Showing posts with label geeks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label geeks. Show all posts

Friday, July 27, 2007

Monday, April 16, 2007

J.R.R. Tolkien's New Book


...newly resurrected by his son Christopher, here is the new book coming out April 17th that follows the figure of Turin.

Watch the Online Preview with Art by Alan Lee


Full Article

You'd think the horns of the Valar had been sounded and the island of Numenor had risen from the Western Sea.

If that sentence means anything to you at all, you may already know that on April 17 the first book in 30 years to be published under the name JRR Tolkien is released worldwide. The Children of Hurin, started in 1918 but abandoned, has been 'reconstructed' by the writer's son Christopher.

The story promises to be darker than anything seen in Tolkien's other books, including scenes of incest and suicide. While his other work was influenced by English medieval literature, Hurin is more indebted to the Finnish national epic Kalevala

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

More Dimensions Than You Can Shake a Stick At..

Math Geeks Unite and Celebrate!

Full Article

After four years of intensive collaboration, 18 top mathematicians and computer scientists from the United States and Europe have successfully mapped E8, one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics, scientists said late Sunday.

Jeffrey Adams, project leader and mathematics professor at the University of Maryland said E8 was discovered over a century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure could ever be understood.

"This groundbreaking achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge, as well as a major advance in the use of large scale computing to solve complicated mathematical problems," Adams said.

He added that the mapping of E8 may well have unforeseen implications in mathematics and physics which won't be evident for years to come.

E8 belongs to so-called Lie groups that were invented by a 19th century Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie, to study symmetry.

The theory holds that underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group.

Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects.

However, mathematicians study symmetries in higher dimensions. In fact, E8 itself is 248-dimensional.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

R2-D2

Would you like your own R2-D2 droid, one that will follow you around, play DVD's and project them for you, plug your iPod into, that will except S-Video and USB cables? and has a built in stereo system?

Check him out here

There is even a video of him...