I. This is What Happened Yesterday:




II.  This Is What's Happening Now:

(Jim Cramer) ...Remember, we were down a lot.  You cannot have that kind of drop, even if it was exasperated by some sort of computer trading glitch, unless something is really, really wrong in the world, dead wrong in the world.  So what is the problem? I have got a theory,  it goes like this: governments of the world are uniting in hurting their economies...

No government is ever worried about the stock market.  Not in their country, not in our country-- that would be unseemly, beneath their dignity...

Governments worry about three things: paying the bills, keeping people in work, and keeping inflation in check. The issue right now is that these are conflicting goals all over the world.   The areas that generate jobs for other places, especially China and Brazil, they are slamming on the brakes.  The areas that are desperate to pay the bills are doing so at the expense of jobs, that is Europe.   And the US, we don't know what we're doing-- other than worrying about punishing the rich people who work at banks.  That seems to be a major theme that has captivated Washington.

III.  This Is What Happened A While Ago:

Why was Galileo persecuted by the Church for saying what the Church had previously paid Copernicus to say?

Copernicus was afraid to publish On The Revolution of Celestial Orbs not because he thought the Church would stone him, but because he was afraid other academics would laugh at him.  What was threatened was the Aristotelian paradigm.

A hundred years later, the paradigm was much more... flexible.  It could accommodate new data supporting an old theory.

Oddly, Galileo's own data technically showed that the Earth didn't move-- the Sun revolved around it-- but that the rest of the planets revolved around the Sun.  But Galileo was seeing his data through another (Copernican) paradigm, so he... interpreted things differently.

Galileo had an epic scientific debate right under his nose that would have kept everyone occupied for hours.  The Church would never have been involved.  But Galileo wasn't satisfied with science; he wasn't satisfied with showing that Ptolemy was wrong, nor was he worried that he might be showing Copernicus was wrong-- he wanted his data to be evidence that Catholicism was wrong, e.g that Scriptures had to be interpreted figuratively.  

Galileo broke the Cardinal Rule: wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen.


IV.  Repeated, for emphasis:

...Remember, we were down a lot.  You cannot have that kind of drop, even if it was exasperated by some sort of computer trading glitch, unless something is really, really wrong in the world, dead wrong in the world.