(Roughly) Daily

Ancient Merv
Oasis City along the Silk Road

As connectivity brings every spot in world closer to every other, and one is able more deeply to appreciate the splendidly rich variety of human accomplishment, one might well be overtaken by a less pleasant realization– there’s just no way in the span of a lifetime that one can see even most of what one wants to behold.

Now, thanks to the folks at CyArk, one can can make a great many more stops…  at least virtually.

CyArk is a non-profit entity whose mission is to digitally preserve cultural heritage sites through collecting, archiving and providing open access to data created by laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art technologies.

See an interactive maps of every site here, and learn about the threats to cultural heritage (on another interactive map) here.

As we reach for our passports and phrase books, we might wish light a birthday candle for Frigyes Riesz, the Hungarian mathematician; he was born on this date in 1880.  Riesz made contributions to both functional analysis and ergodic theory– and thus to the mathematical foundation on which modern physics has developed.

But Riesz, Rector and Professor at that University of Szeged, was perhaps more amusingly memorable for his lectures:  Riesz would enter the lecture hall trailed by an assistant and a docent. The docent then read the passages from Riesz’s handbook appropriate to that day’s lesson, while the assistant chalked the appropriate equations on the blackboard… Riesz himself stood to the side, punctuating the “talk” with occasional nods.

Frigyes Riesz