First Day Issue:
Tierra de los Sueños / TdS•Posta
Εὕρηκα!
Bob travels to Siracusa,
sees erupting volcano Ætna,
finds Lost Tomb of Ἀρχιμήδης
2...volume of Inscribed Sphere
- = ---------------------------------
3...volume of Right Circular Cylinder
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Cara S****,
Grazie for inspiring me to have a little fun. Your friend Baron von Munchausen was fantasizing about travelling to Sicilia to see Aetna erupt, and find the Lost Tomb of Archimedes. So I made one of my incredibly talentless and stupid faux postage stamps about it.
I could not find any grappa bottles on the Web, so I used chianti.
This is my art -- Refrigerator Art. I am a huge fan of the American faux postage artist Donald Evans ... except he was a brilliant artist, and I am the Drunk Driver of Art. Fortunately the USA does not require artists to have a government license, or talent.
Tierra de los Sueños/TdS•Posta is one of my Postal Issuing Authorities, another is PostalÖ Vleeptron.
Oh but I am SO SORRY I got Archimedes' Ratio wrong! It's 2/3, not 1/3 ! I am really rusty and my memory is getting undependable.
To compare volumes of different shaped objects, Archimedes made wooden models of the objects -- a wooden sphere of a size which would fit inside a wooden cylinder -- and then weighed them. (You just have to use the same kind of wood.) He was a very smart guy.
He seems to have been a cousin of the Tyrant (King) of Siracusa, Hero.
Pythagoras lived nearer to you, in Crotone. (The neighbors burned down Pythagoras' cult compound twice. People today, particularly students, feel the same about mathematicians.)
Single-handedly the old man Archimedes -- around 70 years old -- held off the Roman Army from Siracusa for about three years, with his catapults and giant grappling hooks and glass lenses which set the Roman ships on fire. After a while, all he had to do was throw a rope over the city wall and the Roman soldiers would all scream and flee.
Hope you enjoy the silly stamp.
Bob
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