food names, encyclopaedias

At the Physiology Refectory today I had Beef Madras. But shouldn't it be called Beef Chennai? I asked some Indian guys next to me and they said the city is usually called Madras by Indians.

The Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD is $A129 on the Australian website and $US39.95 ($A53) on the US website. They won't be getting my custom...

Coincidentally, a few hours after the beef madras, I went to a public lecture about Ramanujan by Bruce Berndt. I learnt so much about his life. He did not even pass his mathematics examinations at college, BB said because most of it was based on geometry. And his best discoveries were in the last year of his life. (I thought his bad health prevented him from doing any maths then.) BB told me that he has a formula for pi which adds over 70 digits per term, and a Japanese mathematician has a formula for 1/pi which adds about 90 digits per term (the current record).