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Iâve just been reading a new book (by the excellent science writer Dave Sobel) about Marie Curie: if ever there was a case of a person who, with her husband until a random street accident killed him, worked at a dangerous project and succeeded, it was them. Only person (of any gender) to win two Nobel Prizes in two different fields, and yet always humble and generous. One of the largely-unknown aspects of her contribution thatâs covered in this book is how she mentored so many young (mostly women) scientists who went on to also make major discoveries. Interesting stuff. So sometimes that which (could) kill us ends up becoming something really important, if we work through it successfully (and live long enough!)
when you said in your âlessonâ that âDead people lie in their graves until Judgement Dayâ, for what itâs worth, the Bible contradicts that, when it reports that after Jesusâ resurrection, many of âthe saints which sleptâ (were dead) arose and went into the city⌠(and probably scared everyone else to death, figuratively speaking. see Matt 27:52-54)Given that the subject of this cartoon is completely different, this side discussion is irrelevant, though.
Iâve long heard about and thought about the nuances of translation over the centuries, esp before the printing press made it easier to have the same text, though I have no Hebrew and only a tiny bit of Greek. Iâve just been reading Charles Freemanâs new book âThe Reopening of the Western Mindâ, and one point he makes in it that I hadnât thought about was that many (actually, most of them, it sounds like) of the monks copying ancient texts didnât know Greek themselves, so it was understandable that copying errors, or errors in interpretation of âwhatâs that word supposed to be?â came into the text. As papyrus supplies disappeared in Europe and parchmentâmade from cowhides so requiring lots of cowsâwere at something of a premium, some triage of which texts to put resources into copying was required: there was some interest in copying crucially important ancient texts of the Greek and Arab worlds, but priority given to religious texts because those were more directly important to their perceived mission. I hadnât really thought about the scribes not knowing the language they were copying.
yes⌠i remember my father making the radical addition to our old Ford by adding a turn signal to the steering columnâso he didnât have to always hold his arm out the window. And I remember doing my dissertation on punch cards, and running my Fortran program at HMC until it timed outâŚ
when I worked as an editor many decades ago, 2 spaces after the period was the standard, but I learned then that newspapers had a 1-space standard (to save space, presumablyâdidnât help readability).
Iâve just been reading a new book (by the excellent science writer Dave Sobel) about Marie Curie: if ever there was a case of a person who, with her husband until a random street accident killed him, worked at a dangerous project and succeeded, it was them. Only person (of any gender) to win two Nobel Prizes in two different fields, and yet always humble and generous. One of the largely-unknown aspects of her contribution thatâs covered in this book is how she mentored so many young (mostly women) scientists who went on to also make major discoveries. Interesting stuff. So sometimes that which (could) kill us ends up becoming something really important, if we work through it successfully (and live long enough!)