The Proof and the Lie
A mathematical lie has been circulating on the Internet.
It concerns the background of Wiles's recent work on mathematics
related to Fermat's last theorem, which involves the earlier work of a
mat…
Sermon for St. Andrew's Day:
Necessity Is the Mother of Invention.
(Flag thanks to a Stevenson family site)
Command at Mount Sinai
Tuesday, Nov. 25, was the feast day of St. Catherine, patroness of a
monastery at Mount Sinai. (See entries for that date.)
"In a landmark essay,* the anthropologist Bernard S. Cohn showed how
th…
Understanding Media
BBC News, March 2, 2002:
"The Reverend Billy Graham has apologised for a taped conversation with
former President Nixon in which he said the Jewish 'stranglehold' of
the media was ruining the United…
Wheels for St. Catherine
"This java applet displays the wave functions of a particle in a three
dimensional harmonic oscillator."
See also the Chapel of the Burning Bush at St. Catherine's Monastery.
St. Catherine's Day
As the previous three entries indicate, I have little respect for the
lies of the Bible. Certain Christian traditions are, however, worthy of
respect.... among them, the observance of Nov. 25 as St.…
Farewell to 40-Year Holiday
Hope everyone had a happy "Sam the Sham Day," a religious holiday with
roots in the Book of Exodus:
"We got the... name from the movie 'The Ten Commandments.' Old Ramses,
the King of Egypt, …
A Contribution to Trudeau's"Story Theory of
Truth" --
Epic of the Chosen People:
After Forty Yearsin the Wilderness,
The Winners Are...
Dallas, 1963:
Sam the Sham"started his music careerin Dallas in the early six…
Epiphany
Yesterday, to give thanks for the winning score in the Harvard-Yale
game (Harvard won, 37 to 19), I browsed the Net to find the religious
significance, if any, of the number "37." I encountered the picture at…
For Saint Cecilia's Day
"Bastian Perrot... constructed a frame, modeled on a child's abacus, a
frame with several dozen wires on which could be strung glass beads of
various sizes, shapes, and colors. The wires correspo…
School Book Depository
Pro-Truth
Pro-Lies
"Many people look at the Kennedy assassination as a turning point, when
people started realizing and thinking and believing their government
would lie to them and li…
Chinese Theatre, Part II:
Just Say NO
For more on the above "spider" symbol, see
ART WARS for Trotsky's Birthday(Oct. 26, 2003), Parts I and II
and the site from whichthe above figure is taken,
Yin &…
November Oscar
From weebay.com:
November
This nauticalflag signifiesthe letter N.
Oscar
This nauticalflag signifiesthe letter O.
Just say November Oscar.
(See previous entry.)
Chinese Theatre
Epic Records released a new Michael Jackson album, "Number Ones," on
Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003.
From Those Were the Days:
On this date in...
"1984 - The largest crowd to see the unveiling of a Hollywood …
Staying the Course
"However flawed the case for invading Iraq may have been, the premature
withdrawal of U.S. military forces would not only be a humiliating
defeat for the United States but a betrayal of the hopes of t…
Total Recall:
in which Philip K. Dickmeets Joan Didion yet again
From Joan Didion's new work on California history, Where I Was From:
"There was never just the golden dream of riches and bountiful nature,
but always a…
Inaugural Poem for California: Archaischer
Torso Apollos
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,darin die Augenäpfel
reiften.
Abersein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,in dem sein Schauen,
n…
Russell Crowe as Santa's Helper
From The Age, Nov. 17, 2003:
"Russell Crowe's period naval epic has been relegated to second place
at the US box office by an elf raised by Santa's helpers at the North
Pole."
From A …
The Empty Center From Stephen Mitchell,
foreword toThe Enlightened Heart:An Anthology of Sacred Poetry:
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,But the Secret sits in the middle
and knows,”Robert Frost wrote,lookin…
From theEmpty Center:
From Friday's 2:56 AM entry --
Philip K. Dick,The Man in the High Castle:
"Sun at the top.Tui at the bottom.Empty in the center."
"Do you knowwhat hexagram that is?"she said."Without u…
Aes Triplex
The title, from a Robert Louis Stevenson essay, means "triple brass"
(or triple bronze):
From the admirable site of J. Nathan Matias:
"Aes Triplex means Triple Bronze, from a line in Horace's Odes that r…
Philip K. Dick Meets Joan Didion
From the ending ofThe Man in the High Castle:
Juliana said, "I wonder why the oracle would write a novel. Did you
ever think of asking it that?" ....
"You may say the question aloud," …
The Tables of Time
Implied by previous two entries:
"This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is
immortal diamond." -- Gerard Manley Hopkins,
"That Natur…
Change and Permanence:A Philosophical
Quartet
Heraclitus
Hopkins
H. Wilhelm
Paul B. Yale
Dream of the Unified Field
Quartet:
Shanavasa, Ananda,Jorie Graham, Robert Louis Stevenson "Shanavasa asked
Ananda,
'What is the fundamental uncreated essence of all things?' "
-- Jorie Graham, "Relativity: A Qu…
The Silver Table
"And suddenly all was changed. I saw a great assembly of gigantic forms
all motionless, all in deepest silence, standing forever about a little
silver table and looking upon it. And on the table there…
Divine Comedy
Michael Joseph Gross:
"The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewis's Divine Comedy: the narrator bears
strong resemblance to Lewis (by way of Dante); his Virgil is the
fantasy writer George MacDonald; and upon boardi…
11:11
"Why do we remember the pastbut not the future?"
-- Stephen Hawking,A Brief History of Time,Ch. 9, "The Arrow of Time"
For another look atthe arrow of time, see
Time Fold.
Imaginary Time: The Concept
"Imagina…
Eleven.
For Hermann Weyl's Birthday:
A Structure-Endowed Entity
"A guiding principle in modern mathematics is this lesson: Whenever you
have to do with a structure-endowed entity S, try to determine its
group of automorphisms,…
A Beautiful Fantasy:
The Secret life of John Nash
"Dr. Blind (pronounced 'Blend') was about ninety years old and had
taught, for the past fifty years, a course called 'Invariant Subspaces'
which was noted for its mon…
Today in History:The Comeback Kid
(Courtesy of Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar)
On this date:
In 1962, having lost the California governor's race, Richard Nixon said
to the press, "You won't have Nixon to kick around any …
Legacy Codes:
The Most Violent Poem
Lore of the Manhattan Project:
From The Trinity Site --
"I imagined Oppenheimer saying aloud, 'Batter my heart, three person'd
God," unexpectedly recalling John Donne's 'Holy Sonne…
Legacy Codes
"In writing The Legacy Codes, the term itself became the play's central
metaphor. In newspaper accounts of the Wen Ho Lee case, the classified
legacy codes which caused the uproar were described as computer…
Game Over "Everything that has a beginning
has an end."
-- The Matrix Revolutions
Matrix, by Knots, Inc., 1979.
"Easy to master -- A lifetime to enjoy!"
The object for 2 players (8-adult)is to be the first to f…
Endings and Beginnings
Today's birthday: author Sam Shepard.
From pbs.org:
"Shepard has a noted aversion to pat endings: 'I hate endings. Just
detest them. . . . The temptation toward resolution, towards wrapping
up t…
Library of Paradise
Click to enlarge.
In memory of architect Philip Chu, who designed the above library at
Amherst College:
"Chu was best known for his designs of college libraries, which his
family said blended 'mode…
Chronotope
The polytope at left in the illustration below might, to use the term
of Bakhtin, be called a "chronotope."
See Time Fold for a literary context.
All Souls' Dayat the Still Point
From remarks on Denis Donoghue's Speaking of Beauty in the New York
Review of Books, issue dated Nov. 20, 2003, page 48:
"The Russian theorist Bakhtin lends his august authority to what…
Symmetry in Diamond Theory:Robbing Peter to
Pay Paul
"Groups arise in most areas of pure and applied mathematics, usually as
a set of operators or transformations of some structure. The appearance
of a group generally r…
All Saints' Day:The Song of Saint Ezra
Ezra Pound, imagist poet and fascist saint, died on this date in 1972.
"But you, newest song of the lot, You are not old enough to have done
much mischief. I will get you a…