>Calculus is an important part of the intellectual tradition handed down
to us by the Ancient Greeks.
No it isn't? It was discovered by Newton and Leibnitz. If they're talking about Archimedes and integrals, I seem to recall his work on that was only rediscovered through a palimpsest in the last couple of decades and it contributed nothing towards Newton and Leibnitz's work.
Calculus was actually pioneered by the Kerala School of mathematicians in India during the European Middle Ages, several centuries prior to Newton and Leibniz popularizing it in Europe. The Indian texts were also quite well known to Europeans by that time, it was nowhere close to an independent discovery.
"Bhāskara II (c. 1114–1185) was acquainted with some ideas of differential calculus and suggested that the "differential coefficient" vanishes at an extremum value of the function.[18] In his astronomical work, he gave a procedure that looked like a precursor to infinitesimal methods. [...] In the 14th century, Indian mathematicians gave a non-rigorous method, resembling differentiation, applicable to some trigonometric functions. Madhava of Sangamagrama and the Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics stated components of calculus. They studied series equivalent to the Maclaurin expansions of [redacted] more than two hundred years before their introduction in Europe. [...] however, were not able to 'combine many differing ideas under the two unifying themes of the derivative and the integral, show the connection between the two, and turn calculus into the great problem-solving tool we have today.'"
Archimedes had functionally developed a method of integration (which was how he obtained results like volume/surface area of a sphere, or centre of mass of a hemisphere) in a manuscript that got lost to time and then rediscovered in a palimpsest (pasted and written over with a religious text)
"Laying the foundations for integral calculus and foreshadowing the concept of the limit, ancient Greek mathematician Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390–337 BC) developed the method of exhaustion to prove the formulas for cone and pyramid volumes.
"During the Hellenistic period, this method was further developed by Archimedes (c. 287 – c. 212 BC), who combined it with a concept of the indivisibles—a precursor to infinitesimals—allowing him to solve several problems now treated by integral calculus. In 'The Method of Mechanical Theorems' he describes, for example, calculating the center of gravity of a solid hemisphere, the center of gravity of a frustum of a circular paraboloid, and the area of a region bounded by a parabola and one of its secant lines."
It's less about population size, and more about ecological footprint of the population. Per capita, rich nations and rich populations within developing nations are the ones having the biggest ecological impact: https://overshoot.footprintnetwork.org/newsroom/country-over....
My father passed away in 2023. Our last discussion
was in the parking lot of his apartment, discussing whether or not the milk in
my car might spoil if I leave it there while I come up to visit for a bit.
Later, he died walking his dog with my mom, though the ER "resuscitated" him.
What I feel the worst about is the time between his heart attack and death, 4 days later.
In that time the doctors reanimated him, like a zombie. They were able to
elicit physical reactions by yelling his name, and poking him, I guess to make
my mother feel better that he might still be there. Eventually, I noticed blood
in his urine bag, ad the nurse looked at me weird when I noticed, and that night he died from a massive aneurysm.
I missed his passing because my phone was on silent mode so I missed
everyone's calls. I was watching the finale of Succession, and pressed "volume up" until it was max, but some time in the last few years Android decided that action shouldn't increase ringer volume.
I am sad to have not been there. He now has a tree in my back
yard, and I think about him often. He was a gregarious, brave, unabashed person who found the most joy in being a playground monitor..
and I'm lucky to have known him. But there's never enough time or enough reasons to make time, and no closure to be had in his death.
I'm happy to give them to any HN user but I'm afraid I have only three left and there are three emails in my inbox asking for invites, so if one is you then congratulations! Otherwise, sorry.
Nit-picking, but Witcher 2 is now legal in Australia. It was banned at the time because there was no MA classification available (something that has since been rectified).
And to counter the positive disposition of this nit, they banned Rimworld, not for the part where you can set up a human trafficking and organ harvesting farm, but for the part where you can smoke a green leaf for positive mood.
Interesting idea, but wouldn't the ejecta from multiple impacts create a global cooling effect, which would be counterproductive to the intent of the project (i.e. a warm, high pressure area)?
No it isn't? It was discovered by Newton and Leibnitz. If they're talking about Archimedes and integrals, I seem to recall his work on that was only rediscovered through a palimpsest in the last couple of decades and it contributed nothing towards Newton and Leibnitz's work.