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Old 05-24-2002, 08:13 AM   #16
Nar
Wight
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Posts: 228
Nar has just left Hobbiton.
Sting

Naar-- thank your father for his theory-- I remember just enough of my math major to know what fields & rings & ideals are in Algebra. I really enjoyed it. Maybe you & your father could write it up as an article for Barrowdowns-- I'd love to see it all laid out-- maybe then I could understand it! This is off-topic, but I collect fantasy/horror stories with mathematical themes. One is Frank Belnap Long's The Hounds of Tindalos, in which the biblical temtation & fall is reimagined as a sin against geometry-- yep, biting into that apple wasn't about sex or lust for knowledge, it was a sin because a perfect sphere was violated with (evil!) angles Quote: 'man, the pure part of him, is descended from a curve!' The hero tries to escape the embodied angles (the hounds) by plastering his room into the interior of a sphere. That is the nuttiest pulp fantasy/horror story I know. Although the mathematics is incoherent, Long's heart's in the right place.
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