« first day (3651 days earlier)      last day (1437 days later) » 
01:00 - 21:0021:00 - 00:00

1:07 AM
Question: which of the two is better/preferable?
"sueing us" or "filing a lawsuit on us".
1:29 AM
@FaheemMitha I would say suing or filing a lawsuit against us.
Context: my aunt just filed a lawsuit on me and my handicapped sister. I wonder if it is as fun as everyone says.
@Cerberus Thank you. So, it would be "sueing us" or "filing a lawsuit against us"?
@FaheemMitha Suing, not sueing.
I would not have a preference, but perhaps others will weigh in.
How terrible for you, that your own aunt should be suing you.
@Cerberus Oh, I thought it was sueing. Or maybe variant spellings? Anyway, I'm going with "filing a lawsuit against us".
What does she want?
@Cerberus You don't know the half of it.
1:32 AM
No, indeed.
@Cerberus Nothing. We have a rather special family. The lawsuit doesn't even really involve me.
She just added our names for no reason.
I was aware she was filing a lawsuit. We had discussed it. I had no idea I was going to be listed as a defendant.
Sueing can be found in publications, but I suspect it will be considered an error by most.
@Cerberus Ok, so suing then. But I think I'll just stay with "filing a lawsuit against us". That's ok, right?
1:34 AM
Sounds fine to me.
There seem to be a lot of variant spellings in English. Probably many of them first arose in error.
@Cerberus Ok, thank you.
Good luck.
I hope you shall prevail.
I'm planning to write her a letter to ask her to remove our names, and not be insane. But with my relatives I'm not optimistic. Right now, I'm just writing her asshole son an email to tell him to jump in a lake (not literally). Long story.
It's one of those days when it would be helpful to be Donald Trump.
@Cerberus Thank you.
@FaheemMitha If you really want to resolve the bad feeling, I would suggest that you make a phone call, rather than sending text.
It is almost always far easier to resolve issues in live speech.
@Cerberus Talking to those people has never worked out well. But thank you for the suggestion.
1:38 AM
Are you sure there is no chance at all it might work in this case?
Actually, when I said no reason, that's not actually correct, I think. What is appears to be is an attempt at blackmail.
So, they actually want me to join in the lawsuit, on their side.
If so, then why bother writing a letter, which will certainly be received no better than speech.
Apparently, their strategy is to file the case on me unless I agree to do that.
Odd.
@Cerberus So I can produce it in a court later.
1:39 AM
You could record the call just in case.
Her son said: "You're either with us or against us, and we'll fight you too". That was a few days ago. I only discovered I was being sued yesterday.
@Cerberus I could. I don't know that is viewed in an Indian court, but thank you for the suggestion.
@Cerberus Yeah, no kidding. The subject of the lawsuit is something I know basically nothing about. I'm not involved in any way.
@Cerberus Also, I can lay out my thoughts better in a letter. A phone call could easily deteriorate into yelling.
@Cerberus That is 100% correct.
OK, 98.7% correct. Close enough for rock 'n' roll.
This sentence seems a bit awkward. Comments?
> Yesterday, Sunday 8th November 2020, I opened the envelope addressed to me
that was sent to me by Dua Associates.
@Robusto About your weighing in?
For one thing, there is the "me" repetition.
1:48 AM
@Cerberus About suing vs sueing.
@FaheemMitha On 8 November 2020 I received an envelope addressed to me by Dua Associates.
There. Economical, but all the facts are in.
Better.
@Robusto Actually, I had received the envelope a few days earlier. I opened it Sunday.
Then put the date you received it.
Nobody cares when you opened it.
1:50 AM
And I would prefer something more specific, like a summons or whatever it was.
@Robusto I don't remember when that was, but the important date is when I opened it.
Why?
@Robusto Actually, that seems to be the relevant date, since I don't have X-ray vision.
@Cerberus Because that's when I read it?
I am in receipt of an envelope from Dua Associates, which was addressed to me.
But why is it relevant when you read it?
1:51 AM
@Robusto Hmm.
I presume you are saying "which was addressed to me" because the contents do not mention you?
By the way, does anyone have a preference for a certain performance of the Winterreise?
@Cerberus Because I'm responding the next day, I guess. It's not particularly important I guess.
@Robusto They don't. So yes, you are correct.
Then I would only mention receipt, not opening.
1:52 AM
@Cerberus Schubert?
@Robusto OK that's the one I'm most familiar with.
@Robusto Yes, Fischer-Dieskau would be my first thought too.
My fave.
But at the moment I seem to prefer the more passionate performance by Bostridge, despite his less than perfect accent.
Though a female version would also be fine.
Personally, I prefer the more upbeat stuff. Relatively upbeat, that is. Since we're talking about Schubert.
1:53 AM
My newspaper recommends Gerhaher's version, which is nice but slow.
Hahahaha, I looked on YouTube just now and they're all Fischer-Dieskau! ^_^
He is the most famous performer!
inorite
Newspaper also recommends the Goerne version.
Gold standard for male singers.
1:54 AM
That's so boring, being that good.
I enjoy the light, fluffy Schubert.
Okay, frankly all four versions are great.
But I am no connoisseur.
@FaheemMitha A Schubert soufflé?
@Robusto Something like that.
Top hit for Suleika 1. I don't have a preferred version.
I think Schubert must have the most individual piano style in history. Instantly recognizable.
Oh, it's Kathleen Battle.
I agree with the comment that says it's a bit fast.
Nice.
Fischer-Dieskau died in 2012. I suppose I should have known that, but it still comes as a surprise. Christ, I was listening to him 50 years ago already.
@Robusto Musical family?
@FaheemMitha Not really. I was a musician, though.
@Robusto Oh
Music has ruled my life.
2:19 AM
@tchrist What do you know, Dutch newspapers are remarking on the lack of distance between people yesterday in America.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
No racism in this room.
We have had some demonstrations where the proper distance was not kept.
But it did not seem to cause any significant number of infections, so you'll probably be all right.
But it's still so weird, seeing people wearing mouth caps but not doing the essential thing.
Send the Dutch newspapers out to where I live. I don't come within 10 meters of anybody unless I go to the supermarket.
Didn't you see the footage from the election celebrations?
And Biden hugging people?
@Robusto who has a black kettle nowadays?
Who has a kettle nowadays?
2:33 AM
@Mitch Black Kettle was murdered at Wounded Knee.
Microwave or those water boiler things with flower decorations
Aren't pots exactly kettles?
Music has ruined my life.
There was this girl...
Played the oboe...
It was a wild time....
But then ...
What comes afterwards....
@Mitch He fixes her cable?
Um...
Cable?
@Mitch It's a Lebowski reference.
Ohhhh
Like they at least have an ethos
I'm awful at quotes.
2:47 AM
> Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at least it was an ethos.
I think that's close to the mark.
People will reel off quotes and I'll be like ' oh, I remember that movie. I think.'
I really like this performance.
Even with its imperfections.
I remember that I saw it with a friend and oh yeah we saw two girls we knew there, but just vaguely that the movie was ok to pretty good
@Cerberus that was ok.
2:49 AM
You're a fast listener.
I remember though that I was talking with rib and verb and throwing big lebowski quotes at each other
It was awesome. The first day in a long while that I could breathe
I SPELLED IT RIGHT THIS TIME
@Cerberus to be honest I didn't listen to it
Oh, I'm so surprised.
I'm watching TV so I can only multitask with some limitations
@Cerberus I listened for a bit. He has a good voice. I'll bookmark it and listen to it complete when I have the time.
@Cerberus I'm surprised that you're surprised
2:57 AM
@Robusto It seems more passionate than other performances, which I am apparently in the mood for.
@Mitch Yeah, this is not music for multi-tasking.
@Cerberus Nothing wrong with that.
Relevantly I'm watching 'Mozart in the Jungle'
Because you know, Mozart
@Mitch That show started good, and I thought it was going to be about the lives and concerns of orchestra musicians. Then it got all fluffy and awful.
@Cerberus Do you mean the spontaneous celebrations that erupted everywhere yesterday and looked more like the overthrow of a dictator than merely an election win?
@Robusto it's ok.
3:01 AM
I guess current and former orchestra musicians aren't a big enough demographic to support a show like that. But I would watch such a show.
I'd rather watch Fargo or Mandalorian
@tchrist Yes, but also the Biden campaign, and the candidate himself.
@Mitch Fargo is past its prime.
@Robusto my sentiments exactly
Except for the choosing to watch it myself
@Cerberus Everybody near him had passed through virus tests and bunkering.
3:06 AM
@Robusto it's weird how it sorta consistently maintains the same tropes over and over.
I'm enjoying season 4
@Cerberus And as far as I could see, it was outdoors and everyone but the two principals and their respective spouses were masked.
So many people are so happy
At least for a couple days
I wonder why there are so few speakers of Iranian in Iran.

I wonder why there are so few speakers of Iraqian in Iraq.

I wonder why there are so few speakers of Austrian in Austria.

I wonder why there are so few speakers of Belgian in Belgium.
@Mitch But a snake won't die till the sun goes down.
Haha so many snake metaphors
"you all knew I was a snake when you let me in"
Or is that the scorpion swimming across the river?
3:16 AM
@tchrist All right, that is something.
What is bunkering?
@Cerberus Hiding out in his basement. :)
Family conclave.
I was archly alluding to Hitler's bunker, but that better fits the dictator refusing surrender.
Ah.
By the way, I am happy the worst things people predicted would happen during and immediately after the election have not come to pass.
No riots.
He's still working on that angle.
I wonder why the FAA and the Secret Service are being allowed to treat Biden as the President Elect, but the General Services Administration is not.
3:25 AM
Perhaps Trump's control of the various branches of government isn't always very strong?
I don't think he and his aides are very competent so that hinders them a lot
@Cerberus a lot of things that people predicted didn't happen
Like landslide for Biden or send taking the Senate
But also a race war
Indeed.
But the most significant thing, in my opinion, is that Trump is not rallying his supporters to attack institutions or anything.
And free ice cream. I was pretty disappointed
Nor is he committing a coup d'état (thus far...).
But it upsets my stomach a little so it's probably for the best
@Cerberus so far
3:31 AM
@Cerberus He was trying to get them to push through to stop the counting of the votes.
But I think he's not competent enough to pull off a coup d'etat
@tchrist But it did not happen.
Sure, attempted murder isn't a crime.
Just like attempted bribery isn't.
How is that relevant?
It's a crime to shout fire in a crowded theater.
Whether somebody gets killed or not.
3:36 AM
@tchrist don't worry it'll all come out with a new AG
Who may well be somebody like Elizabeth Warren
Before chosen as VP I thought it would have been Harris
Congress will meet on January 6th to decide whether they like the color of the electors' votes. Perhaps the Biden transition team will be given their statutory moneys and access after then.
@Mitch Same.
But deliberately fucking over the transition team out of a smooth transition as required by law is a cowardly attack on national security.
None of this is what I meant.
What I meant is that I am happy it did not happen.
Totally expected
Bunch of children
The law provides the funds and access.
It is not subject to imperial fiat.
> The delay has implications both practical and symbolic.

By declaring the “apparent winner” of a presidential election, the GSA administrator releases computer systems and money for salaries and administrative support for the mammoth undertaking of setting up a new government — $9.9 million this year.

Transition officials get government email addresses. They get office space at every federal agency. They can begin to work with the Office of Government Ethics to process financial disclosure and conflict-of-interest forms for their nominees.
You don't have to wait until January 20th. It's critical than you not do so.
That's why they made the laws. And that's why it's supposed to happen once there is an apparent winner, not a newly sworn-in president. That's the whole point.
@Mitch It may start to. There's too much for it all to come out with anything like due alacrity.
@Cerberus I didn't really expect it to. The Fokskyites always say they'll riot if they don't get their way.
They managed to get semiautomatic weapons into the Michigan State Capitol, and had a plan to kidnap the head of government there.
3:53 AM
Which would have achieved nothing.
There's data showing that people voted for Trump reported doing so because in some crazy proportion of cases they said they were afraid of riots from BLM protesters and Antifa otherwise.
Because that's what Fox News told them would happen if Trump didn't win. The entire country would devolve into anarchy and open warfare.
The people they're targeting have too little education in world history to recognize that this has been the constant ploy of autocratic regimes for like ever.
I think some optimism would do us good.
@Cerberus I'm optimistic that Biden is putting the most important things first: the virus.
FEMA is supposed to be directing everything once that declaration has been made. They are not.
4:13 AM
@tchrist Yes, that will certainly be an improvement over Trump's 'approach'.
After Biden announced his covid task force's debut tomorrow, Pence remembered that he had his own covid task force that hasn't met for months, so will also have a meeting tomorrow.
Haha.
> On Monday, Biden is launching a 12-member coronavirus task force, which will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Dr Vivek Murthy and former food and drug administration commissioner Dr David Kessler. Yale epidemiologist Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith is also expected to join.

The task force will be responsible for executing his promises for tackling Covid-19, which include doubling the number of drive-through testing sites, establishing a US public health job corps to mobilize 100,000 Americans on contact tracing; and ramping up production of masks, face shields and other PPE.
 
1 hour later…
5:32 AM
Sounds good.
 
3 hours later…
8:17 AM
> The first likely person in history whose name we know is 'Kushim', who was not a king, a poet or a warrior, but an accountant. He signed a receipt 3400 years BCE in Mesopotamia, which said "29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim"
This week, the first two production-scale batches of the Sputnik 5 vaccine will be shipped in Russia, 30 000 and 40 000 doses' worth. About 60% of this shipment will go to regions, while 40% will be used to inoculate doctors in Moscow.
Thus, by the end of the week the vaccination campaign will have started across Russia.
The officials said that by the end of December the vaccine will be available commercially to any Russian who is willing to pay.
9:09 AM
I will undergo vaccination at the first opportunity
9:27 AM
@Robusto that ending!
10:19 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, link at beginning of body, pattern-matching product name in body, pattern-matching website in body, +2 more (432): Endeavor Nulavance United Kingdom Skincare To Even Out Skin For Good! by RasvyaJoy on english.SE
 
3 hours later…
1:00 PM
> The political situation in the US got so interesting that Lenin half-opened his left eye in the Mausoleum
(a Russian joke)
I don't get it
1:51 PM
gander -> goosey gander -> slang for a look
But how does it combine with "propa"?
"proper gander"? It's so complex
proper gander
yeah :D
> A vaccine against Covid-19 is in sight, with the announcement of the first interim results in large-scale trials showing the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate is 90% effective, according to the manufacturers.
Yes, but that was in a press release, not in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
It's good news, but no data.
90% is really quite high even at two doses, nothing at all like what we get with our flu vaccines. It's more like smallpox where it's 95%, or measles where one does is 93% and two doses 97%. Polio vaccines today are now 90% at two doses and 99–100% at three doses.
1:58 PM
This is also an mRNA vaccine. We haven't ever had an mRNA vaccine that's been approved and gone to market, so far. It requires a "cold chain of handling" that's much colder than normal, at least dry ice or better.
So this might end up being a rich-world-only vaccine. We can't say until there's a full dataset to analyse for safety and efficacy.
But like I said, even a 90% initial estimate of its efficacy is quite surprising, and not in a bad way.
It takes longer to tease out the safety figures than the efficacy figures.
@CowperKettle Yeah, it's because you have to be a nonrhotic speaker for it to make sense.
Dodgy color theory there.
2:21 PM
17 hours ago, by Robusto
user image
I wonder if there are parks under transparent ceilings for use in winter.
Modern malls sometimes have huge and high ceilings. Why not make a park for everybody to go in the winter under a similar ceiling.
Especially in the north, where winter lasts from mid-November to mid-March
@Robusto It's still weird primaries. If they're doing RGB additive primaries then R+G should be yellow additively. And all three primaries should surely be white additively or black subtractively.
@CowperKettle To what purpose?
@tchrist For the purpose of not going mad from a long winter.
To go and sit or walk among the greenery
@CowperKettle Wouldn't windows work?
Oh, now I see.
There are glass-covered botanical parks like that.
For instance, airship hangars reached 50 meters in height. Why not build similar structures for parks and use it as a municipal territory for people to attend.
2:32 PM
There are. London has one.
Milwaukee, also.
London is at 51.5 degrees north latitude; Milwaukee is at a balmy 43, but it's continental.
Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory (Mitchell Park Domes or The Domes) is a conservatory located at Mitchell Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. It is owned and operated by the Milwaukee County Park System, and replaced the original Milwaukee Conservatory which stood from 1898 to 1955. The three domes display a large variety of plant life. == Description == Designed by Donald L. Grieb Associates, Architect, the Conservatory is composed of three beehive-shaped glass domes that span 140 feet (43 m) in diameter and are 85 feet (26 m) high. They are properly referred to as the world...
They are smaller than the crystal palace in London.
I think?
The London one is the Palm House at Kew Gardens.
The Palm House is a greenhouse located in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew that specialises in growing palms and other tropical and subtropical plants. Many of its plants are endangered or extinct in the wild. Initially built as status symbols in Victorian Britain, several examples of these ornate glass and iron greenhouses can still be found in parks such as Liverpool's Sefton Park and Stanley Park.Palm House was the first greenhouse to be built on this scale. It was also the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron. == History == One of the earliest examples of a palm house is located in...
So these are all really "giant greenhouses".
One of the three domes in Milwaukee is tropical, one is desert, and the third is ephemeral and varies by season.
3:09 PM
@tchrist Graphic designers have peculiar ideas about the color wheel.
That one doesn't bother me much.
But usually the designers get it right, even if it looks odd. Whenever I try to produce a color scheme it's like passing a kidney stone. I know what looks good, but not how to get there. The solution is to pick a prefab scheme someone else cooked up.
@MattE.Эллен You watched it to the end? I'm impressed. ^_^
3:28 PM
Hiya folks!
Once I was reading a book on Logic and in the preface it was written something like “when writers don’t write the preface, i.e. how the book came into existence, I quite don’t like it”, but I don’t remember the particular book. Can someone recommend me a similar quote or something where a writer or someone else says about indispensability of “Preface”.
@CowperKettle James Thurber used the "proper gander"/propaganda joke a very long time ago.
The Very Proper Gander by James Thurber
I think it was in response to the lunacies of the Red Scare in the US. So, at least in part, your forbears were to blame.
@CowperKettle Conservatories are big green houses (for growing plants from warmer areas) that are intended to be visited.
Positioned near the shore of Lake Michigan, the Lincoln Park Conservatory (1.2 ha / 3 acres) is a conservatory and botanical garden in Lincoln Park in Chicago, Illinois. The conservatory is located at 2391 North Stockton Drive just south of Fullerton Avenue, west of Lake Shore Drive, and part of the Lincoln Park, Chicago community area. The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool and the North Pond Nature Sanctuary are further to the north along Stockton Drive. Along with the Garfield Park Conservatory on Chicago's west side, the Lincoln Park Conservatory provides significant horticultural collections,...
but also there are commercial indoor water parks so that you don't have to take a plane to a carribean island. In the US it's...
@Mitch So I was actually in a greenhouse when I was studying music at the conservatory? I didn't see any plants, only pianos and other instruments. Does this mean pianos are grown in hothouses?
@Robusto Yes
The following is a list of notable water parks in the world sorted by region. A water park or waterpark is an amusement park that features water play areas, such as water slides, splash pads, spraygrounds (water playgrounds), lazy rivers, wave pools, or other recreational bathing, swimming, and barefooting environments. == Africa == == Americas == == Asia == == Europe == == Oceania == == Defunct water parks == === Canada === Skinner's Wet'n Wild, Lockport, Manitoba – closed in 2005 Penguin Village, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan – closed in 1993 Wild Rapids Waterslide Park, Sylvan L...
Most of those are outside, but many are inside.
@KnightadmiresChappo A preface is the thing written by the author of a work. A forward is written by someone else.
Ohhhh. You mean when a preface is not written at all. You meant "when writers don’t write a preface"
But to your question, no, I can't think of any such statement by anyone. But I suspect it would be by someone like Smullyan who was trying some self-reference.
3:45 PM
@Mitch yeah, I need a quote that says about the significance of the “Preface”
Oh? Are you writing a preface or a forward?
Yeah for my friend. He’s got an assignment to make a book.
Oh, cool, then make something up and say that Mark Twain said it.
God doesn't throw mice.
Lol, would you mind if you make a thing on your own. Don’t get offended but I find ya quite witty and nice, so your wordings and name will do good for a little college assignment.
@M.A.R. Nice!
3:48 PM
"Or as Mark Twain might have said, 'a preface is like a dead dog'. The rest of that quote is lost."
How about this:
> A book without a preface is like the word “young girl” in German which have no gender.
CC @Cowp, I know you like this stuff
3:53 PM
@M.A.R. Haha, just what I thought
@M.A.R. So is that for a particular species or is it just for all life combined?
@Mitch A eukaryotic cell I'm told
I read that there might be about 8 000 ultra-rare diseases, but all these diseases combined might affect 10% of the population. But since they are very quaint, the affected people have extremely slim chances of ever getting a proper diagnosis.
I think it might be true.
@CowperKettle There are several diseases with only a double digit number of confirmed patients worldwide
@KnightadmiresChappo Presumably your audience isn't here which is more tolerant. You probably want to say something that makes sense. To compare 'a book without a preface' with 'a girl having no gender' seems a little too ... vulgar?
3:57 PM
Thing is, obviously the more severe it is, the faster it's going to eliminate the individual from the population
When I read different OMIM pages of rare diseases, I constantly come across a sentence like this: "Initially it was thought to present with drastic symptoms in early childhood, but in the last 10 years we discovered that there is a whole gamut of presentations, ranging into midlle age and beoynd and having different symptoms"
@CowperKettle Medical education is filled with talking about all the rare diseases... but then when you go into practice you forget most everything outside of your specialty. So it's really easy to misdiagnose or rather really hard to get good diagnosis on these rare things.
@CowperKettle We know very little about human body sadly
@M.A.R. Im sure it's spelled out in the accompanying documentation, but that makes sense.
Endocrinologists say to me - oh, you have a diabetes that is mild and periodically vanishes at all? Must be something rare, if you have a trainload of money, go to Moscow and have a vagonload of genetic tests haha.
4:00 PM
I think there's another Roche poster that is all the DNA/RNA stuff that is about as complex.
@M.A.R. is both hemoglobin -and- chlorophyll on the chart?
what is the stuff in horseshoe crab blood that does the fancy work?
M00532 -- Photorespiration
It has stuff on plants, animals, humans and some stuff on bacteria and archea too
@M.A.R. Like cerebral folate deficiency, about which I wrote an article in Wikipedia. I've uploaded some nice graphics recently.
M00165 -- The Calcin cycle
I translated a case report but still failed to understand how precisely this deficiency strips neurons of the myelin sheaths.
It's too complex.
Too many steps and enzymes.
@CowperKettle Pretty typical especially of signaling pathways
It's really 50 things happening at once
BBL studying
4:21 PM
@Mitch Oh yeah, lest the assignment get rejected by being labelled as “obscene”
I usually don’t like when people write “Résumé” as “Resume”
Both, of course, aren’t same.
@KnightadmiresChappo In the US, accents aren't very common (or easy to do) so the second one is much more common. It makes the first one look pretentious because you went to a lot of extra trouble to make it stand out as 'right'.
4:48 PM
@Mitch What to write in Acknowledgment if no one really helped me?
"Thanks for nothing suckers, I never wanted your help anyway."
@Mitch You're thinking of their Vulcan blood, which is blue like Spock's because they use the copper in haemocyanin not the iron in haemoglobin.
@Mitch makes notes
@MattE.Эллен Dr. Johnson said it best:
The Letter to Chesterfield (February 1755) was Samuel Johnson's response to what some believed to be Lord Chesterfield's opportunistic endorsement of his A Dictionary of the English Language. Although Chesterfield was patron of the Proposal for the Dictionary, he made no moves to further the progress of the Dictionary until seven years after his original investment into the project. Suddenly, Chesterfield wrote two "puff" pieces to promote the Dictionary, which prompted Johnson to write a letter accusing Chesterfield of only providing help when it was least needed. Some claim that the letter caused...
5:22 PM
ten whole pounds and two puff pieces, and he complains!
Such ingratitude.
 
1 hour later…
6:27 PM
More funny katakana: ロード・オブ・ザ・リング
Can you guess it from the transliteration? "rōdo obu za rinngu"
 
1 hour later…
7:43 PM
8:15 PM
Just finished reading Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist ... pretty interesting. I wasn't aware that Newton in his later life became the Warden and then Master of the Mint in England.
This was his nemesis:
William Chaloner (1650 – 22 March 1699) was a serial counterfeit coiner and confidence trickster, who was imprisoned in Newgate Prison several times and eventually proven guilty of high treason by Sir Isaac Newton, Master of the Royal Mint. He was hanged on the gallows at Tyburn on 22 March 1699.Chaloner grew up in a poor family in Warwickshire, but through a career in counterfeiting and con artistry attained great wealth, including a house in Knightsbridge. He started by forging "Birmingham Groats", then moved on to Guineas, French Pistoles, crowns and half-crowns, Banknotes and lottery tickets...
Also I hadn't known that Newton aspired to alchemy, and that it was for religious purposes that he did so.
> He knew that all the theorizing, all the theological argument, all the indirect evidence from the perfect design of the solar system could not match the value of one actual, material demonstration of the divine spirit transforming one metal into another in the here and now. If Newton could discover the method God used to produce gold from base mixtures, then he would know—and not just believe—that the King of Kings would indeed reign triumphant, forever and ever.
He even thought he had it at one point.
> To paraphrase Albert Einstein, Newton wanted to know what choices God made when He created the world. More deeply, he wanted to understand what comes next—what the divinity is doing now in the physical cosmos of space and time. And here, at last, he thought he had the answer: in multiplying gold at the laboratory bench he had achieved the ultimate act of imitatio dei, an imitation of God’s will in the world.
> Somehow—he never revealed just what convinced him—he understood that the divine secret of the transmutation of matter had eluded him once again. And then, perhaps in response, or at least in sequence, his mind broke.tion.
> Levenson, Thomas. Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist (p. 91). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Fascinating fellow, Sir Isaac.
01:00 - 21:0021:00 - 00:00

« first day (3651 days earlier)      last day (1437 days later) »