POST SCRIPT - got the picture up this morning, so there's hope! But I can't blog in the mornings - gotta be out and about - BYE!
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Well, I've been trying for a couple of hours to upload a beautiful picture inside the British Museum. Though I'm quite happy with most things about my new hotel room (first refrigerator I've seen since leaving home!) apparently internet connectedness is not going to be one of them.
Hopefully either it is just "spotty" or I can find a work-around - because I can't go a whole week without updating or this will snowball into an avalanche - am already at least two mathematicians behind. A good internet connection is not really something I can be without.
After arriving today I went to the Royal College of Physicians here in London and took in their exhibit on the very interesting John Dee - of whom I had not heard until I began studying for this sabbatical. However, from what my friends tell me, sci-fi/fantasy and comic book fans have heard of him because his possible (well, more than possible, but who knows exactly how much) dealings with the occult have made him a fascinating figure to many. He lived at a time when chemistry & alchemy, astronomy & astrology, science & magic were not quite separate yet.
He was close to the center of the court of Elizabeth I and may have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's conjuror Prospero in The Tempest, and he may also have been part of the inspiration for Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. There is also a D. C. Comics villain named John Dee (aka Doctor Destiny). I'm ashamed I did not know all this, but I'm here to learn! Today I saw his crystal ball and others of his occult belongings, as well as books he wrote and books he owned.
Since the British Museum is near my hotel I went there too, and I gravitated towards exactly the same exhibits I gravitated towards 13 years ago during my only other visit to London - like everyone else - Rosetta Stone and Elgin Marbles. (They look the same as they did then, but the Rosetta Stone has been moved, which threw me at first . . .)
Tomorrow I'll attend a lecture on Alan Turing and John von Neumann put on at the London Museum by Gresham College, and in the evening I'll be attending a MathsJam event. In between I hope to see some of the following: Trafalgar Square, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Temple Church, St. Paul's Cathedral.
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