Wag the Dogma(continued from 2001) Ingrid
Thulin andGlenn Ford in"The 4 Horsemenof the Apocalypse":
A sneering review from TIME Magazine, March 23, 1962:
"Hero Ford, a playboy from Argentina, falls pampassionat…
Party Phone
for Van Morrisonon his birthday
A few words for M.C.C.: Honey Blonde
She's as sweet as tupelo honey She's an angel of the first degree.
She's as sweet as tupelo honey Just like honey, ba…
Seven
"Research & Ideas" memo from Harvard Business School dated April
17, 2006:
"The word experience comes from the Latin words ex pericolo, which mean
'from danger.'"
-- Etymology by Professor Joseph Badaracco o…
The Seventh Symbol:
A Multicultural Farewell
to a winner of theNobel Prize for Literature,the Egyptian author ofThe
Seventh Heaven:Supernatural Stories --
"Doctor Jackson has identifiedthe seventh symbol."-- Starg…
For the Feast of St. Ingrid:
The Hand of Grace
"Only the hand of grace can end the race"
-- Mary Gauthier
"Have you tried 22 tonight?"
-- Rick in Casablanca
Today's lottery in Pennsylvania(state of Grace):
Mid-da…
Today'sHollywood Birthday
William Friedkin,director ofThe Guardian,The Birthday Party,and The
Exorcist.
Related material:
Yesterday's entry on St. Augustineand the life ofRobert J. O'Connell,
S.J.,author ofPlato on th…
Under God
(continued from
August 11)
Today's Washington birthday:Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona). "... maybe it
was McCain's role as 'movie-teller' that he cherishes most-- the man
who used to narrate the plo…
Today's Sinner:
Augustine of Hippo, who is said tohave died on this date in 430 A.D.
"He is, after all, not merely taking over a Neoplatonic ontology, but
he is attempting to combine it with a scriptural tradition of a…
Today's Saint:Philosopher Max Black,who died
on this datein 1988"...
Max Black, the Cornell philosopher, and others have pointed out how
'perhaps every science must start with metaphor and end with algebra,
and perhap…
Philosopher's Rock (continued from previous
entry)
"Alcatraz, Spanish for pelican, was named Isla de los Alcatraces after
the birds that were the island's only inhabitants." --Bay City Guide
Related material
Thomas…
Today's birthday:Sean Connery
"Poetry is an illumination of a surface, the movement of a self in the
rock."-- Wallace Stevens, introduction to The Necessary Angel,
1951Welcome.First edition, 1936
Beginnings(continued fromAugust 22)
A classic of mathematical history in this week's New Yorker begins,
"On the evening of June 20th, several hundred physicists, including
a Nobel laureate, assembled in an auditorium …
Same TimeLast Year:
"'Once upon a time' used to be a gateway to a land that was inviting
precisely because it was timeless, like the stories it introduced and
their ageless lessons about the human condition."
-- Doroth…
IntroductionsIn talks at Valencia, Spain, in
May through August of
2004, Alexander Borisenko, of Kharkov National University in the
Ukraine, provided a detailed introduction to the topic of today's
opening lecture at ICM…
Beginnings"Nothing ever begins.There is no
first moment; no single word
or place from which this or any other story springs.The
threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the
tales that preceded tha…
Mathematics and Narrative (Geometrization
and Perelman)
MetaphysicalWonderlands
"With no means to verify its truth, superstring theory, in the words of
Burton Richter, director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center, may turn out to be 'a kind of metaphysical won…
For Jill St. John
On Her Birthday: Cleavage Term
Revisited "... a point of common understanding between the classic and
romantic worlds. Quality, the cleavage term
between hip and square, seemed to be it.…
Special Topics
From a review by Liesl Schillinger in the Aug. 13 New York Times of a
new novel by Marisha Pessl:"... Special Topics in Calamity Physics
tells the story of a wise newcomer who joins a circle of students …
Under God
continued from Friday
Above left: Lieutenant Dan
from "Forrest Gump"
Above right: This week's TIME
asks, "Who needs Harvard?"
Well, maybe Lieutenant Dan.
Perhaps he should heed
the words of …
Cleavage Term
"... a point of common understanding between the classic and romantic
worlds. Quality, the cleavage term
between hip and square, seemed to be it. Both worlds used the term.
Both knew what it wa…
DavidFrankfurter,author ofEvil
Incarnate(PrincetonUniv. Press)
Via dell'Inferno"Most modern men do not believe in hell because they
have not been there." -- Review of Malcolm Lowry's Under the VolcanoThe
…
Happy Six
(continued from
New Year's Day, 2006)
See David P. Roberts (1998)
on Twin Sextic Algebras
for a discussion of
sextic twinning as an
analogue of duality
in vector spaces:
Related material: R…
Under God
Adapted from August 7: "Saomai, the Vietnamese namefor the planet
Venus, was theeighth major storm to hit Chinaduring an unusually
violenttyphoon season."
-- AP online tonight Memorable Quotes …
Catechism
Q - No more Mr. Nice Guy?
A - Seven is heaven.
Echoes Log24 onWednesday,8/9/06:Absinthe
makes theheart grow
fonder...Log24 8/9/06:"Time disappearswith Tequila. It goes
elastic,then vanishes."-- Kylie Minogue Log 24 and New York Times
on 8/9/06:Log…
Night Listener (See previous entry.)
Thanks to Natalie at
KHYI, 95.3 FM, Plano, Texas
(hard country music),
for just now playing
A Fine Line, by Radney Foster:
There's a curve in the highway, just south of …
Timeagain: 3:57 Revisited Question
(NBC Nightly News
this evening)
Who is minding the
Internet liquor store?
Answer
The Green Fairy:
Kylie Minogue
in "Moulin Rouge"
Online news today at 3…
Two-Bar Hook Wikipedia on Mel Gibson:
"The arrest was supported by...
an open container... 75% full,
labeled 'Cazador [sic] tequila'
(a strong type of mezcal)."
Today's New York Times: Refined Teq…
The Crimson Passioncontinues...
From The Harvard Crimson today:
Ned Lamont '76 faces voterstoday in Connecticut's primary "Lamont was a
fourth generation legacy student
whose great-grandfather-- Thomas W. Lamont, cl…
Clown
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard." Mel Gibson in
"Conspiracy Theory" Hence …
ART WARS continued
Adapted from Rick McKee,
Augusta Chronicle, Aug. 2, 2006
Click on picture for details.
Script:
"David Stuart, a University of Texas master of Maya writing, stopped by
and tried to …
Game Boy Click on picture for details.
"Nine is a verypowerful Nordic number."-- Katherine Neville
http://www.dict.cc/?s=Einsatz: to put one's backinto something
bei etwasEinsatz zeigen t…
Zen and the Artof Definition"Good is a noun.
That was it. That was what
Phaedrus had been looking for. That was the homer over the fence that
ended the ballgame." --Robert M. Pirsig "How should we define
goodness?"-- Tit…
John Huston
was born
100 years ago on this date.
Huston directed
the film versions of
The Night of the Iguana
and
Under the Volcano.
"Borges' seminal short story
El jardin de senderos que se …
ART WARScontinued"Examples are
thestained-glass windowsof knowledge."--
Vladimir Nabokov Today's New York Times:Jason Rhoades, 41, Maker
ofTransgressive Installations,Is Dead For some backgroundon Rhoades's
Manhattan
g…
Quad
by
Samuel Beckett:
Click on the
figure for details.
"I am always about
in the Quad" --God
(Rhyme attributed to
Monsignor Ronald
Arbuthnott Knox)
Related material:
the previous entry,
an artic…
The Double CrossThe following symbol has been
associatedwith the
dateDecember 1:Click on the symbolfor details.That date is connectedto
today's date sinceDec. 1 is the feast--i.e., the deathday-- ofa saint
of mathematics…
The Presbyterian Exorcist
In memory of Charles W. Dunn, Harvard Professor of Celtic Languages and
Literatures Emeritus, who died July 24, 2006, at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center in Boston at the age of 90. Dunn…
ART WARScontinued from
previous entry
In memory ofElisabeth Schwarzkopf:
"Who is the fairest of them all?"This question might
well be posed by...Rosalind Krauss, Meyer Schapiro Professorof Modern
Art and Theory…
ART WARSContinued fromNov. 25, 2005
The Frankfurter SchoolFrom today's New York Times:A review of a current
Manhattan art exhibition--"It
begins with a juxtaposition of early body-oriented videos by Mr. Nauman
and P…
Let Noon Be FairComment at Peter Woit's
weblog today:"Would this be a
good time to bring up the social habits of ancient Greek mathematicial
philosophers?"Answer to this rhetorical question:
"De veras! It's so romanti…
In memory of Wallace Stevens,
Presbyterian saint, whose feast is today
Agon of the Critics:
Christian vs. Jew
The following are extracts from recent reviews of On Late Style, a book
by Edward Said.
John …
The Crimson Passion
continues.
The Harvard Jesus:
Crimson/Nancy K. Dutton
Monday, Feb. 23, 2004
"If Jesus does come back, he will likely be wearing a tie-dyed shirt,
smoking a joint, flashing t…
Final Arrangements,continued"Ontology
Alignment is
the process of determining
correspondences between concepts."
Online New York Times today "With a little effort,
anything can be shown toconnect with anything else:e…
Highway 1Revisited
John Constantine,cartoon character, andDonald E. Knuth,Lutheran
mathematician
"I need a photo-opportunity,I want a shot at redemption.Don't want to
end up a cartoonIn a cartoon graveyard."
Mel Gib…