Vacation My main computer decided to take a vacation, so there will be no more detailed entries for (probably) a couple of weeks. Congratulations, all you short-timers, on having nearly made it through another school year. Update of May 1: Change "detailed entries" to "entries that take a lot of research time on the computer." Posted 4/30/2003 at 6:30 PM |
Heidegger's birthday: September 26. Einstein's birthday: March 14. Fred Zinnemann, who won an Oscar Zinnemann's birthday: today, April 29. In honor of Zinnemann, a cheerful man, who died on Einstein's birthday in 1997, our site music today is the cheerful Gershwin tune "Our Love Is Here To Stay." In honor of Olivia Newton-John (granddaughter of physicist Max Born), who notably portrayed the Muse Terpsichore in "Xanadu"◊ and who shares a September 26 birthday with Gershwin, T. S. Eliot, and Heidegger, today's midi of "Our Love" has a special arrangement. Ms. Newton-John might wish to commemorate the romance ("Passionate!" -- Yale University Press) of Hannah Arendt, a Jewish political theorist, and Heidegger, a Catholic Nazi, by listening to "Our Love" on the acoustic bass and glockenspiel.† Terpsichore is the Muse of Dance. September 26, 1905. ◊ Not to be confused with an Orson Welles † Glockenspiel means "bell-play." Posted 4/29/2003 at 3:17 PM |
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." Some previous journal entries for this month seem to be summarized by Emily Dickinson's remarks: "Because I could not stop for Death-- Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity-- " Consider the following journal entries from April 7, 2003:
The "horse's head" figure above is from a note I wrote on this date 18 years ago. The following journal entry from April 4, 2003, gives some details:
Posted 4/28/2003 at 12:07 AM |
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 a good balance between security and memorability." -- Ian Jermyn, New York University; Alain Mayer, Fabian Monrose, Michael K. Reiter, Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies; Aviel Rubin, AT&T Labs — Research Illustration -- Warren Beatty as "Town & Country," Those who prefer the simplicity of a 3x3 grid are referred to my entry of Jan. 9, 2003, Balanchine's Birthday. For material related to the "Town & Country" theme and to Balanchine, see Leadbelly Under the Volcano (Jan. 27, 2003). ("Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in town..." - Huddie Ledbetter). Those with more sophisticated tastes may prefer the work of Stephen Ledbetter on Gershwin's piano preludes or, in view of Warren Beatty's architectural work in "Town & Country," the work of Stephen R. Ledbetter on window architecture. As noted in Balanchine's Birthday, Apollo (of the Balanchine ballet) has been associated by an architect with the 3x3, or "ninefold" grid. The reader who wishes a deeper meditation on the number nine, related to the "Town & Country" theme and more suited to the fact that April is Poetry Month, is referred to my note of April 27 two years ago, Nine Gates to the Temple of Poetry. Intermediate between the simplicity of the 3x3 square and the (apparent) complexity of the 5x5 square, the 4x4 square offers an introduction to geometrical concepts that appears deceptively simple, but is in reality fiendishly complex. See Geometry for Jews. The moral of this megilla? 32 + 42 = 52. Posted 4/27/2003 at 3:24 PM |
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" referred to a bizarre meditation of mine titled "The Matthias Defense," which combines some thoughts of Nabokov on lunacy with some of my own thoughts on the Judeo-Christian tradition (i.e., also on lunacy). In this connection, the following is of interest: From a site titled Meaning of the Twentieth Century -- "Freeman Dyson has expressed some thoughts on craziness. In a Scientific American article called 'Innovation in Physics,' he began by quoting Niels Bohr. Bohr had been in attendance at a lecture in which Wolfgang Pauli proposed a new theory of elementary particles. Pauli came under heavy criticism, which Bohr summed up for him: 'We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that is not crazy enough.' To that Freeman added: 'When a great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer, himself, it will be only half understood; to everyone else, it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope!' " -- Kenneth Brower, The Starship and the Canoe, 1979, pp. 146, 147 It is my hope that the speculation, implied in The Matthias Defense, that the number 162 has astonishing mystical properties (as a page number, article number, etc.) is sufficiently crazy to satisfy Pauli and his friend Jung as well as the more conventional thinkers Bohr and Dyson. It is no less crazy than Christianity, and has a certain mad simplicity that perhaps improves on some of that religion's lunatic doctrines. Some fruits of the "162 theory" -- Searching on Google for muses 162, we find the following Orphic Hymn to Apollo and a footnote of interest: 27 Tis thine all Nature's music to inspire, "Page 162 Verse 29.... Now the last string.... Gesner well observes, in his notes to this Hymn, that the comparison and conjunction of the musical and astronomical elements are most ancient; being derived from Orpheus and Pythagoras, to Plato. Now, according to the Orphic and Pythagoric doctrine, the lyre of Apollo is an image of the celestial harmony...." For the "highest chord" in a metaphorical sense, see selection 162 of the 1919 edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse (whose editor apparently had a strong religious belief in the Muses (led by Apollo)). This selection contains the phrase "an ever-fixèd mark" -- appropriately enough for this saint's day. The word "mark," in turn, suggests a Google search for the phrase "runes to grave" Hardy, after a poem quoted in G. H. Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology. Such a search yields a website that quotes Housman as the source of the "runes" phrase, and a further search yields what is apparently the entire poem:
Housman asks the reader to tell him of runes to grave or bastions to design. Here, as examples, are one rune and one bastion.
Dagaz: (Pronounced thaw-gauze, but with the "th" voiced as in "the," not unvoiced as in "thick") (Day or dawn.) From Rune Meanings: Dagaz means "breakthrough, awakening, awareness. Daylight clarity as opposed to nighttime uncertainty. A time to plan or embark upon an enterprise. The power of change directed by your own will, transformation. Hope/happiness, the ideal. Security and certainty. Growth and release. Balance point, the place where opposites meet." Also known as "the rune of transformation." For the Dagaz rune in another context, see Geometry of the I Ching. The geometry discussed there does, in a sense, "hold the bursting wave," through its connection with Walsh functions, hence with harmonic analysis. Temple of Athena Nike on the Nike Bastion, the Acropolis, Athens. Here is a relevant passage from Paul Valéry's Eupalinos ou L'Architecte about another temple of four columns:
Four columns, in a sense more suited to Hardy's interests, are also a recurrent theme in The Diamond 16 Puzzle and Diamond Theory. Apart from the word "mark" in The Oxford Book of English Verse, as noted above, neither the rune nor the bastion discussed has any apparent connection with the number 162... but seek and ye shall find. Posted 4/25/2003 at 7:59 PM |
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 that "a terrible beauty is born," and the date of Vatican I's 1870 attack on reason, Dei Filius. My comment on Yeats's remarks: "No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his life and his youth and his affections from the days of Tone to those of Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'd see you damned first." -- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist, published 1914-15 in serial form My comment on the Vatican's remarks: "[Robert Penn] Warren taught for years at Yale and became toward the end of his life one of the most vocal critics of deconstruction, which had Yale as its headquarters. He is said to have exclaimed, 'They got a whole new line of bullshit up here.' ” Warren wrote that
For some clues as to whether this, too, is bullshit, see my note of Easter Monday 2003, Posted 4/24/2003 at 4:13 PM |
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 else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced." -- Opening sentence of Martha Cooley's The Archivist About 24 hours later, I came across the following obituary in The New York Times: "Edgar F. Codd, a mathematician and computer scientist who laid the theoretical foundation for relational databases, the standard method by which information is organized in and retrieved from computers, died on Friday.... He was 79." The Times does not mention that the Friday it refers to is Good Friday. God will have his little jokes.
For a better (and earlier) obituary than the Times's, see The San Jose Mercury News of Easter Sunday. For some thoughts on death and the afterlife appropriate to last weekend, see The Matthias Defense. † The Exorcist, 1973 Posted 4/24/2003 at 3:33 AM |
Midnight in the Garden Tony Scherman on an April 7, 1968, recording by Nina Simone: "...nobody could telescope more emotion into a single, idiosyncratically turned syllable (listen to the way she says the word "Savannah" in her spoken intro to "Sunday in Savannah." It breaks your heart -- and she ain't even singin' yet!)." See also the following entries on midnight in the garden: Trinity, Oct. 25, 2002 Midnight in the Garden, Oct. 26, 2002 Point of No Return, Dec. 10, 2002 Culture Clash at Midnight, Dec. 11, 2002 Dead Poets Society, Dec. 13, 2002 For the Dark Lady, Dec. 18, 2002 Nightmare Alley, Dec. 21, 2002 For the Green Lady, Dec. 21, 2002 "With a little effort, anything can be shown to connect with anything else: existence is infinitely cross-referenced." -- Opening sentence of Martha Cooley's The Archivist
Posted 4/23/2003 at 12:00 AM |
Temptation
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 in honor of Aaron Spelling, producer of "Satan's School for Girls," whose birthday is today, I suggest the following three cultural milestones. First, an accurate, if tasteless, recounting of Scripture at a Christian site that correctly notes that Satan may appear as "an angel of light"... rather like Aaron Spelling? This site also offers, as background music, a lame parody of the evils of Rock 'n' Roll in the form of a midi of "Fire" that would hardly tempt even someone Hell-bent on sinning. Second, a book, The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, the basis of the Roman Polanski film "The Ninth Gate." This book is notable for the way it skillfully, and perhaps accurately, depicts Satan as an "angel of light" who does not resemble Aaron Spelling in the least. This Satan could really tempt me. Finally, my favorite music video of all time: the 1988 Kylie Minogue "Locomotion." If the Devil could now look, sing, and dance like Kylie in 1988, I would be lost. Fortunately, perhaps, the days when Kylie could make me fall in love with one glance are now over. Still, if I had to fall, I would much rather do it with Kylie than with Spelling. As she herself says, "It's better the Devil you know." For more on Kylie, trains, and death, see the Jan. 3 entry The Shanghai Gesture. The locomotive image is courtesy of a website that may, in view of the subject of this entry, prefer to remain anonymous. Posted 4/22/2003 at 4:23 PM |
From an obituary of a biographer of Emily Dickinson, Richard B. Sewall, who died on Wednesday, April 16, 2003: "Descended from a line of Congregational ministers dating back to the Salem of the witch trial era, Mr. Sewall was known for infusing his lectures with an almost religious fervor." Riddle What is the hardest thing to keep? For one answer, see my entry of April 16, 2003. For commentary on that answer, see the description of a poetry party that took place last April at Sleepy Hollow, New York. See, too, the story that contains the following passages: "As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather's History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and book of dreams and fortune-telling.... The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue, and the plough-boy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow." Update of 11:55 PM April 21, 2003, See also the last paragraph of this news story, From the entry of midnight, October 25-26, 2002: Make my bed and light the light, For more on the eight-point star of Venus, Posted 4/21/2003 at 4:23 PM |
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 Petroskey. Petroskey cancelled a scheduled April 26-27 Hall of Fame celebration of the Bull film due to the possibility of political remarks. In further remarks at the National Press Club on April 15, Robbins said "Sportswriters across the country reacted with such overwhelming fury at the Hall of Fame that the president of the Hall admitted he made a mistake and Major League Baseball disavowed any connection to the actions of the Hall's president. A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice."
Update of 2:00 AM April 21, 2003: A belated Easter greeting from Durham, North Carolina. Posted 4/20/2003 at 2:30 PM |
Posted 4/20/2003 at 1:28 AM |
"Through the unknown, remembered gate...." Posted 4/19/2003 at 2:56 PM |
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, rather than of Christ." -- Introduction to Malcolm Lowry's classic novel Under the Volcano, by Stephen Spender "Hey, big Spender, spend a little time For a somewhat deeper meditation on time, see Architecture of Eternity. See also Literature of the Descent into Hell. "Mexico is a solar country -- but it is also a black country, a dark country. This duality of Mexico has preoccupied me since I was a child." -- Octavio Paz, quoted by Homero Aridjis Amen. Concluding Unscientific Postscripts: "Once upon a time..." -- Anonymous "It's quarter to three..." -- Sinatra Posted 4/19/2003 at 2:45 AM |
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 way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way." Posted 4/18/2003 at 3:17 PM |
To the Society of Jesus Have a Good Friday,
Prompted by Pilate's question "What is truth?" and by my March 24 attack on Noam Chomsky, I decided this afternoon to further investigate what various people have written about Chomsky's posing of what he calls "Plato's problem" and "Orwell's problem." The former concerns linguistics, the latter, politics. As my March 24 entry indicates, I have nothing but contempt for both Chomsky's linguistics and Chomsky's politics. What I discovered this afternoon is that Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution, in 2001 appointed a Chomskyite, David W. Lightfoot, as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. "Why do we know so much more than we have evidence for in certain areas, and so much less in others? In tackling these questions -- Plato's and Orwell's problem -- Chomsky again demonstrates his unequalled capacity to integrate vast amounts of material." What, indeed, is truth? I doubt that the best answer can be learned from either the Communist sympathizers of MIT or the "Red Mass" leftists of Georgetown. For a better starting point than either of these institutions, see my note of April 6, 2001, Wag the Dogma. See, too, In Principio Erat Verbum, which notes that "numbers go to heaven who know no more of God on earth than, as it were, of sun in forest gloom." "Examples are the stained glass windows Motto of † The Exorcist, 1973 Posted 4/18/2003 at 1:17 PM |
Bishops sued for slander
Three women who spoke out against the Catholic Diocese of Erie are now speaking up in court. They are suing the diocese, Bishop Donald W. Trautman and retired Bishop Michael J. Murphy on claims of defamation. The women say the bishops slandered or libeled them a year ago in public statements that Trautman and Murphy made about the women's concerns in the case of a former diocesan priest, Robert F. Bower. Bower resigned from the priesthood a year ago over his arrest in 1999 on felony charges that he possessed child pornography on his personal computer. The women came forward in an Erie Times-News article April 17, 2002, to say that they had tried to raise concerns about Bower long before his arrest. They said they met with Murphy in 1982, and that he did nothing to discipline Bower. The women's suit, filed Wednesday, marks the first time that someone has sued the 13-county Catholic Diocese of Erie in connection with the sex-abuse scandal that started rocking the Roman Catholic Church nationwide more than a year ago. The women's lawyer said the bishops accused the women of lying. The bishops were responding to comments the women made in the Erie Times-News article, when the women said they met with Murphy 20 years ago to express their concerns about gay pornography that one of the women said she found in Bower's mail when she was his church secretary. That woman, Sally Beres, said she was fired as secretary two days after the meeting with Murphy. Beres claims that 20 years later, when she aired her concerns about Bower again, the bishops responded by defaming her and the other two women who came forward, Ann Caro and Helen Rusnak. The women's lawyer, Richard A. Peterson of Greenville, said the suit will focus on the written statement Trautman issued April 21 in which he sharply criticized Beres, Rusnak, Caro and the Erie Times-News. Posted 4/17/2003 at 11:30 PM |
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 discover the real date of Jesus's birth. The coin that provided the clue portrayed Aries the Ram looking back at a star. From Molnar's own site, Star of Bethlehem: "On April 17, 6 BC, two years before King Herod died, Jupiter emerged in the east as a morning star in the sign of the Jews, Aries the Ram." Therefore, according to Molnar, today is Christmas. Accordingly, let us sing a (slightly improved) carol in memory of the late Murray L. Bob (see April 15 entries): God rest ye, merry gentleman. Let us also voice a rousing chorus of one of my personal all-time favorites, in memory of a film director (see previous entry), who gave us a vision of Robert Mitchum (Ram) and Sarah Miles ("Lady Caroline Lamb") united in marriage (Ding-Dong): Who put the Ram in the Why, David Lean, of course. Update of April 21, 2003: When You Care Enough "Jan Scott, 88, a television art director and production designer who had won 11 Emmy Awards, died April 17 at her home in Hollywood Hills, Calif. The cause of death was not reported. She started working in television in the 1950s and earned her first Emmy nomination in 1956 for a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" production. Her first Emmy Award came in 1968 for her work as an art director for "Kismet," which appeared on ABC. Her last Emmy was awarded in 1989 for "I'll Be Home for Christmas," on NBC." -- The Washington Post, April 21, 2003 Posted 4/17/2003 at 2:14 PM |
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. Part I From Puck of Pook's Hill, by Rudyard Kipling The Theatre lay in a meadow.... a large old Fairy Ring of darkened grass, which was the stage.... Shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his play.... Their play went beautifully.... They were both so pleased that they acted it three times over from beginning to end before they sat down in the unthistly centre of the Ring to eat..., This was when they heard a whistle among the alders on the bank, and they jumped. The bushes parted. In the very spot where Dan had stood as Puck they saw a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person.... He stopped, hollowed one hand round his ear, and, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, went on:
The children looked and gasped. The small thing - he was no taller than Dan's shoulder - stepped quietly into the Ring. "I'm rather out of practice," said he; "but that's the way my part ought to be played." Still the children stared at him -- from his dark blue cap, like a big columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. At last he laughed. "Please don't look at me like that. It isn't my fault. What else could you expect?" he said. "We didn't expect anyone," Dan answered slowly. "This is our field." "Is it?" said their visitor, sitting down. "Then what on Human Earth made you act Midsummer Night's Dream three times over, on Midsummer Eve, in the middle of a Ring, and under -- right under one of my oldest hills in Old England? Pook's Hill -- Puck's Hill -- Puck's Hill -- Pook's Hill! It's as plain as the nose on my face." ".... You've done something that Kings and Knights and Scholars in old days would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out. If Merlin himself had helped you, you couldn't have managed better!" Part II From "East Coker," by T. S. Eliot In that open field Part III From The Real World, by Anonymous: Tonight is the night of the Paschal full moon, which is used to calculate the date of Easter. On this date in 1871, playwright John Millington Synge was born. He wrote of "the wonderfully tender and searching light that is seen only in Kerry." On this date in 1991, director David Lean died. He showed us the tender and searching light of Kerry in "Ryan's Daughter." The summer harvest festival of County Kerry is known as "Puck Fair." The song "The Kerry Dance" includes the following lyrics:
Tonight's site music is "The Kerry Dance" arranged in a form appropriate to the spirit of "East Coker" and the spirit of Puck Fair. Eliot and Eleanor Cameron were both concerned with "keeping time" in a very deep sense. For more on this subject, see my previous entries for April 2003, Poetry Month. See, too, Midsummer Eve's Dream. Posted 4/16/2003 at 9:36 PM |
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: by Eleanor Cameron (Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1969). Cameron, on page 73, gives the source of her title; it is from the Mabinogion: "And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf." Cameron finds the meaning of this symbol in Dylan Thomas: His Life and Work, by John Ackerman (Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 6: "Another important feature of the old Welsh poetry is an awareness of the dual nature of reality, of unity in disunity, of the simultaneity of life and death, of time as an eternal moment rather than as something with a past and future." For part of a Nobel Prize lecture on this topic — time as an eternal moment — see Architecture of Eternity, a journal note from December 8, 2002. That lecture is from an author, Octavio Paz, who wrote in Spanish. Here are some other words in that language:
These lyrics to the song "Guantanamera" (see Palm Sunday) were on my mind this afternoon when Cameron's book caught my eye. Green and crimson are, of course, also the colors of Christmas, or "Christ Mass." In view of the fact that Cameron's book is about children's literature, this leads, like it or not, to the following meditation. From a religious site: Matthew 18:3 - And said, Truly I say to you, Unless you are converted, and become like little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Mark 10:15 - Truly I say to you, Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter it at all. Luke 18:17 - Truly I say to you, Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall by no means enter it. A meditation from a less religious site: "What I tell you three times is true." Finally, from what I now consider
to be an extremely religious site, a picture: Posted 4/15/2003 at 11:07 PM |
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 later a professor of film studies at Dartmouth, his alma mater. Rapf died on April 15, 2003, at the age of 88. He contributed to the screenplay for Disney's "Cinderella" (1950). According to his Washington Post obituary, "he said he gave the character of Cinderella a spirit of class struggle." Rapf described his Hollywood childhood in Back Lot: Growing Up With the Movies, 1999. "A dream is a wish your heart makes." Entered Friday, April 18, 2002, 3:24 AM EST. Posted 4/15/2003 at 5:01 PM |
Certain Things by Murray L. Bob DEATH:
TAXPAYER COMPLAINT: The people who benefit the most from research are never the people who pay for it. Both items above are from A Contrarian's Dictionary Strikes Again! — Murray, a library director, checked out during National Library Week, April 6-12, 2003. From the work quoted above, two of his classic parting shots: LIBRARY: When you look at everything else in this town you know there shouldn't be a great library here. Fortunately, the librarians don't know this. LIBRARIANS: Old librarians never die, they just close the books. Posted 4/15/2003 at 2:42 PM |
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 Philip Kapleau Roshi, Kalu Rimpoche, and Harada Tangen Roshi, who all know the way to Cold Mountain...." See Buddha's Birthday (April 8) and The Diamond Project. "What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? — Tom Eliot, The Waste Land "I am thinking... — Suzanne Vega, "Tom's Diner"
"De donde crece la palma" — Song lyric From On Beauty, by Elaine Scarry, Princeton University Press, 1999, a quotation from Homer —
See also A Mass for Lucero and The Shining of Lucero. — George Balanchine Posted 4/13/2003 at 11:59 PM |
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 Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003 Those who recognize the church below will understand the caption. For Peter, Paul, and Murray: Posted 4/13/2003 at 3:07 PM |
2:23 PM
Today's birthday: dancer/actress Ann Miller. "In 1937, she was discovered by Lucille Ball...." Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz,
Posted 4/12/2003 at 2:23 PM |
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, April 12, 2003, Posted at 12:24 AM EDT:
For further rhetoric, see A Short Comparative Guide to Religion and Philosophy. This site has the added attraction of a midi of Lennon's classic, "Instant Karma," mentioned in yesterday's entry "Heaven's Gate." Posted 4/12/2003 at 1:44 AM |
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
Perhaps the real heaven's gate is at Instant karma update: At 5:09 PM I read the following in the New York Review of Books, dated May 1, 2003, which arrived today. From a review of Terror and Liberalism, by Paul Berman:
Speaking of Ur, Berman likes to quote a non-Biblical Abraham, named Lincoln. The first, Biblical, Abraham was a damned homicidal lunatic, and the later American Abraham also delighted in blood sacrifice. But that's just my opinion. For a different view, see the Chautauqua Abrahamic Program. Posted 4/11/2003 at 2:56 PM |
The Poet as Prophet In honor of Wallace Stevens, quoted in Posted 4/9/2003 at 4:00 PM |
The Shadow and the Valley Bad news this morning. An old friend is gone. Posted 4/9/2003 at 1:01 PM |
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 "the Shadow," the following trilogy of links seems appropriate:
Nota bene: Today is also the birthday of Posted 4/9/2003 at 12:25 AM |
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." "When smashing monuments, save the pedestals; they always come in handy."
Posted 4/8/2003 at 3:07 PM |
In memory of Cécile de Brunhoff, discoverer of "Here we see the imagined universe of Babar's Dream by Jean de Brunhoff. In an archetypal battle between good and evil, the graceful winged elephants — the angels of kindness, intelligence, courage, patience, perseverance, knowledge, work, hope, love, health, joy, and happiness — drive out the demons of misfortune, anger, stupidity, discouragement, sickness, spinelessness, despair, fear, ignorance, cowardice, laziness." — Source cited: Edward R. Tufte, Visual Explanations Today is Buddha's birthday. For the Posted 4/8/2003 at 2:56 AM |
Buddha's Birthday Song As I'm listening Posted 4/8/2003 at 12:00 AM |
Math Awareness Month April is Math Awareness Month. Posted 4/7/2003 at 11:59 PM |
An Offer He Couldn't Refuse Today's birthday: Francis Ford Coppola is 64.
From a note on geometry of April 28, 1985: Posted 4/7/2003 at 1:17 PM |
Art Wars: 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 aggressive and pre-emptive, the president can conduct the war on terror from the National Gallery of Art."
Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, another example of great determination and strength of character:
Donald Coxeter Dies: Leader in Geometry By Martin Weil "Donald Coxeter, 96, a mathematician who was one of the 20th century's foremost specialists in geometry and a man of great determination and strength of character as well, died March 31 at his home in Toronto." From another Coxeter obituary:
For a differing account of how geometry is related to code-breaking, see the "Singer 7-cycle" link in yesterday's entry, "The Eight," of 3:33 PM. This leads to a site titled An Introduction to the "Now I have precisely the right instrument, at precisely the right moment of history, in exactly the right place." — "Patton," Added Sunday, April 6, 2003, 3:17 PM: The New York Times Magazine of April 6
The military nature of our Art Wars theme appears in the Times's choice of words for its cover headline: "The Greatest Generation." (This headline appears in the paper, but not the Internet, version.) Some remarks in today's Times Magazine article seem especially relevant to my journal entry for Michelangelo's birthday, March 6.
Compare this with a mathematician's aesthetics:
It seems clear from these two quotations that the real conceptual art is mathematics and that Kimmelman is peddling the emperor's new clothes. Posted 4/5/2003 at 9:49 AM |
Mathematics Awareness Month
From Michael Pearson, Director of Programs and Services for the Mathematical Association of America, in his Liaison Newsletter of January 2003: "For this year's Mathematics Awareness Month, April 2003, the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics has selected the theme of Mathematics and Art.... From a ReelWavs.com transcript of nsa.mp3 (436K) From an eulogy for Ivan Illich: "He frequently cited the Latin maxim 'corruptio optimi pessima,' the corruption of the best is the worst." Posted 4/4/2003 at 4:36 PM |
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 properties of the number eight. Consider eight rectangular cells arranged in an array of four rows and two columns. Let us label these cells with coordinates, then apply a permutation.
The resulting set of arrows that indicate the movement of cells in a permutation (known as a Singer 7-cycle) outlines rather neatly, in view of the chess theme of The Eight, a knight. This makes as much sense as anything in Neville's fiction, and has the merit of being based on fact. It also, albeit rather crudely, illustrates the "Mathematics and Art" theme of this year's Mathematics Awareness Month. (See the 4:36 PM entry.) The visual appearance of the "knight" permutation is less important than the fact that it leads to a construction (due to R. T. Curtis) of the Mathieu group M24 (via the Curtis Miracle Octad Generator), which in turn leads logically to the Monster group and to related "moonshine" investigations in the theory of modular functions. See also "Pieces of Eight," by Robert L. Griess. Posted 4/4/2003 at 3:33 PM |
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
Today's site music (see midi console at top right of screen) is "All or Nothing at All." In view of the Sunday Lottery entry of March 31 and of Starr's hits, this song might be retitled "007 or 256." In view of Draper's hit
the following article is of interest:
Two other quotes, epigraphs to the classic novel Cosmic Banditos, seem relevant:
Those who prefer Jewish metaphysics can consult the related book Seinfeld and Philosophy: Posted 4/3/2003 at 12:12 PM |
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 Alasdair Gray's Glasgow novel 1982 Janine. The "Sein Feld" heading is a reference to the Seinfeld final episode, which aired May 14, 1998. The first column contains a reference to angels -- apparently Hell's Angels -- and the second column provides a somewhat more serious look at this theological topic.
For another look at angels, see "Winging It," by Christopher R. Miller, The New York Times Book Review Bookend page for Sunday, May 24, 1998. May 24 is the feast day of Sara (also known by the Hindu name Kali), patron saint of Gypsies. For another, later (July 16, 1998) reply to Dyson, from a source better known than myself, see Why Religion Matters, by Huston Smith, Harper Collins, 2001, page 66. Posted 4/2/2003 at 2:30 PM |