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[I could've done without that last line, but still a cool article.]

Austin American-Statesman
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Take a long holiday
EDITORIAL BOARD

Say what else you might about the French, they sure know how to enjoy a vacation.

Full-time employees in France take an average of seven weeks of vacation per year. Italians take about eight weeks.( Read more... )

(no subject)

Austin American-Statesman
Sunday, August 27, 2006
For the love of pure thought
EDITORIAL BOARD

In a culture defined by the squalid roar of a tabloid murder case or the next pronouncement of an infantile millionaire athlete pedaling a stationary bicycle, silence is the unmistakable stamp of something true, maybe even heroic.

Last week, the International Mathematics Union awarded its equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal, to Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old Russian mathematician. The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass., has indicated that it will offer Perelman $1 million for his work. Experts in the field say Perelman will almost certainly be one of the greatest mathematicians of the 21st century and, perhaps, one of the greatest math minds ever.

Perelman responded by refusing to appear at the Mathematics Union ceremony and sent word that he would not accept the Fields Medal. Through friends, he has made clear that he will not accept the Mathematics Institute endowment in spite of his Spartan circumstances. And to those reporters who might not have known anything about topology, his specialized field, but who understood all too well a hot news story, Perelman had almost nothing to say.( Read more... )