A Prayer for Archimedes

A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus.

For seventy years, a prayer book moldered in the closet of a family in France, passed down from one generation to the next. Its mildewed parchment pages were stiff and contorted, tarnished by burn marks and waxy smudges. Behind the text of the prayers, faint Greek letters marched in lines up the page, with an occasional diagram disappearing into the spine.

The owners wondered if the strange book might have some value, so they took it to Christie's Auction House of London. And in 1998, Christie's auctioned it off—for two million dollars.

For this was not just a prayer book. The faint Greek inscriptions and accompanying diagrams were, in fact, the only surviving copies of several works by the great Greek mathematician Archimedes.

An intensive research effort over the last nine years has led to the decoding of much of the almost-obliterated Greek text. The results were more revolutionary than anyone had expected. The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized.

...

Two of the texts hiding in the prayer book have not appeared in any other copy of Archimedes's work, so no one but Heiberg had studied them until now. One of them, titled The Method, has special historical significance. It could be considered the earliest known work on calculus.

Cool!

A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus.

Whoa. Cool.

Has this been linked to before?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

Awww, the kitty-cam kitties are being cute right now! There's an adorably floofy marmalade kitty sitting on top of the scratching pole (oops, just jumped off), and three sibs chasing each other around.

There was a human interacting with them, removing things from the pen, and all the kittens tried to escape!

Okay, I give. Where is the link to the kitty cam again?

I only have the pop-up window open, I have no idea what the link is.

wait, I found it: [link]

Timelies all!

Kitty-cam...soo tempting, but I don't need another time-sink.

The kitty cam is just not working for me the same way that the puppy cam did. Every time I open the window I see them, remember PETA and think, "Mmm...land fish!"