h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm tired now, as I was woken up in the middle of the night by my office, needing me to sort out a problem with one of the computers. They pay me extra to provide night-time support one week in every four. I only get called about three times a year, so it's good pay.

So I'm glad that I'm going on another holiday. We'll leave either late on Friday evening or early on Saturday morning. This time, it's a relaxing week in our mobile home in Wexford, rather than an activity-filled drive through the UK as we did last week.

I think I'll bring my book on Newton with me and put the notes together for a Newton entry, something I've been intending to do for years.

I'm debating whether to bring the telescope with me. It takes up a reasonable amount of space in the boot, but the skies are much clearer in Wexford, and it'll give me a chance to try out my new "Solar System Imager" (also known as a camera).

Ooh, I'll be looking forward to your Newton entry (didja know he invented the cat flap?). I'm currently reading Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle which features Newton and Liebniz as major characters. The more I learn of the two of them, the more I'm fascinated.

I'd take the telescope. Venus and the Moon are near transit currently and I also see (from checking Google Sky) that Saturn and Mercury are very close together as well. Loved the recent images in the news of Saturn's rings showing some kind of possible collision.

He was incredibly vindictive to Leibnitz! Did he hound him to death virtually over the precedence question of the calculus? Some even say he mentioned 'standing on the backs of giants' as a dig a Leibnitz who was short of stature.

I read somewhere that among Newton's unpublished papers was a list of figures which someone later identified as the relations of equal-tempered semitones, to many decimal places. I wrongly credited newton with being the first to calculate this in my Temperament entries; actually someone had done it around 1590 in Italy I think, well before the publication of log tables (1614?). Must update that Entry.

Have a good stargazing holiday! See you in a month in the choir

No, the "Shoulders of Giants" comment was a dig at Robert Hooke who was a hunchbacked dwarf.

Have a wonderful relaxing time

Come back refreshed

What a plonker. Berkeley got in a few telling digs at Newton.

DEar Gnoman,

Enjoy your break, stargazing, reading and all the other lovely relaxing things you are going to do at Wexford. Which would include going to all the super restaurants.

Kind regards to you all,

Christiane.
AR80

xkcd today has a Newton vs. Leibniz comic strip:

http://xkcd.com/626/


Zube

Thanks, Christiane.

Enjoy your hols, Gnomon

Thanks. I'll be busy this evening and heading off tomorrow morning, so I'll say goodbye tomorrow.

No, I'll say goodbye now.