Galileo’s famous quote about mathematics from Il Saggiatore, pp. 24–25:
“Parmi oltre à ciò di scorgere nel Sarsi ferma credenza, che nel filosofare sia necessario appoggiarsi all’opinioni di qualche celbre Autore, si che la mente nostra, quando non si maritasse col discorso d’vn’altro, ne dovesse in tutto rimanere sterile, ed infeconda; e sorse stima, che la Filosofia sia un libro, e une fantasia d’un uomo, come l’Iliade, e l’Orlando furioso, libri ne quali la meno importante cosa è, che quello che vi è scritto, sia vero. S. Sarsi la cosa non istà così. La Filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro, che continuamente ci stà aperto innanzi à gli occhi (io dico l’universo) ma non si può intendere se prima non s’impara à intender la lingua, e conoscere i caratteri nei quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi, & altre figure Geometriche, senza i quali mezi è impossibile à intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un’oscuro laberinto.”
01957 English translation by Stillman Drake in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo: “In Sarsi I seem to discern the firm belief that in philosophizing one must support oneself upon the opinion of some celebrated author, as if our minds ought to remain completely sterile and barren unless wedded to the reasoning of some other person. Possibly he thinks that philosophy is a book of fiction by some writer, like the Iliad or Orlando Furioso, productions in which the least important thing is whether what is written there is true. Well, Sarsi, that is not how matters stand. Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.”
#Google #Chrome installs a 4GiB #Gemini Nano model without asking users now. Article appears to be AI slop.
Pancho Barnes was apparently quite the character. #flying #history
#Ezra-Klein did an #interview with #Stewart-Brand, largely about his new book about maintenance. Also, #enshittification.
#history of #flying: general aviation manufacturing in #USA peaked in about 01978 at 18000 planes per year, but thereafter collapsed due to product liability, starting to recover after the #GARA of 01994
#history of #flying and #GARA: “However, towards the end of the 70s, during the period from 1978 to 1988, industry-wide employment fell by a devastating 65 percent. Aircraft manufacturing overall saw a massive decrease in new aircraft shipments, falling 95 percent (...) between 1983 - 86, Beech Aircraft defended itself against 203 lawsuits, each case costing them an average $530,000 to defend. Interestingly, while researching these cases, the NTSB found that none of the accidents could be attributed to manufacturing and design defects.”
And #Cessna had stopped making single-engine aircraft in 01986.
Oral legislative history of #GARA and #flying #history. #toread
#history of #Microsoft and #IBM and their respective management structures, and the TAB key for moving between fields in OS/2.
#nuclear #energy #history, Hyman Rickover’s 01953 memo about how “paper reactors” are simple, small, cheap, light, quickly built, flexible in purpose, and require very little development, while practical reactors are behind schedule, require an immense amount of development on apparently trivial components such as corrosion, expensive, slow to build, large, heavy, and complicated. “The original was published in The Journal of Reactor Science and Technology, Volume 3, No. 3 (which is classified) and reproduced many times, e.g. in Congressional testimony.”
David Chisnall on #Mastodon.
Lindsey Kuper deprecating “local-first software for asshole longtermist reasons” on #Mastodon
Scott Francis on #Mastodon
Lea Verou on #Mastodon
29-second #video below and above a floating #solar-energy farm in #China. #solar #energy
#SpaceX #video about #Starship (#BFR) with almost 25 minutes of high-production-value drama #space