A few days ago, I read Oldest Biblical Inscription Deciphered, Archaeologists Say by our News Staff, and found it fascinating.  It takes one back to Solomon, who, according to the Bible, had a thousand wives (that’s includin’ concubines, I have to tell ya.)  Now people like to embellish these stories, and my mother sometimes would sing this:

Oh Solomon, he had a thousand wives
And bein' a kind hearted fella,
He wanted all o' them
To lead contented lives
So he bought each mamma
A grand piana, ....

When Dmitri Mendeleev first published his table of elements in 1869 (picture), only 60 of these were known. One group in particular was absent, namely the inert gases.  Now you may have heard this song:

"All these gases are inert
  Helium, neon, argon.
I’ll sing this song until it hurts
  Krypton, xenon, radon." **

Some years ago, I was watching a wildlife TV programme, where a mother leopard was leading her three cubs, and they encountered a bank. Two of the cubs jumped it on the first go, but the third struggled until it found a piece of overhanging vegetation which enabled it to take the bank in two leaps.

When one leaves school and enters university, one can find that leaps are required which can overtax the brain. I am always pleased to find books in maths and the sciences which allow one to make these leaps. In Mathematician’s Delight (Pelican 1943), W. W. Sawyer wrote:

How often have you taken a picture with a digital camera, only for it to come out looking like this? The sky’s too bright, the shaded parts are too dark, and however much one juggles with it with software, it won’t come out right.
 


The eye managed to adapt to it all right, effortlessly moving over the scene. With film, if one were a darkroom wizard, one could play tricks with the processing. But digital – what do we get for our multi-megapixels and our 16777216 colours?