Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 02, 2021

These two are pikers, compared to Bill and Ted.

Time travel stories all end up either really dumb or REALLY twisty. “Both” is not uncommon.

The Church is probably still looking for you. There’s an executioner waiting.

Nobody expects a Papal inquisition.

Blame or Credit – depends on the outcome and perspective.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Except the Catholic Church was pro-science around that time and even funded scientific research. It wasn’t anti-science until years later in response to the anti-science Protestant Church gaining in popularity.

LOL nice lips on the Black kid! The only thing missing is him holding a big ol’ hunk of watermelon! I mean, as long as you’re doing broad stereotypes…

Listening to my favorite Big Band songs, like (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCYGyg1H56s) I like to imagine a teenage Mozart listening with me, and speculate how that would change history.

“E pur si muove.”

Galileo would best keep that secret about the real origin of the telescope lest he wants to be burned at the stake for witchcraft. I mean, talking to two boys from the future is just what a sorcerer would do.

Serendipity is nothing to apologize for.

Gallileo wouldn’t understand. He didn’t speak English.

I suspect maybe ‘heliocentric theory’ and ‘presenting your theories in an offensive manner’ would have been difficult to fit in the speech bubbles. Seeing as the church built an observatory during Galileo’s lifetime, however, its unlikely they were bothered by his telescope.

The Church is excellent evidence that Barnum overestimated humans

Stigler’s Law states that no scientific discovery is actually named for the first person who came up with it. Fittingly, Stephen Stigler himself was not the first person to notice this. Relevance here is that the telescope (using lenses to see really far-away things) was invented by an anonymous person in the Netherlands, probably derived from the work of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek with microscopy (using lenses to see really small things).

Further support for my hypothesis that the character Darrin is a nod to fellow cartoonist Darrin Bell is that one of Candorville’s characters, Clyde, always refers to his buddy, the protagonist Lemont, as “Big L”.

As an aside, one of my favorite bits of cartoon dialog came from that strip:

Lemont: “If you could have people say just one thing about you at your funeral … what would it be?”

Clyde: “Hey! Look! He’s breathing!”

—Darrin Bell, Candorville, 2010 Sep. 28

The church didn’t give him grief over the telescope – even the Jesuit astronomers used them. They objected to his claims that were counter to their interpretations of the Bible.

Galileo Galilei did not invent the telescope but was the first to use it systematically to observe celestial objects and record his discoveries. His book, Sidereus nuncius or The Starry Messenger was first published in 1610 and made him famous.

The first person to apply for a patent for a telescope was Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey (or Lipperhey). In 1608, Lippershey laid claim to a device that could magnify objects three times. His telescope had a concave eyepiece aligned with a convex objective lens.

Have they been excommunicated? Can they expect the Spanish Inquisition?

Or a child molester

It was not the invention of the telescope that got Galileo in trouble. It was his heliocentric view of the Solar System.

Galileo did not invent the telescope. He was the first one (at least, the first one who published) to look at the sky, rather than out at “what are those people doing in the next valley over”.

The Church didn’t get upset at him looking through a telescope; they got upset at him saying “the moon has spots and flaws” (the Heavens are perfect, donchaknow) and “Jupiter appears to have moons” (everything revolves around the Earth).