Mankind’s ingenuity is so often undermined by Nature. For example, our chemists spend decades trying to perfect vaccines for illnesses only to discover the same chemical compounds already exists in some hitherto unknown Amazonian plant. Nature, though, can’t always upstage us. Take the wheel for example. When humans invented it 5000 years ago, it never previously existed in Nature. Well, that’s what we always thought.
Science
Algebra – The Unknown Quantity
How much more time must elapse before a trust fund kicks in, under the terms set by the will of an eccentric deceased and algebra-promoting relative? This article tells a story of Todd’s efforts to figure that out.