Being and
TimeBeingHeideggerTimeEinsteinHeidegger's birthday: September
26.Einstein's birthday: March 14.Fred Zinnemann, who won an Oscarfor
directing "From Here to Eternity":Zinnemann's birth…
ART WARS:
Toward Eternity
April is Poetry Month, according to the Academy of American Poets. It
is also Mathematics Awareness Month, funded by the National Security
Agency; this year's theme is "Mathematics and Art.…
ART WARS:
Graphical Password
From a summary of "The Design and Analysis of Graphical Passwords":
"Results from cognitive science show that people can remember pictures
much better than words....
The 5x5 grid creates …
Mark
Today is the feast of Saint Mark. It seems an appropriate day to thank
Dr. Gerald McDaniel for his online cultural calendar, which is
invaluable for suggesting blog topics.
Yesterday's entry "Cross-Referenced" re…
ART WARS:
A Terrible Beauty
On this date in 1905, Robert Penn Warren, the first poet laureate of
the United States, was born. This is also the date of Ireland's 1916
Easter Monday rebellion, of which Yeats wrote th…
Cross-Referenced
†
Shortly after midnight on the night of April 22-23, I updated my entry
for Shakespeare's birthday with the following quotation: "With a little
effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything…
Midnight in the Gardenof Good and Evilon
Shakespeare's Birthday
Tony Scherman on an April 7, 1968, recording by Nina Simone:
"...nobody could telescope more emotion into a single,
idiosyncratically turned syllable (lis…
Temptation
Locomotive The Starof Venus
Locomotion
In memory of Nina Simone, a singer who died April 21, whose
autobiography was titled (after the Screamin' Jay Hawkins song) I Put a
Spell on You, and…
Riddle This world is not conclusion; A
sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound.
It beckons and it baffles; Philosophies don’t know,
And…
Hall of Shame
"You belong with the cowards and ideologues in a hall of infamy and
shame."
-- Actor Tim Robbins, who played pitcher Nuke LaLoosh in "Bull Durham,"
in a letter to baseball Hall of Fame president Dale Petr…
Easter Greetings.
Claves Regni Caelorum
"June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone
forever with only the sense of it all left here in his head. Now, a
whole autumn, a white winter, a cool and greening…
Harrowing
In memory of the many who have died on April 19, most notably Octavio
Paz.
"There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the
harrowing of Hell. But it is the Consul whom we think of here, ra…
A Red Mass
For G. H. Hardy, who, although he kept a portrait of Lenin in his
rooms, knew more of truth than most Christians ever know.
"317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are
shaped in one wa…
To the Society of Jesus(also known as the
Jesuits):
Have a Good Friday,Traitors
†
Prompted by Pilate's question "What is truth?" and by my March 24
attack on Noam Chomsky, I decided this afternoon to further investig…
Holiday Affair
From a site recommended by oOMisfitOo:
In The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi (Rutgers University
Press, 1999), Michael R. Molnar explains how the purchase of a $50
Roman coin led him to discov…
Keeping Time
The title of this entry comes from T. S. Eliot (see below). The
subject, and the relevance of the Kipling passage, are from Eleanor
Cameron's Green and Burning Tree, itself the subject of an April 15
entry…
Green and Burning
After posting the 2:42 PM entry at a public library this afternoon, I
picked up the following at a "Friends of the Library" used-book sale:
The Green and Burning Tree:On the Writing and Enjoymentof C…
Once Upon a Time On Tuesday, April 15, 2003,
at 5:01 PM EST, this place was reserved for later use. It now seems an
appropriate spot to put Maurice Rapf, a screenwriter, a blacklisted
Communist fellow-traveler, and l…
Certain Things
by Murray L. Bob
DEATH:
The great equalizer. The only vacation for which you need no
reservation. Death was more acceptable when people didn't live as long.
More proof, if any was needed, that th…
Palm Sunday, Part II:
Cold Mountain
From the notes to the CD of Songs From the Mountain (John Herrmann,
Dirk Powell, Tim O'Brien):
"John [Herrmann, banjo player] would like to dedicate his work on this
recording to Ph…
3:07 PM
Palm Sunday
"The folk scene, in reality, was a strange coming together of liberal
ideals, rural traditions, marketing and youth culture...."
— David Hajdu, review of "A Mighty Wind" in The New York Times of Pa…
2:23 PMSequelto the previous two entries
"This world is not conclusion;A sequel stands beyond...."— Emily
Dickinson
Today's birthday: dancer/actress Ann Miller.
"In 1937, she was discovered by Lucille Ball...." …
Rhetoric Happens
"Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall."
— Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, quoted by Douglas Robinson at
the site Linguistics and Language
CNN.com headline, Saturday, Apri…
Heaven's Gate
"Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall."
— Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, quoted by Douglas Robinson at
the site Linguistics and Language
Mesopotamian mathematics: "Loca…
The Poet as Prophet
In honor of Wallace Stevens, quoted in yesterday's entry of 3:07 PM
EDT: April 8, 3:07 PM EDT April 9, 10:50 AM EDT
The Shadow and the Valley
Bad news this morning. An old friend is gone.In light of last night's
entry, the best I can do at the moment is yet another trilogy of links:
A song
A reading
A psalm
Hearts of Darkness
Today's birthdays:
Charles Baudelaire, poet, b. 1821
Leopold II, King of Belgium, b. 1835
Tom Lehrer, mathematician, b. 1928
In view of these birthdays and of yesterday's entry quoting Eliot on
"t…
Death's Dream Kingdom
April 7, 2003, Baghdad - A US tank blew a huge statue of President
Saddam Hussein off its pedestal in central Baghdad on Monday with a
single shell, a US officer said.... "One shot, one kill."
"Wh…
Babar's Dream
In memory of Cécile de Brunhoff, discoverer of Babar, who died
yesterday at the age of 99.
"Here we see the imagined universe of Babar's Dream by Jean de
Brunhoff. In an archetypal battle between good…
Buddha's Birthday Song
Backstory
Lyrics:
As I'm listeningTo the bellsOf the cathedralI am thinkingOf your
voice...And of the midnight picnicOnce upon a time....
Thinking of her voice
Math Awareness Month
April is Math Awareness Month.This year's theme is "mathematics and
art."
An Offer He Couldn't Refuse
Today's birthday: Francis Ford Coppola is 64.
"There is a pleasantly discursive treatment of Pontius Pilate's
unanswered question 'What is truth?'."
— H. S. M. Coxeter, 1987, introductio…
Art Wars:Mathematics and theEmperor's New
Art
From Maureen Dowd's New York Times column of June 9, 2002: "The shape
of the government is not as important as the policy of the government.
If he makes the policy aggres…
Mathematics Awareness Month
April is the cruellest month....
Do you know nothing?Do you see nothing?Do you remember "Nothing"?
— T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
From Michael Pearson, Director of Programs and Serv…
The Eight
Today, the fourth day of the fourth month, plays an important part in
Katherine Neville's The Eight. Let
us honor this work, perhaps the greatest bad novel of the twentieth
century, by reflecting on some pr…
Musical Metaphysics
Some background for my journal entries of April 2, 2003 (Symmetries),
of March 31, 2003 (Sunday Lottery), and of March 28, 2003 (Bright
Star):
In memory of Rusty Draper, who died Friday, March …
Symmetries.... May 15, 1998
The following journal note, from the day after Sinatra died, was
written before I heard of his death. Note particularly the quote
from Rilke. Other material was suggested, in part, by Ala…