Dostoevsky’s handwriting in 1838. (letter to his brother Michael, August 9.)
![matthen:
If you roll a circle inside one 3 times its size, it will actually trace out a 4 pointed star shape called an Astroid (this shape is traced out in the animation in orange). But what if inside the smaller circle, there is an even smaller one tracing out a smaller Astroid? This animation shows the intricate shape that is generated by adding the effects of all the Astroids. [code]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxggprahmL1qfg7o3o1_250.gif)
If you roll a circle inside one 3 times its size, it will actually trace out a 4 pointed star shape called an Astroid (this shape is traced out in the animation in orange). But what if inside the smaller circle, there is an even smaller one tracing out a smaller Astroid? This animation shows the intricate shape that is generated by adding the effects of all the Astroids. [code]
(via wisebeyondheryearss)
“Justinian’s church of Hagia Sopia, Constantinople (532), was an achievement without parallel in world architecture, and one that was not to be equaled until the great age of Gothic cathedrals. Its structure concealed under marble veneer and mosaic, it admits light miraculously at every level, creating an atmosphere of heightened emotion in tune with the Byzantine liturgy that it served.”
-from Western Architecture by Ian Sutton
Theodora - (c. 500 – June 28, 548) was empress of the Roman Empire and the wife of Emperor Justinian. She liked to get it on with a lot of people. I mean, it couldn’t have been hard. Look at that bitch.
cwnl:
Isaac Newton’s Personal Notebooks Go Digital
Who says you can’t hoard anything in this now technological world? Here’s something for the science history buffs:
The largest collection of Isaac Newton’s papers has gone digital, committing to open-access posterity the works of one of history’s greatest scientist.
Among the works shared online by the Cambridge Digital Library are Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica and the ‘Waste Book,’ the notebook in which a young Newton worked out the principles of calculus.
Other of his myriad accomplishments include the laws of gravity and motion, a theory of light — pictured above are notes on optics — and his construction of the first reflecting telescope.
Newton was also notoriously idiosyncratic and irascible, obsessed with the occult and vicious towards scientific rivals; a full account of his life and science can be found in James Gleick’s Isaac Newton, and a partial but entertaining fictionalization in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. But the papers come straight from the master.
“Anyone, wherever they are, can see at the click of a mouse how Newton worked and how he went about developing his theories and experiments,” said Grant Young, the library’s digitization manager, in a press release. “Before today, anyone who wanted to see these things had to come to Cambridge. Now we’re bringing Cambridge University Library to the world.”
Approximately 4,000 pages of material are available now, and thousands more will be uploaded in coming months.
(via ikenbot)
