'Hello, I'm the Doctor. And, if you can hear this, then one of us is going to die'. At the bottom of the sea, in the wreck of a floating radio station, a lost recording has been discovered. After careful restoration, it is played for the first time - to reveal something incredible. It is the voice of the Doctor, broadcasting from Radio Bravo in 1966. He has travelled to Earth in search of the Hush - a terrible weapon that kills, silences and devours anything that makes noise - and has tracked it to a boat crewed by a team of pirate DJs.
The TARDIS lands the Doctor and Martha in the Lake District in 1909, where a small village has been terrorised by a giant, scaly monster. The search is on for the elusive 'Beast of Westmorland', and explorers, naturalists and hunters from across the country are descending on the fells. King Edward VII himself is on his way to join the search, with a knighthood for whoever finds the Beast. But there is a more sinister presence at work in the Lakes than a mere monsteron the rampage, and the Doctor is soon embroiled in the plans of an old and terrifying enemy.
The human being aspires to the best possible performance. Both individuals and enterprises are looking for optimal - in other words, the best possible - solutions for situations or problems they face. Most of these problems can be expressed in mathematical terms, and so the methods of optimization undoubtedly render a significant aid.
The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdös and the Search for Mathematical Truth
Paul Erdös was an amazing and prolific mathematician whose life as a world-wandering numerical nomad was legendary. He published almost 1500 scholarly papers before his death in 1996, and he probably thought more about math problems than anyone in history. Like a traveling salesman offering his thoughts as wares, Erdös would show up on the doorstep of one mathematician or another and announce, "My brain is open
In Search of British Heroes is the story of five legends of British history – Boudicca, Robin Hood, Macbeth, King Harold and William Wallace. All five of them can be said, by their lives and deaths, to have changed our country forever. Not because they were hugely successful, in fact, all but one died a failure, but because, even in their lifetimes, they were seen as symbolising something greater than themselves. This is the stuff of which true legends are made.
