day.

The Canadian 50 cent (not half dollar)
is medallic (not coin) orientation..

E Pluribus Unum: "One out of very very many"
About 14.8 million were struck.
No telling how many remain.

Two shaves and two haircuts.
Barber dimes, quarters, and halves
saw a lot of commerce,
so they weigh less per count
than later types.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Art of Finance

Industrial Medals: A Currency of Fame

Art & Copy

A Man's Home is His Market

A Culture of Reality, Reason, and Freedom

Since Karl Marx, government was always taken as a consequence of an oppressive economy.  The arguments of the Age of Reason – Locke derived from Aristotle – that government evolved in a “state of nature” to protect rights was ignored.  However, a recent JSTOR search on “anarcho-capitalism” returned 31 useful citations.  Anarcho-capitalism challenged social conservatives to find individualist, market-based justifications for government – not just in the past but for the present future as the global economy has corporations many times larger than most of the world’s 180+ nation-states.

The “state of nature” hangs over us as a constant threat. Even before nuclear weapons, H. G. Wells’ Things to Come showed a world reduced by war to a primitive struggle for survival.  To what extent is government a protection against barbarism or the entry gate to it? 

Minarchists claim that a constitutionally-limited government is the best protection for our rights, and therefore our best option for a peaceful world.  Free market anarchists disagree with that.  Minarchists reply that eventually, the largest private defense agency inevitably will become the new government.  Without a historical record, the theoretical arguments could not be resolved.

In fact, empirical evidence abounds.  The essential problem – as Ayn Rand cogently asserted – is that academic philosophers are mired in Kantian epistemology: they distrust their senses and insist on “consistent” arguments which are not even that because they are detached from reality.  Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a perfect example. 

Nozick tried to show that in a “state of nature” the largest private defense agency will become first an ultra-minimal government and then a minimal (rights-protecting) government.  Ultimately, he failed because he did not explain the evidence.  In his time, Pinkerton, Burns, and a hundred other private guard companies in America did not fire on each other. However, in most of the world warring groups did and still do vie to be the monopoly provider of force in a given geography – and the outcome was and is not a general protection unalienable natural rights.  And in America, then as now, gang warfare existed with no sign of extinction by the legal monopoly of physical force in retaliation.

The deeper problem avoided by both Nozick and his foil, Murray N. Rothbard, is that utopians attempt to prescribe for everyone else how we should, could, or would live in a perfect world, which these freedom-loving social planners devise for the rest of us.

Individualism is not just an abstract political notion.  People vary; and many of them are comfortable within a collective.  Of course, many of us are happier hearing that different drummer. 

If you decided that it would be more efficient for your employer to have the shipping dock on the other side of the building, what would you do?  You could convince the top management with a cost-benefit presentation and they could just order it done. You could bribe everyone to do it your way, offering tangible selfish rewards.  You could take their children hostage.  More likely, the managers would form a committee of stakeholders because people tend to go along with decisions that they helped to make.  The others would adapt, grouse and complain, or leave.

The structure of a society does matter.  An open society is more prosperous than a controlled society.  But an open society includes people who are controlled and controlling.  (Sometimes, they claim to be individualists.)  The fundamental determinants of a culture are complex and deeply rooted.  An old story from a previous generation of university fellows tells of the graduate school dining room where three sociologists sat down with a couple of biologists.  After introductions and amiable chatter, the biologists excused themselves. “We have to start some cultures,” one said.  The sociologists were surprised, and laughed at the pun.  Then they considered: How do you start a culture?

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Sociology of Freedom

The Science of Liberty

Freedom in an Unfree World

Open Secrets

Longhorn Fire and Safety

We needed a new fire extinguisher, so I searched for "Austin fire extinguishers."  Reading the web pages showed that Longhorn Fire and Safety was probably the best bet.  They promised not to be undersold or out-serviced.  

On the way there, I stopped at Home Depot and took pictures of their array.  Longhorn met the Home Depot price on a Kidde and recharged our old First Alert.  

http://www.longhornfireandsafety.com/

Matt was fun to deal with. He is a honest horse trader.  The First Alert was the landlord's equipment. Like the others with which we have been provided by different owners and agents in different states over the years, it was charged when they gave it to us, but not tagged and sealed.  Now it is. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Volunteering in an Emergency: What to Expect
Around Austin
Locksporting
Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security
Employee Theft

Alongside Night to run in Austin; Author to Appear

J. Neil Schulman will be in Austin for the screening of his film, Alongside Night on June 18.  We will meet him for dinner at the Dog & Duck (17th & Guadalupe) the next evening, Thursday, June 19, from 5:00 PM to 7:00.  After dinner we will go to Brave New Books (1904 Guadalupe, just north of MLK) for autographs.

 With a cameo by Ron Paul, Alongside Night is the story of the final economic collapse of the United States. We see it through the eyes of 16-year-old Elliot Vreeland.  Elliott searches for his father, a Nobel laureate economist who was targeted for arrest because he consulted with the Europeans to create a gold-based currency that effectively destroyed all confidence in the U.S. dollar.  Inflation is rampant.  The federal government has issued emergency scrip; and vending machine tokens circulate as a convenience.  As shortages and rationing spread, thousands of activists and protestors are rounded up.  Hundreds are held in a secret prison called “Utopia” – Nowhere.

Alongside Night

Wednesday, June 18 7:30PM - 9:25PM

in Austin, TX at

AMC-14 Barton Creek Square Mall

Tickets $11.00 at

http://www.tugg.com/events/9089

Starring Kevin Sorbo (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys), Mara Marini (Recreation), Susan Smythe (Lady Magdalene), Jake Busey (Contact and Starship Troopers), Star Trek: Voyager's Tim Russ and Garrett Wang as well as up-and-coming actors Christian Kramme, Reid Cox, Kyle Leatherberry, Rebekah Kennedy, Charlie Morgan Patton, and Eric Colton. Cameo appearances by Dr. Ron Paul, David D. Friedman, and Adam Kokesh.

Kevin Sorbo as Dr. Martin Vreeland,
Nobel Laureate economist

Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQsVgxMTnc

Fan Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6kBbGHq6Bk

Internet Movie Database

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667061/

Longer Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTZ8vn45Cds

Find us on Facebook: 
Alongside Night in Austin here

Author's websites:

http://www.alongsidenight.net/

http://www.alongsidenightmovie.com/

Graphic novel from Pulpless.com still available via Amazon.

Kindle edition of graphic novel available via Amazon

Jake Busey plays the President of the United States

The Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alongside_Night

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Alongside Night Released
Murray Rothbard: Fraud or Faker?

Numismatics Informs Economics

Another Example of Unlimited Constitutional Government

Republican Rebels

Liberty's Kids

I was happy to have found this in a remainder bin in a supermarket.  Originally produced in 2002, Liberty’s Kids: Established 1776 features great acting in support of strong historical writing.  Nominally intended for 6 to 12 year-olds, the stories include people (Phillis Wheatley) and events (Dunsmore’s Proclamation) that I had to look up.  After watching this, I sent them on to my sister’s kids. 

The viewpoint characters are two young teenagers: James Hiller and Sarah Phillips.  He is American and an apprentice to Benjamin Franklin.  She is English and staying with Franklin who is a friend of her family.  Also, she is seeking her father, an army officer stationed at Fort Pitt on the Ohio frontier. The third youngster is a French boy, Henri Lefevre, who was indentured to pay off his parents' passage when they died en route.  Franklin’s adult worker is Moses, a former slave who worked at skilled trades and market jobs to buy his freedom.   His brother, Cato, is still a slave. Cato joins the British Army to earn his freedom, and eventually leaves for Canada with the Tories.  This is all very complicated.

We also meet Benedict Arnold, the hero of Fort Ticonderoga (voice by Dustin Hoffman).  Arnold Schwartzenegger speaks for Baron von Steuben. Maria Shriver is Benedict Arnold’s wife, Peggy Shippen. Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal, Michael Douglas, Michael York, Aaron Carter, Liam Neeson, Sylvester Stallone, Norman Schwarzkopf, Russell Means, and Warren Buffett also give voice to the characters.  Heading the line-up is Walter Cronkite, as Benjamin Franklin, in his last working role. 

Liberty is for everyone and the writers take a little of it with the facts, though not egregiously.  It is true that John Adams insulted John Dickinson. It is not true that Benjamin Franklin was standing right there when Adams’s attempt at apology was rebuffed. 

The worst problems are within the guide for teachers and parents provided on the website, http://libertyskids.com/.  There it is claimed that we only have the freedoms that the government gives us.  That contradicts the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it… “

The Liberty’s Kids website does provide an interesting array of games and activities.

The series garnered several media awards.  Walter Cronkite was recognized with two Daytime Emmys for acting.  The Television Critics gave the entire series its award for 2003.  The Humanitas Prize (Wikipedia here; and homepage here) recognized the writers for two episodes: Marc Scott Zicree and Elaine Zicree for “Common Sense”; and Doug McIntyre for “Liberty or Death.”

The creators, Michael Maliani and Kevin O’Donnell brought their experience from Sailor Moon, Inspector Gadget, Strawberry Shortcake and other popular series.  Their ideas were then developed for production by Andy Heyward who grew up in the TV business and bought the production company DIC Entertainment from Radio-Television Luxembourg in 1986.  In addition to the many writers who worked on individual episodes, most of the series was the work of Jim Staahl. His credits begin with Sid Caesar and Steve Allen, continue through Mork & Mindy, Charles in Charge, and Young Hercules, and include Second City Theater and SCTV.  Jim Staahl was a writer for the Emmy Award series “Teacher’s Pet” from Disney.

The forty chapters run 24 minutes each.  The show has aired on PBS, CW, and MyNetwork TV. It still runs on independent stations that want to meet FCC requirements for educational programming.  CBS placed it under their labels “Slumber Party” (2006) and “Cookie Jar”  (2008).  Also in 2008, it ran on The History Channel.  In 2012, the series went digital on qubo.  

The entire set of DVDs can be found for sale new and used on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other sites online.  Or watch the bargain bins at the supermarket.

Also on Necessary Facts

All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights 

Contradictions in the Constitution 

Unlimited Constitutional Government 

The Market for Voting 

Republicans for Voldemort

The bumpersticker is amusing, certainly. It does beg investigation into the epistemology of the message.  I accept that on the surface it is meant to imply that Republicans are for Voldemort, i.e., that Republicans inherently and implicitly support the dark lord.  However, in point of fact, such a claim would be unnecessary, as for instance, "Republicans for Bush" or "Republicans for Palin."  Logic demands that we accept Voldemort as a Democrat and allow that some Republicans favor his reign. I first met this entendre in 1968, in Charleston, South Carolina.  Enrolled at the College of Charleston, and a member of College Democrats, I met adults who told me that they were not racists; and eschewing the Democratic party, they had previously formed "Democrats for Eisenhower."  Thus, "Republicans for Voldemort" must mean that the prince of evil is a Democrat.  I can accept that. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS:
Republican Rebels
Austin Tech Republicans
Ayn Rand versus Conservatives
Etruscans and Americans

High Brew Cold Brew Coffee

Austin is a great town for food.  One of the benefits of being members of the Wheatsville Co-op is meeting the local vendors who bring new products.  High Brew Coffee opened this year.  Their website is still very plain. Their canned coffees are very exciting.  Three flavors - Mexican Vanilla, Double Espresso, and Mocha Chocolate - are sweetened with condensed milk, sugar, and stevia.



Also on Necessary Facts
Awesome Austin Foods
Central Texas Bee Rescue
Around Austin (2014)
Jaime's Salsa of Austin

Watson’s Double Helix: Doing Science and Writing About It

The Double Helix (1968) is James D. Watson’s very personal account of how he and Francis Crick worked out the structure of DNA through 1951 and 1952.  The reading is an easy 141 pages.  But depth is here, also.  The story is about scientists, their social spheres, and their conflicts, and (ultimately) their collaborations.  This is also a chronological tour through some of the mind of James D. Watson.  Proof demands evidence explained by consistent reasoning. Getting there is intuitive, insightful, and contrary.

Watson does not explain the technical terms.  Mostly, it does not matter if you do not know the formulas for adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine.  (I do not. The book has pictures.) However, neither does he do more than drop the terms “keto” and “enol.”  (You can look them up. I have not.)  The narrative moves forward nonetheless. 

More than the frustrating work of discovery, this story reveals much about how the culture of academic science perceived itself in the middle of the 20^th century.  Watson’s telling is personally unkind to Sir Lawrence Bragg.  Bragg ordered his doctoral candidate, Crick, to abandon the pursuit for DNA. Says Watson: “ … we refrained from publicly questioning Bragg’s decision. An open outcry would reveal that our professor was completely in the dark about what the initials DNA stood for. There was no reason to believe that he gave it one hundredth the importance of the structure of metals, for which he took great delight in making soap-bubble models. Nothing then gave Sir Lawrence more pleasure than showing his ingenious motion-picture film of how soap bubbles bump each other.” (page 69)  Yet, Bragg wrote the Foreword. That speaks to the culture of science.

Their conflict with Rosalind Franklin is now a legend.  In closing the history, Watson allows that her barbed shell was a necessary defense in a society that held her sex against her.  Yet, Watson also admits that she stood on good science.  She refused to accept the helix until her own x-ray crystallography validated it, even though a single snapshot from that library inspired Crick and Watson to seek the spiral structure.  When the cards were on the table, Franklin agreed, plainly, flatly, honestly.  Ironically perhaps, at that moment, the structure of DNA had nothing to do with sex.

“Much of the talk about the three-dimensional structure of proteins and nucleic acids was hot air. … It made no sense to learn complicated mathematical methods in order to follow baloney.” (page 27).

Just as Sir Lawrence Bragg denied the value in Francis Crick’s independent path, Watson was fired by the supporters of his post-doctoral work.  His position at Cambridge (where he was not supposed to be in the first place) was cancelled and he was offered nine months (not a year) in the States.  Often attributed to Buddha, the fact that a prophet is not appreciated in his homeland is correctly cited to Jesus.  To the betterment of all, the culture of science is different than that of religion.  The worst they can do to you is to withhold your stipend.  In fact, Watson’s colleagues and friends at King’s College in London, Max Perutz and John Kendrew, assured him that they could find some money if he chose to remain in England.  That help turned out not to be necessary, though Watson continued his work at Cambridge.

He fit in well, there.  The sense of fair play that defined science then was important to him.  Crick and Watson worried about invading the research spaces of others who also sought the structure of DNA.  Topmost of them was Linus Pauling, already holding a Nobel Prize, and clearly capable of more achievements at that level.  When a published paper showed that Pauling was not just wrong, but had blundered, Crick and Watson knew that they had about six weeks to finish their work because Pauling could not be bested twice. 

(Jeff Goldblum played John Watson in a television production of the story, “The Race for the Double Helix” Horizon season 23 episode 16, September 14, 1987.) 

Also on Necessary Facts 

Bob Swanson and Genentech

Biohackers

Epigenetics and Evolution

The Map that Changed the World

De Magnete by William Gilbert

Apparently, no one had cut a magnet in half before.  Claims were made for the existence of gold magnets. Lodestone was a remedy for contrary medical symptoms.  Even the sailors who relied on lodestones wrongly called the poles of a magnet north and south for pointing north and south.  In 1600, while Galileo worked on mechanics in Padua, William Gilbert (or Gilberd) investigated magnetism in London. 

Galileo’s crime was questioning Aristotle.  Gilbert denounced Aristotle as a second-hander, a mere copyist for wives’ tales.  Galileo wrote in vernacular Italian. Gilbert wrote in Latin. Gilbert created new words for the new concepts he discovered: verticity for the tendency of an iron needle to point to a magnetic pole; versorium for an electroscope, i.e., a needle on a pivot to detect fields; coition for attraction because both bodies are mutually pulled to each other.  That last was a serious problem for the Victorian reader.  This Dover edition is a reprint of P. Fleury Mottelay’s 1889 translation. Mottelay nicely rendered this into an archaic kind of English, readable by moderns but spiced with older phrasings that perhaps more correctly delivered Gilbert’s own thinking.  Moreover, this edition is supported by copious footnotes from the author’s own research into the history of magnetics. 

  

You can find the original in Latin at the Lancaster University faculty projects archives here. Mottelay knows his science; and in translating, he does employ some modern terms, chief among them, "field."  In truth, Gilbert did not hypothesize fields. That thinking came later.

William Gilbert knew that the Earth is a magnet.  Earth’s magnetic field gives polarity to iron.  Heat a bar or needle of iron until it loses all attraction, then, place the bar aligned north and south and let it cool. It will acquire polarity. 

You can prove this for yourself, Gilbert enjoins you, by running the needle through a cork and floating it in a tub.  That is a simple apparatus; and he employed it over and over in different ways to tease out the facts about magnetism.

The beauty of this work is the intense and patient study behind it.  Gilbert was not publishing conjectures.  He was announcing empirical facts.  He called for experiments and observations in rejection of the compiling of authoritative citations from ancients.  In that, William Gilbert helped to nurture the Renaissance into the Age of Reason.   

He made some mistakes.  While clearly understanding that electricity is related to magnetism, he did not find evidence of electro-static repulsion.  He also claimed that magnetic variation is constant, though a generation later, it was measured as variable.  It is more important that he knew about variation, that the magnet aligns not quite true north-south, depending on the location on Earth.

Gilbert constructed models of the magnetic Earth, spheres of iron charged with polarity. He knew that bars and needles exhibit the phenomena better, but he had another point to make; and he did so repeatedly.  One of his spheres has a chunk missing. Another has a large protrusion. Thus, Gilbert demonstrated magnetic variation over the oceans and near mountains.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Galileo's Two Sciences

Science in the Middle Ages

The Success of the WEIRD People

Circumference by Nicholas Nicastro

Great Scientific Experiments

Volunteering in an Emergency: What to Expect

When disaster befalls your community (or one near you; or one you care about), helping others in distress may seem intuitively obvious to you.  However, like much else in modern society, government agencies and institutional organizations regulate, control, and manage spontaneous volunteering.  Like traffic lanes and traffic lights, or standard time zones, the processes usually work out well for everyone when participants keep to the program.  

About half of the Texas Conservation Corps members
who attended training in
"Managing Spontaneous Volunteers".
They get paid $12,000 per year to build trails
and otherwise manage public lands
and respond to disasters such as
Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey.
After a year, they get $5500 toward college.

Generally, any community has some kind of emergency response coordinator.  Large towns have several agencies that assume known roles, such as a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). The Red Cross and Salvation Army are the two most visible private entities. They act because they have legally-recognized authority from a government agency with competent jurisdiction.  Your county sheriff or township police may have signed a “memorandum of understanding” (MOU) granting those powers in case of an emergency.  These are all necessary (and proper) because a disaster will overwhelm and deplete the usual first responders: police, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians.

Terms to know:·  

•  VOAD – Volunteer Organizations Active in a Disaster·
• VRC – Volunteer Resource Center
• Affiliated Volunteers are members of recognized organizations such as the Youth Corps, the Senior Corps, Americorps. They may actually be paid in some way. They have formal training and are credentialed in their special skills, such as interviewing and intervention or machine operations, from chainsaws to Bobcat “Skid-Steers”. Their organizations assume some liability for them.
• Spontaneous Volunteers reflect two meanings. On the deeper level, the volunteer is spontaneous, personally motivated by the news events to come to aid.  Once on the scene, the spontaneous volunteer can be counted on for enthusiasm and energy. They are free of cost to the agency that engages them.  Spontaneous volunteers bring a range of skills.  They provide additional resources that can be marshaled. 

 However, spontaneous volunteers are known to come with a wide range of problems, from lack of training to sociopathic predatory behaviors. 

“In a report published online on March 25 in advance of the print edition of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, Lauren Sauer, M.S., surveyed 24 nongovernment volunteer organizations (NVOs) that had responded to disasters in the past and found that 19 of them — or 79 percent — had spontaneous volunteers show up to help. While a majority of those organizations said they found such volunteers useful, 42 percent reported that volunteers had been injured in the response, and there were two reported deaths among them. Organizations were allowed to respond anonymously as a way to encourage survey participation.”  (Read here.)

If the town next to yours suffers a tornado or a flood and you feel motivated to help out, your experience will go better if you know what to expect and what is expected of you.

•  Report to the VRC, the Volunteer Resource Center.
• Provide full identification with any validated credentials such as Adult First Aid or Commercial Vehicle Operations.
• Be prepared to take care of yourself. Bring 72 hours of food, water, and sleeping gear.  Do not expect that the VRC will be able to bivouac you.
•  Know what is needed. Know what you can do. Ask for a list of tasks and pick the ones that suit your skills.  You might arrive as an electrician and find yourself pumping water from homes – and that might be fine for you, if you expect that possibility.
• Take direction.  The volunteer center has been lawfully empowered by a memorandum of understanding. If you go off on your own, you might find yourself dismissed or (ultimately) arrested and jailed; that is embarrassing all the way around for everyone.

 The best way to help out is to prepare in advance by joining a recognized voluntary relief agency.  Some faith-based organizations prepare a million sandwiches and deliver them to the Red Cross; others distribute ten thousand Visa Debit Cards.  What you do is up to you.  You will be more effective if you understand the Management of Spontaneous Volunteers. 

(This was written from some of the notes taken during an eight-hour training session in "Managing Spontaneous Volunteers" April 11, 2014, sponsored by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the One-Star Foundation.)

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Shifting the Paradigm of Private Security
Security in the 21st Century
Incident Report
Redshirts: Expendable in Fact and Fiction

Galileo's Two Sciences

Dover Books specializes in the reproduction of classic works whose copyrights have expired.  This translation by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Silvio from 1914 was based on a rendition into modern Italian by Antonio Favoro. That work was part of the National Edition of Galileo’s compiled works published in 1913. It was a time of rising nationalism that would bring a worldwide war and fascism. However, Galileo’s work belongs to anyone who seeks the truth.

The Two Sciences here are what we now call “Statics” and “Dynamics” in freshman engineering curricula.  He also discusses problems from modern engineering college textbooks in strength of materials – and he gets a few things wrong, but that does not detract from the overall presentation.

Missing from Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences is any mention of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Nonetheless, many times throughout, Galileo does refer to experiments with falling bodies. With extreme patience, he teased out the truth.  Galileo considered balls rolling down inclined planes and pendula of different arcs with bobs of different weights. His work foreshadowed Rayleigh on aerodynamics, but Galileo had no quantitative answers for his questions about air resistance; he knew nothing about the relationships among viscosity, cross section, and velocity. That would come 250 years later. Yet, he knew the variables…. And he knew much else.

Mean proportion
of velocity of
a falling body

 Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences is one of those books that we all “know” but never read.  With over an hour on public transportation every morning and another plus a quarter or half at night, I had the time to read this.  I recommend it highly to anyone who wants to discover science for themselves, rather than taking someone else’s word for it. 

Again, in this Galileo makes no mention of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.   But he does argue at length about the fact that two bodies of different weight fall with just about the same final velocity. Newton admitted to standing on the shoulders of giants.  Galileo depended on the “mean proportion” that was developed by the Oxford Calculators of the 13^th century.  It is sadly very easy to posit that if Galileo had worked in the Middle Ages instead of the Counter-Reformation and wars of religion, his labors would have been embraced by the Church that opposed him in his own time.

Galileo also offers complex geometric proofs that I had to read past to get through. Even though algebra was over 300 years old by the time he wrote, like Isaac Newton (who was born the year that Galileo died), he proved his points with geometry.  We no longer learn it.  Yes, we have a year in high school; but even Richard Feynman had to admit defeat because he could not retrace Newton’s steps.  We are geometrically illiterate.  Still, it is obvious that Galileo was setting the foundation for his later demonstrations.  Deepest and chief among them are previews of what we call “calculus.”  Galileo showed that the instantaneous is an expression of the infinite.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Science in the Middle Ages

Great Scientific Experiments

More on "Necessary Factual Truths" by Greg Browne

Pi in the Sky Over Austin