Game Theory

Twelve years ago, Walters Art Museum curator Will Noel opened a parcel and discovered what he calls "Archimedes' brain in a box. " Thus began a search for buried treasure — in this case, the lost writings of Archimedes of Syracuse, a famed Greek mathematician and inventor who lived in the third century B.C. Noel and his boss, museum director Gary Vikan, found a 174-page book made of cured goatskin that was ugly beyond belief. The sheaves were singed around the edges, the text and pages were defaced by water stains, and mold had eaten away entire sections.

LEONID HURWICZ, 90 Nobel laureate in economics Leonid Hurwicz, who shared the Nobel Prize in economics last year for developing a theory that helps explain how buyers and sellers can maximize their gains, has died, a spokesman said yesterday. Dr. Hurwicz died Tuesday, said Mark Cassutt, spokesman for the University of Minnesota, where Dr. Hurwicz was an emeritus economics professor.. Dr. Hurwicz was given his prize in Minneapolis last December because he couldn't make the trip to Stockholm, Sweden.

As usual, my playlist is a wildly eclectic mix of sounds. The new releases I'm listening to this week range from evocative '50s blues to ferocious post-grunge rock. In between, there's quirky urban pop and dense, progressive hip-hop. Percy Mayfield, Specialty Profiles: Let's start with the oldie of the bunch by one of the most undervalued songsmiths in pop. Two years ago, the Concord Music Group acquired the catalog of Specialty, Art Rupe's legendary '50s label that released pioneering rock 'n' roll records by Little Richard and Lloyd Price and early gospel tracks by the Soul Stirrers featuring a young Sam Cooke.

Perhaps the second most important poker tournament of the year was scheduled to finish sometime in the wee hours earlier this morning with the final table showdown of the World Poker Tour Championship at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. The biggest name among the six finalists was Men "The Master" Nguyen, the flamboyant California card room veteran who has been a mentor to a generation of Vietnamese players. But Nguyen, known for his effusive personality, was the short stack at the six-player table with 1.49 million chips.

Music - buying it, making it, spinning it for others - consumes so much of Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson's life these days that sleep is a rare luxury. But he wouldn't have it any other way. When the Philadelphia-based drummer isn't in the studio or on the road with his band, the Roots, playing more than 200 dates a year, he's beating the skins for other acts (Jay-Z, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Jaguar Wright, Christina Aguilera, the list flows on). And when he isn't keeping time on the drums, he's accelerating or suspending it as a DJ on the turntables.

NATIONAL Beaten man denies claim A retired elementary teacher who was repeatedly punched in the head by police in an incident caught on videotape said yesterday that he had not been drunk, put up no resistance and was baffled by what happened. pg 3a WORLD Quake relief begins arriving Pakistan's army and international relief agencies delivered a first trickle of food, medicine and tents yesterday to some areas shattered by Saturday's earthquake, but most of the devastated region remained isolated by rockslides and broken bridges.

World Wrestling Entertainment star John Cena stars in his second movie, the action-adventure 12 Rounds, which opens Friday. We caught up with the professional wrestler recently to discuss his acting career. Was acting in a movie easier for you the second time around, after having done The Marine? It was certainly easier, but I don't think it had everything to do with the experience from The Marine. We really just had a very, very good crew. Mark Gordon's production company - he produced Speed, Saving Private Ryan - really stepped in there with Fox to make sure this thing kind of knocked itself out of the park.

"A Beautiful Mind," by Sylvia Nasar. Simon & Schuster. 440 pages. $25. At age 21, John Forbes Nash unleashed a theory of rational behavior that would change the face of economics and win a Nobel Prize. Nine years later, he was confined to a mental hospital with a full-blown case of schizophrenia.Now 70, Nash has inspired the biography "A Beautiful Mind," by New York Times economics reporter Sylvia Nasar. Was Nash's mental illness the dark underside of his stunning numerical brilliance? Is it the case that "a predisposition to schizophrenia was integral to Nash's exotic style of thought as a mathematician?"

A summer program that offers gifted students an opportunity to pursue such passions as building a robot, exploring the science of the Chesapeake Bay, playing jazz or learning the physics of solar power has been sliced out of Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget for 2010. The Maryland Summer Centers for Gifted Students have run for 42 years but will end after this summer if advocates for gifted students and their parents can't persuade the administration to restore the funding, about $413,000.

Positively Fifth Street, by James McManus. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 416 pages. $26. Positively Fifth Street explores those two most American of pastimes -- poker and murder. It is the story of Texas no-limit hold 'em -- the ultimate high-stakes card game -- and the sharpies who flock to Las Vegas every spring for a showdown in the World Series of Poker. And it is the story of the grisly murder of Ted Binion -- a heroin addict and roustabout whose father founded the World Series and who dies, in classic Vegas style, at the hands of a stripper and her boyfriend.