Open Thread - 02/19 is Copernicus' Birthday

matejko_copernicus_tower_frombork_1872

~~ Copernicus

Yet another heretic, Nicolaus Copernicus, 1473 - 1543 gave us the Heliocentric solar system He wasn't the first to propose heliocentrism, nor is his model that close to correct, relying on circular orbits with epicycles, but our current model largely evolved from his and not those of any of his predecessors. He died very shortly after his work, Dē revolutionibus orbium coelestium was published and was thus not around when his person and his work was maligned and missed out on the banning of his book. Had he lived a while longer he cerainly would've suffered Gailileo's fate or worse, given that Galileo was admonished by the church not to hold or defend "the Copernican doctrine".

On this day in 1954, to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's union with Russia (also known in the Soviet Union as the Pereiaslav Agreement) and boost Ukrainian born Nikita Kruschev's standing at home and abroad, and give Ukraine itself a bit of a boost, the Soviet Politburo transferred administration of the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR

It is the third Monday in February which makes it Presnuts Day. I can recall when we celebrated Washington's Birthday and then, in 1968, decided to lump in Lincoln's birthday and call the holiday Presnuts Day. This honored both men without creating another day off for the plebes. Some allege that the idea was to celebrate all presnuts, but that is not the case, and is simply a feeble attempt to get some consideration for the various presnuts who should most definitely be neither celebrated nor honored. Andy Jackson and James Polk; Herbie Hoober, no matter how admired, greatly beloved and honored by Stanfoo U, come to mind, others do too, too many others, sadly enough, but I won't go there today.

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On this day in history:

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0356 -- Emperor Constantius II decreed the closing of all pagan temples in the Empire. *

1674 -- The Treaty of Westminster ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War. **

1878 -- Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.

1942 -- FDR signed executive order 9066, allowing the forced internment of Japanese Americans

1943 -- The Battle of Kasserine Pass began

1945 -- The US Marines landed on Iwo Jima.

1949 -- Ezra Pound was awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry

1953 -- Georgia approved the US' first literature censorship board

1954 -- The Soviet Politburo transferred administration of the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.,br.

1963 -- Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" was published

1976 -- Gerald Ford rescinded FDR's Executive Order 9066 ***

1985 – William J. Schroeder became the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave the hospital

* Leading to centuries of intellectual, behavioral, and occupational tyranny, the shadow and stink of which still permeates our lives

** It also transferred the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (to be renamed New York) to England.

*** Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon couldn't be bothered.

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Some people who were born on this day:

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

~~ Nicolaus Copernicus

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1473 -- Nicolaus Copernicus, heretical mathematician and astronomer
1526 – Carolus Clusius, botanist
1743 -- Luigi Boccherini, Italian cellist and composer
1859 – Svante Arrhenius, physicist and chemist
1869 – Hovhannes Tumanyan, poet and author
1877 – Gabriele Münter, painter
1896 – André Breton, poet and author, seminal surrealist

1902 – Kay Boyle, novelist, short story writer, activist, and educator
1904 -- Elisabeth Welch, singer and actress
1917 – Carson McCullers, novelist, short story writer, playwright, and essayist
1936 -- Sam Myers, singer and songwrite
1939 – Erin Pizzey, activist and author, founded Refuge
1940 -- Smokey Robinson, singer, songwriter, and producer
1940 -- Bobby Rogers, singer, songwriter, and miracle
1946 – Paul Dean, guitarist
1946 -- Karen Silkwood, technician and activist
1948 -- Mark Andes, singer, songwriter, and bassist
1949 -- Eddie Hardin, singer, songwriter, and pianist
1950 – Juice Leskinen, singer and songwriter
1950 – Andy Powell, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1952 -- Amy Tan, author
1954 – Francis Buchholz, bass player

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Some people who died on this day:

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

~~ André Gide

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1916 -- Ernst Mach, physicist and philosopher
1951 – André Gide, novelist, essayist, and dramatist
1962 – Georgios Papanikolaou, pathologist, invented the Pap smear
1972 -- Lee Morgan, trumpet player and composer
1980 – Bon Scott, singer and songwriter
1998 – Grandpa Jones, singer, songwriter, and banjo player
2003 -- Johnny Paycheck, singer, songwriter and guitarist
2009 – Kelly Groucutt, singer and bass player
2016 – Umberto Eco, novelist, literary critic, and philosopher
2016 -- Harper Lee, author
2017 -- Larry Coryell, jazz guitarist

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Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

Roll your own

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Today's Tunes

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Nicolaus Copernicus

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The Treaty of Westminster

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Luigi Boccherini

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Elisabeth Welch

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Sam Meyers

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Smokey Robinson & Bobby Rogers

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Mark Andes

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Juice Leskinen

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Lee Morgan

Bon Sccott

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Johnny Paycheck

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Kelly Groucutt

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Larry Coryell

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Bonus Sam Meyers

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Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?

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Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

Open thread, Copernicus, phonograph, Constantius II, Luigi Boccherini, Sam Meyers, Smokey Robinson, Bobby Rogers, Larry Coryell

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Cassiodorus's picture

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-21824-avdeevka-liberated

It's like Alex Christoforou said. They want you to believe that there are all these weapons just waiting at the Polish-Ukrainian border, their guardians just waiting for that $61 billion check so we can all save Ukraine... yeah right...

It's really a puzzle. Either they have to pay an awful lot of people to believe the garbage they spout, or the volunteers who believe it are really that stupid. Erving Goffman would be embarrassed.

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'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

enhydra lutris's picture

@Cassiodorus
Dot only Adeyevka, but Donets City, now free from shelling by the Ukies in Adeevka (pick a spelling). Given that "all the world's a stage" peerehaps it isn't Goffman, but Pirandello who should come to mind.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Cassiodorus's picture

@enhydra lutris I loved reading Pirandello when I was an undergraduate. But that was a long time ago. Could you supply us with a particularly appropriate Pirandello scene here?

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4 users have voted.

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

enhydra lutris's picture

@Cassiodorus

when I was 17, in High School. I wasn't thinking of a scene, but just the whole thing where the characters' reality and life and being is fictitious and yet they are immortal archetypes, far more real and substantive than ordinary humans who change from day to day to day. I think one of them may actually say something like that at one point.

be well and have a good one

edited to add an apostrophe to "characters"

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris
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ya' still retain the gist

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enhydra lutris's picture

@QMS

that the characters don their personna, whatever the author writes, like clothes or something, and humans also don their personna, to impress and get along with those they interact with, so, conform and go along to get along, or, to quote Dylan, "all is phony"

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris

next time will keep clothes on

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3 users have voted.

@Cassiodorus really are @Cassiodorus that stupid
just tried to watch a video of
the ocean gate ‘disaster’

they got a discount on the carbon fiber
from boeing ‘cause it was ‘too old’ for
using on 100 ton jets in the air and
those people thought(?) it would be ‘just fine’
for 12,000 ft Depths? the comic/tragedy
writes itself

supposedly ‘trained engineers’
inspiring confidence Today

for those in the cheap seats
with boeing planes falling out
of the sky using their cast offs
seems kinda ‘dicey’

edit oh yeah, only got 4 minutes in
to this point and had to stop watching
I was laughing to much to continue

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7 users have voted.

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

enhydra lutris's picture

@Tall Bald and Ugly

In an airplane in is subject to tensile stress, whereas in a sub it is all about compression, so it's completely different, ya see.

be well and have a good one

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

know @enhydra lutris Why I had to stop
watching due to laughter then

up
4 users have voted.

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Lookout's picture

Not only does the planet revolve around the sun...life itself revolves around the sun too. The sun powers the whole system.

Kepler added the essential understanding of elliptical orbits around the sun. I think it was Newton who said if I have seen far it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants. Such is the nature of science.

Thanks for all the music and the OT! Happy roll your own day...sounds like a good idea.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout

really rules our little world. Sol Invictus or Helios, or, if one prefers, Huitzilopochtli or Kinich Ahau (Kʼinich Ajaw).

Kepler is the giant mental monument to the triumph of data over dogma. He strove long and mightily to fit the masses of data he and Tycho collected into the Copernican model with endless epicycles upon epicycles but the damn numbers kept coming up effing ellipses, so he finally broke down and went with it.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

@enhydra lutris  
I thought it was the earth-centric Ptolemaic model that needed the complications of epicycles to fit the data, whereas the Copernican model eliminated the need for them?

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enhydra lutris's picture

@lotlizard

perfectly circular orbits for all the planets, causing some planetary retrograde motions to require epicycles to explain the. From da wiki:

Copernican heliocentrism is the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. This model positioned the Sun at the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets orbiting around it in circular paths, modified by epicycles, and at uniform speeds. The Copernican model displaced the geocentric model of Ptolemy that had prevailed for centuries, which had placed Earth at the center of the Universe.

and

his heliocentric model retained several of the Ptolemaic elements, causing inaccuracies, such as the planets' circular orbits, epicycles, and uniform speeds,[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_heliocentrism

There's a picture of his model in the wiki and in the painting above (beneath his right elbow). Neither clearly shows the epicycles however, as they were pretty small, but they were necessary to explain the retrograde motion of Mars and other planets.

be well and have a good one

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4 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

consider @Lookout suspicious observers
for a more in-depth look at this.

so accessible even a knuckle-dragger
like me can grok it

daily update background info and
Real OBSERVABLE Science

up
3 users have voted.

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

enhydra lutris's picture

@Tall Bald and Ugly @Tall Bald and Ugly

after all, that is the first half of Sherlock's Equation.

be well and have a good one

edited to fix typo

up
3 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

last few years @enhydra lutris (decades?)
it seems ‘he Scienze’ and
engineering Do exist only
in their minds

eg my reply to cas
and six foot Safe

thanks for the ot

up
3 users have voted.

Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

enhydra lutris's picture

@Tall Bald and Ugly

up
2 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

up
3 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --