16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 If We Knew the Outcome of a War, There Would be No Need t...

The determining cause of most wars in the past has been, and probably will be of all wars in the future, the uncertainty of the result; war is acknowledged to be a challenge to the Unknown, it is often spoken of as an appeal to the God of Battles. The province of science is to foretell; this is true of every department of science. And the time must come—how soon we do not know—when the real science of war, something quite different from the application of science to the means of war, will...
Folksonomies: statistics war chaos theory
Folksonomies: statistics war chaos theory
   notes

Quote from Sir Michael Foster Times Literary Supplement, 28 Nov 1902, 353-4.

14 DEC 2011 by ideonexus

 Bacon's Recipe for Gun Powder

Sed tamen salis petrae. VI. Part V. NOV. CORVLI. ET V. sulphuris, et sic facies toniitrum et coruscationem: sic facies artificium. But, however, of saltpetre take six parts, live of young willow (charcoal), and five of sulphur, and so you will make thunder and lightning, and so you will turn the trick. Bacon's recipe for Gunpowder, partly expressed as an anagram in the original Latin.
Folksonomies: chemistry poetry
Folksonomies: chemistry poetry
  1  notes

Presented in rhyme and in an anagram in Latin.