Free Republic

LOS ANGELES Kathleen Holtz only got her driver's license two years ago. Now, at 18, she's got a law license. Holtz learned Friday that she passed the California bar exam. "It's not a big deal to me," Holtz said of her age. Eighteen is the minimum age to practice law in California but 30 is the average age of admission to the state bar. Holtz was 15 when she entered law school at UCLA, where she was a Law Review editor. "If you sat in the same class with her for a whole semester, you would never know she was...

The E8 pattern (left), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right) Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt). In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."

A surfer dude with no fixed address may be this century's Einstein. A. Garrett Lisi, a physicist who divides his time between surfing in Maui and teaching snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, has come up with what may be the Grand Unified Theory. That's the "holy grail" of physics that scientists have been searching for ever since Albert Einstein presented his General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago. Even more remarkable is that Lisi, who has a Ph.D. but no permanent university affiliation, solves the problem without resorting to exotic dimensions, string theory or exceptionally complex mathematics. A successful Grand...

British brains dominate list of living geniuses By Aislinn Simpson Last Updated: 1:07am GMT 29/10/2007 Britain has more living geniuses per head of population than anywhere else in the world, according to a new survey which reveals the country's influence on science, technology, business and the arts. Almost a quarter of those featured in the list of 100 living geniuses are Britons, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web, in joint first place, and physicist Stephen Hawking at seven in the list. British artists and musicians feature heavily, including Brit Art leader Damien Hirst at number 15,...

MENDELEEV SLEEP: The development of the periodic table of the elements was a leap forward in the chemical sciences. Although not responsible for discovering the elements he knew existed, Mendeleev organized the information available to him like no one else before him. It was his organizational skills that revealed something critically important to the advancement of mankind. What he discovered was new! Mendeleev noticed patterns in the properties and atomic weights of halogens, alkali metals and alkaline metals. According to the legend, Mendeleev had written what he knew about existing elements on the equivalent of flash cards and organized, reorganized...

With reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act high on the agenda as Congress returns from its recess, lawmakers must confront the fact that the law is causing many concerned parents to abandon public schools that are not failing. These parents are fleeing public schools not only because, as documented by a recent University of Chicago study, the act pushes teachers to ignore high-ability students through its exclusive focus on bringing students to minimum proficiency. Worse than this benign neglect, No Child forces a fundamental educational approach so inappropriate for high-ability students that it destroys their interest in learning,...

Tributes have been pouring in for Ingmar Bergman, one of the most influential film directors of the 20th century, who died on Monday at his home on the Swedish island of Fårö. He was 89. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt hailed Bergman as "one of the great dramatists in this world," and French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to "one of the geniuses of our time." "The dream ended, the music went quiet that night on the island of Fårö, where Ingmar Bergman died," Sarkozy said. "France, a land of the cultural exception that was dear to Ingmar Bergman, honours...

LONDON — Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen. The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks. May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful. Queen were one of Britain's biggest music groups in the 1970s, with hits...

Her parents knew Georgia Brown was bright. After all, she could count to ten, recognised her colours and was even starting to dabble with French. But it was only when their bubbly little two-year-old took an IQ test that her towering intellect was confirmed. Georgia has become the youngest female member of Mensa after scoring a genius-rated IQ of 152. This puts her in the same intellectual league, proportionate to her age, as physicist Stephen Hawking. According to an expert in gifted children, Georgia is the brightest two-year-old she has ever met. Parents Martin and Lucy Brown have always...

Her parents knew Georgia Brown was bright. After all, she could count to ten, recognised her colours and was even starting to dabble with French. But it was only when their bubbly little two-year-old took an IQ test that her towering intellect was confirmed. Georgia has become the youngest female member of Mensa after scoring a genius-rated IQ of 152. Georgia Brown has an official genius-rated IQ - Intelligence Quotient - of 152 This puts her in the same intellectual league, proportionate to her age, as physicist Stephen Hawking. According to an expert in gifted children, Georgia is the brightest...

True pleasure comes from finding things out. Acquiring knowledge is like a zero dollar investment that can pay its owner dividends for the rest of their life. If you’ve ever experienced the feeling of breaking new intellectual ground, you know it’s transcendent. Discovery is a form of renewal, more revolutionary than any war or politics. Having experienced epic revelation is like being born again; renewed through cognitive baptism. When you know you’ve learned something [so extremely] important, it consumes you, that’s Shangri-La! Learning has an extremely spiritual dimension to it which makes it deserving of its own religion. Learnianity, for...

As the LAPD cracks down on the city's most violent street gangs, federal and county officials have launched their own campaigns to apprehend and deport gangsters who are in the county illegally. For the first time, federal immigration officers are tracking incarcerated gang members, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is creating a database of gang members who are in the U.S. illegally. The FBI is also strengthening its ties to international police agencies and hopes to create a gang intelligence center in El Salvador. "We want to connect the dots the same way we have been doing with...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

Top-seeded Roger Federer defended his title at the Australian Open, beating 10th-seeded Fernando Gonzalez 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-4 in Sunday's final. Australian Open Scoreboard Every match, both men's and women's, throughout the Australian Open. Complete Scores It was Federer's 10th Grand Slam title, and his third in the last four years in Melbourne. The win also extended his win streak to 36 matches, the longest of his career and fifth best in the Open era. Federer also became the first player since Bjorn Borg at the French Open in 1980 to win a Grand Slam title without dropping a set....

The sixteenth century was a period of tumultuous change in Western Europe. The need for some kind of moral and intellectual shake–up within the church had been obvious for some time. Many religious and political writers of the fifteenth century had been aware of the weaknesses of the medieval church and the society in which it was embedded. However, there are good reasons for thinking that few were really prepared for the radical events of the sixteenth century, which are generally referred to collectively as "the Reformation." The Reformation remains of central importance for Christian theology and the life...

Freud's Will to Power BY RONALD W. DWORKIN November 29, 2006 Legend has it that Freud, although educated in the philosophies of his day, studiously avoided the work of Nietzsche to preserve the originality of his ideas against external influence. Nietzsche's analysis of the human psyche, how values were supposedly projections of people's unspoken jealousies and fears, ran dangerously close to Freud's idea (still a work in progress at the end of the 19th century) that the roots of conscious behavior lay in unconscious desires. But after reading Dr. Peter Kramer's outstanding new biography of Freud (HarperCollins, 213 pages, $21.95),...

BOOK REVIEW & DISCUSSION: Ain't Got No Cigarettes: Memories of Music Legend Roger Miller By Lyle E Style "It's an endless story about Roger. He was one of the cleverest people I've ever met in my life." (Waylon Jennings) This is my own review of Ain't Got No Cigarettes, the first Roger Miller book ever published. My review is based on reading the book (twice) and having several discussions with Lyle E Style, the author. He may stop by later to answer questions (as his schedule allows). This one is a must-read, folks. And for you radio personalities who...

Parents and teachers call him St. Paul's low-key whiz kid. Jake Heichert grew up spurning studying, sleeping through the occasional exam — and, most recently, earning a rare pair of perfect scores on the ACT and SAT. Last week, his family sat around their living room, wondering how it all happened. Rich and Susan Heichert's only child received a 2400 on his SAT college assessment test in May. In February he scored a 36 on his ACT. He earned perfect 5s on his Advanced Placement tests in chemistry, U.S. history, and government and politics. Oh, and calculus, Jake added. Almost...

Maths genius declines top prize Photos of the reclusive genius are rare Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards. Dr Perelman was to have been presented with the prestigious Fields Medal by King Juan Carlos of Spain, at a ceremony in Madrid on Tuesday. In 2002, the mathematician claimed to have solved a century-old problem called the Poincare Conjecture. So far, experts working to verify his proof have found no significant flaws. There had been considerable speculation that Grigory "Grisha" Perelman would...