Another stepback

Another example of stepping back to the higher-level question.

One of the Things I Learned From Others was this clarifier by Dick Morris in the ’90s. Political messages are NOT aimed at voters. They’re aimed at donors or other politicians.

When we see absurd crap floating around the media and ask Do they really think we’re stupid? we’re asking a meaningless question. We don’t count. We aren’t in the loop. Step back. Politicians and media are talking to Larry Fink or Bezos or other politicians.

Talking to the Patrons is ancient. I found a historical clarifier on this point last year when I read a 1620 book on astronomy. Rosa Ursina is part Tech Talk and part Patron Talk.

The technical Latin is straightforward, like Tech Talk in any language. When you have a basic grasp of the grammar and vocabulary, and the tech subject itself, you can read Tech Talk easily. Here’s how to build an equatorial mount for your telescope, and here’s how to aim it at sunspots or eclipses or stars.

Patron Talk is impossible to read unless you’re part of the target audience. It’s dense and poetic and full of inside jokes and sidelong references and metaphors, which would have been lost on the tech reader in 1620 and now are completely unintelligible.

Modern science publications make EXACTLY the same division. Part of the article is Tech Talk. Here’s how we did our experiments, here’s what we measured, here’s the control group. Part is Patron Talk, sycophantic poetry aimed at the granting agencies or foundations. We did this experiment to prove CLIMATE EMERGENCY, or to help vulnerable people identify as popcorn kernels, or to prove that Neanderthals are still with us today (hint hint hint TRUMP).

Reprinting Rosa Ursina.

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Continued from part 1.

Christoph Scheiner’s magnum opus is Rosa Ursina, published in 1620.

The title, roughly the Bear’s Rose, is an extremely poetic and sycophantic dedication to his patron, Virginio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano.

The bear, of course, is the patron’s name, and Scheiner waxes lyrical about the vast mind and infinite morality and radiant family of the bear. I think the rose is a metaphor for the sun, which is the main topic of the book. I can’t wade through the dense poetic Latin. The dedication to the reader has a different tone, comparing readers to crows who argue endlessly instead of getting shit done.

Most of the book is geometrical discussions of the earth’s orbit and sun angles. It includes diagrams and descriptions of the more complex equatorial scope with alidades and lenses, then a more basic semi-adjustable scope.

The simple scope (helioscopic machine) is meant as instructions for other DIY (fac per tibi) astronomers. I could have followed the instructions easily, though I’m perfectly unskilled at woodwork. A skilled carpenter could slap it together in a minute.

My model, with the relevant names attached:

Pes is the foot, suppedaneum is the underfoot thingie, dorsum is the back, tabella chartifera is the chart-holding table. Note especially the wingnut F! We don’t think of wingnuts in 1620. Webster says the earliest use in English is 1834. Scheiner doesn’t seem to mention it by name. His instructions don’t cover the telioscopia itself; he only advises you to get a bona telioscopia.

My version, shown on a table in the Brahe observatory:

The helioscopia wasn’t meant to be easily adjustable. The fulcrum had points at both ends so it was simply digging into the wood of the dorsum and the table, and had to be resituated for each angle.

Here’s a view through the telioscopia toward the sun. Poser doesn’t do refraction properly, so the image is just white.

Scheiner’s bobum plumba angle meter reminds me of a Maragha instrument that served the same purpose of sunspot observation.

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