You know, I had heard about Clooney. This sounds really wild. More links:

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Woobie!

Despite pain so intense he could barely walk, the 44-year-old actor-director still appeared on the red carpet at the 'Ocean's Twelve' premiere last December, although he was too weak to climb three stairs up to "The Insider"'s own platform.

Or, you know, he just wanted to go home to his pig.

If spinal fluid is leaking through your fucking nose, I guess you would be in pain.

Damn.

Greek style

Emily, your proof looks completely OK to the entirely-not-a-mathematician me, who has no idea what is that Greek style and what other styles exist or anything of that sort.

What are the Hebrew initials and what are the words they stand for?

M.Sh.L. (we have the one letter that stands for the "sh" sound). It's pronounced usually "mashal", which is also a word in Hebrew, meaning a proverb, a fable, or an allegory. They are the initials of "ma shehaya lehokhiakh". "ma" = what, "shehaya" - that was and "lehokhiakh" - to be proven.

which I already knew and used to use as a sort of meditation to get to sleep oh god am I geeky enough yet?

My brother used to calculate all sorts of roots and powers in order to pass the time when he had to stang guard on his army service.

Poor Clooney! I hereby volunteer to comfort and cosset him, because I'm a giver like that.

who has no idea what is that Greek style and what other styles exist or anything of that sort.

Oh, it's just that the Greeks didn't have the notation to do the proof this way, so their proof has to do with comparing two lines of different length, subtracting one from the other and the remainder of that one from the first one, and the remainder of that from the remainder above, and so on in order to prove that there was, basically, no common divisor. Only they said it much more complicatedly.

so their proof has to do with comparing two lines of different length

So they did their algebra through some sort of a geometric language, you mean?

mmmm Clooney.

back to work.

OK, appointment had been made for this afternoon at a really good optometrist. So I get to avoid Jilli-pokeage.

Well, they didn't really have algebra, is the thing. They had "number" -- which meant positive integers -- and "magnitude" -- which was lines and shapes and things you could measure by hand -- and the two probably overlapped but were certainly not the same thing. So the square root of two wasn't actually a number, but it was a magnitude, and it was proved incommensurable (irrational) by performing operations with other lines.

I think. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it all, while also trying to keep up with "If a straight line is cut into equal and unequal segments, the rectangle contained by the unequal segments of the whole together with the square on the straight line between the points of seccion is equal to the square on the half."