Vector and Matrix Algebra is a short tutorial from Complexity Explorer. It is really quite elementary. I took a formal course in Linear Algebra long ago, and have reviewed the basics a couple times since then. I wanted to see if I still understand those basics. The answer is that I do: I had no trouble at all with the material.
Continue reading‘Bhí sailéid[veriant] ag Miss Montague. Ubh beirithe a bhí agam féin.’
‘Cad a bhí sa sailéid?’
‘Bradán stánaithe, leitís, tráta agus prátaí beirithe.’
D’ith an Duinníneach slaimice aráin agus d’ól sé muigín tae,
gan focal as [3rd pers sing prep pronoun]. D’ól Minnie deora beaga tae ón mhuigín aici siúd go
béasach agus chogain sí grabhóga aráin lena fiacla tosaigh mar
dhéanfadh coinín.
‘Miss Montague had a salad. I myself had a boiled egg.’
‘What was in the salad?’
‘Canned salmon, lettuce, a tomato, and boiled potatoes.’
Dineen ate a chunk of bread and drank a little mug of tea, without a word out of him.
Minnie drank small drops of tea from her little mug there politely and
she chewed bread crumbs with her front teeth like a rabbit would.
| sailéad | salad | m gs npl sailéid |
| Bradán | salmon | |
| stánaithe | canned | |
| muga | mug | m |
| deoir | drop | f npl deora |
| béasach | Well-behaved; mannerly, polite | |
| cogain | chew | |
| grabhróg | crumb | f npl grabhróga |
| tosaigh | begin, start | |
| tosach | beginning, front | m gs tosaigh |
Tumblr User Explains Why Elves’ Eyes In Lord Of The Rings Shouldn’t Look The Way They Do, but in fact there is no problem.
In The Two Towers Legolas claims to clearly see the horsemen of Rohan at a distance of 5 leagues. How is this possible when you consider the curvature of the Earth? You can come up with some bizarre ideas about Elven anatomy which are not suggested in the books or seen in the movies. However, there is a an elegant answer based on the nature of Arda, Tolkien’s world. It was flat, not round, until the end of the second age. At that time the Valar made it round so that mortals could not access Valinor. But Elves could still go there. For them the Earth was still flat and they could sail the straight path to Valinor. Hence for Legolas the curvature of the Earth and the horizon did not exist and hence he could accurately see the horsemen 5 leagues away.
Confession: I got through a 41 year career in IT, mostly in banking and government, without ever compiling or running a COBOL program. I recently saw A very short introduction to COBOL, which describes how to install COBOL on a Mac and how to compile and run a very simple COBOL program. So I tried this on Ubuntu Linux 20.04.
Continue readingExploring the People of Middle-earth: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, an Unexpected Hero.
… Lobelia is one of only a few Hobbit women who are given more than a momentary glance in Middle-earth, and a compelling character in her own right. And what’s more, her narrative arc illustrates beautifully some of the more important lessons The Lord of the Rings has to teach, as she becomes an unlikely hero to those who had consistently refused to give her a chance.
This will only make sense if you have read the books. Peter Jackson did not include the Scouring of the Shire in the film version of The Return of the King.
I went (via Zoom) to a great lecture last night. Serafina Nance spoke to the The Calgary Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada on Tracing the Lives, Deaths, and Explosions of Massive Stars.
Supernovae are cosmic events of gigantic power. Their explosions can shine as bright as a galaxy, a pinprick of extraordinarily bright light in the night sky. What is less well-understood, however, is which stars reach the point of explosion and how they evolve to their deaths. Interestingly, their explosions provide astronomers with key tools to uncover fundamental aspects of our Universe. While we know that the Universe is expanding at an accelerated rate due to dark energy, the rate of the expansion of the Universe is not well-constrained. Supernovae provide us with independent ways to measure this expansion and work to resolve one of the most pivotal questions in astronomy: How fast is the Universe really expanding?Continue reading
The Book of Kings: The book that defines Iranians.
An epic poem written in the 11th Century helped save the Persian language
Mithra-ndir: Gandalf and the Roman cult of Mithras.
J.R.R. Tolkien described The Lord of the Rings as a fundamentally Catholic work. But a close reading of the epic novel reveals many more influences, including a connection between Mithras and the wizard Gandalf, whose Elvish name is Mithrandir.Continue reading
I really do not have much talent for foreign languages, but I find them fascinating. I studied German in High School and Russian in College. For some years now I have studying Irish. Last summer I took a short introduction to Ancient Babylonian. I have had a interest in Latin for a long time. So when I found on Facebook a notice for Vocatio ad cenamI decided to sign up.
There were three days of video lessons, entirely in Latin. Simplified Latin, but still Latin. We worked through Carmen XIII, by Catullus. The first day was with a very simplied version of the text, while on the second we had a version that was less simplified. One the third day we went through the original text. The class ended the next day with an interactive session to review the exercises and have some general discussion.
Continue readingBent Out of Shape: The Ring of Power and the Wraithing of Humanity.
It runs against human nature to reject an advantage once we have it, but that’s what Tolkien’s heroes do again and again. It seems natural to long to wield power and to have great authority, but Tolkien uses a Ring and a concept—wraithing—to warn us against the terrible, corrupting force of absolute power.
Also
“And here is where I take a brief aside and beg you to please read the books if you have only seen the movies, because Peter Jackson utterly destroyed Faramir’s character in the movie.”
See Tolkien vs. Jackson: Differences Between Story and Screenplay. For myself, I had read LOTR many times before seeing the first movie. Hence when seeing the movies my mind automatically filled in the parts Jackson omitted, and corrected those he changed. The books come first, in more than one way.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 