Happy Birthday, "Frank and Stein quickly realized Sounds to me more like a religion. Premodern Religion... See Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Modern (A.D.) religion... Postmodern religion...
See my note Posted 8/30/2003 at 12:00 AM |
The Shining of Park Place Today is the birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., writer, dean of Harvard Medical School, father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and author of at least seven hymns. It is also the feast day of Saint Lewis Henry Redner, author of the tune now known as "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Redner was church organist for Phillips Brooks, who wrote the "Bethlehem" lyrics but then published the hymn under the facetious name "St. Louis," a deliberate misspelling of Redner's name. Redner died on August 29, 1908, at the Marlborough Hotel in Atlantic City. Since Holmes Sr. was both a poet and the father of a famous lawyer, a reference to poet-lawyer Wallace Stevens seems in order. "We keep coming back and coming back -- Wallace Stevens, From Best Atlantic City Hotels: Bally's Park Place, located at Park Place and Boardwalk, partially stands on the site of the former Marlborough Hotel. For some background on the theology of hotels, see Stephen King's classic The Shining and my own note, Shining Forth. Let us pray that any haunting at the current Park Place and Boardwalk location is done by the blessed spirit of Saint Lewis Redner.
Postscript of 7:11 PM --
Charles Lindbergh seems to have done and today's New York Times story Posted 8/29/2003 at 3:07 PM |
See also today's previous entries. Posted 8/28/2003 at 11:35 PM |
Elegance Sigrid Estrada
Louise Glück, the
Pulitzer winner Glück By CARL HARTMAN The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Louise Glück, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a dozen other poetry awards, will be the next U.S. poet laureate.... Asked for a sample of her work, she suggested five lines from "The Seven Ages," published in 2001: "Immunity to time, to change. Sensation Of perfect safety, the sense of being Protected from what we loved And our intense need was And returned as sustenance." Posted 8/28/2003 at 9:26 PM |
Spirit In memory of "The Garden of Eden is behind us — Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Earth Shine, p. xiii: We shall not cease from exploration — T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets. "Every city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers be upon them or watchers before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a dark and mysterious world, they tended to be round and they had protective walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which was shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing expanse of greens, whites, and blues--wild and free--that stopped at the city walls. In time the ramparts became higher and the gates more massive, until they simply disappeared and were replaced by barriers, subtler than stone, that girded every city like a crown and held in its spirit." — Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale Book Cover, "The pattern of the heavens See also my notes of For a more Eden-like city, Posted 8/28/2003 at 6:35 PM |
Crystal and Dragon David Wade published a book called Crystal and Dragon in 1993 about the apparent opposites of structure and fluidity, order and chaos, law and freedom, and so on. Here is a page on these concepts as they relate to my mathematical work. Posted 8/27/2003 at 3:40 AM |
Words Are Events August 12 was the date of death of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., and the date I entered some theological remarks in a new Harvard weblog. It turns out that August 12 was also the feast day of a new saint... Walter Jackson Ong, of St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, a Jesuit institution. Today, August 25, is the feast day of St. Louis himself, for whom the aforementioned city and university are named. The New York Times states that Ong was "considered an outstanding postmodern theorist, whose ideas spawned college courses...." There is, of course, no such thing as a postmodern Jesuit, although James Joyce came close. From The Walter J. Ong Project: "Ong's work is often presented alongside the postmodern and deconstruction theories of Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Hélène Cixous, and others. His own work in orality and literacy shows deconstruction to be unnecessary: if you consider language to be fundamentally spoken, as language originally is, it does not consist of signs, but of events. Sound, including the spoken word, is an event. It takes time. The concept of 'sign,' by contrast, derives primarily not from the world of events, but from the world of vision. A sign can be physically carried around, an event cannot: it simply happens. Words are events."
The web page where I found the Stevens quote also has the following:
Posted 8/25/2003 at 4:24 AM |
Gates to the City Today's birthday: On August 25, 1918, composer Leonard Bernstein was born. From Winter's Tale, Harcourt Brace (1983):
See also
Lenny's Gate:
Fred Stein, Thanks to Sonja Klein Fine Art Posted 8/25/2003 at 3:31 AM |
Passing the Crown Today's New York Times Book Review vilifies author John O'Hara as a "jerk." Earlier this week, the Times called him a "lout." These attacks amount to a virtual crown of thorns. For commentary on these attacks by the Times (a publication generally more sympathetic to Jews than to Catholics), see The Crucifixion of John O'Hara. But there is, to use a term of Harvard philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, "compensation." Today's New York Times Magazine paints an excellent portrait of Harvard President Larry Summers. This portrait, by author James Traub, is less than flattering. Traub notes that Summers is "a blunt and overbearing figure," and quotes an anonymous faculty friend of Summers as saying that many on campus "just despise him. The level of the intensity of their dislike for him is just shocking." Traub notes that at Harvard, "Despite the protections of tenure, virtually all of Summers's critics were too afraid of him to be willing to be quoted by name." At Yale, however, at least one professor has dared to criticize Summers openly. In the Boston Globe on August 14, Alex Beam, Globe columnist, quoted Yale music professor John Halle as saying that Summers, an economist, "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. By all accounts, he is a deeply vulgar individual...." These remarks suggest the following illustrations, based on today's Times Book Review and Times Magazine, of a thorny crown being thoughtfully passed to a new generation.
Posted 8/24/2003 at 2:56 PM |
Pictures of Nothing '"The artist delights to go back to the first chaos of the world... All is without forms and void. Some one said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing, and very like." -- William Hazlitt, 1816, on J. M. W. Turner "William Hazlett [sic] once described Turner's painting as 'pictures of the elements of air, earth, and water. The artist delights to go back to the first chaos of the world...All is without form and void. Some one said of his landscapes that they were pictures of nothing and very like.' This description could equally well be applied to a Pollock, Newman, or Rothko." -- Sonja J. Klein, thesis, The Nature of the Sublime, September 2000 The fifty-second A. W. Mellon series of Lectures in the Fine Arts was given last spring at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., by Kirk Varnedoe, art historian at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.
Varnedoe died on Thursday, August 14, 2003, Pictures of Nothing: "Record-breaking crowds turned up at the National Gallery for Kirk's Mellon Lectures.... Dour works like Frank Stella's early "Die Fahne Hoch," "Gray on Black," seemed to open up under Kirk's touch to reveal a delicacy and complexity lost in less textured explanations." -- Blake Gopnik in the Washington Post, For another memorial to Varnedoe, see A May 18 Washington Post article skillfully summarized Varnedoe's Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery: Closing the Circle on Abstract Art. For more on art and nihilism, see Posted 8/23/2003 at 3:07 AM |
Mr. Holland's Week On Monday, August 18, 2003, Bending Over Backward The word "lout" here refers to On Thursday, August 21, 2003, For some other occurrences of this number, The "three days" remark referred to above Those who share Mel Gibson's
Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: "Ask a stupid question..." For further details, see The Crucifixion of John O'Hara Posted 8/22/2003 at 4:04 PM |
Birthday Tablet "Of the world's countless customs and traditions, perhaps none is as elegant, nor as beautiful, as the tradition of sangaku, Japanese temple geometry." Sangaku means "mathematical tablet." Here is a sangaku for For an explanation, Posted 8/22/2003 at 12:12 AM |
O'Hara's Fingerpost In The New York Times Book Review of next Sunday (August 24, 2003), Book Review editor Charles McGrath writes that author John O'Hara "... discovered a kind of story... in which a line of dialogue or even a single observed detail indicates that something crucial has changed." From the Online Etymology Dictionary: crucial - 1706, from Fr. crucial... from L. crux (gen. crucis) "cross." The meaning "decisive, critical" is extended from a logical term, Instantias Crucis, adopted by Francis Bacon (1620); the notion is of cross fingerboard signposts at forking roads, thus a requirement to choose. The remainder of this note deals with the "single observed detail" 162.
Instantias Crucis Francis Bacon says "Among Prerogative Instances I will put in the fourteenth place Instances of the Fingerpost, borrowing the term from the fingerposts which are set up where roads part, to indicate the several directions. These I also call Decisive and Judicial, and in some cases, Oracular and Commanding Instances. I explain them thus. When in the investigation of any nature the understanding is so balanced as to be uncertain to which of two or more natures the cause of the nature in question should be assigned on account of the frequent and ordinary concurrence of many natures, instances of the fingerpost show the union of one of the natures with the nature in question to be sure and indissoluble, of the other to be varied and separable; and thus the question is decided, and the former nature is admitted as the cause, while the latter is dismissed and rejected. Such instances afford very great light and are of high authority, the course of interpretation sometimes ending in them and being completed. Sometimes these instances of the fingerpost meet us accidentally among those already noticed, but for the most part they are new, and are expressly and designedly sought for and applied, and discovered only by earnest and active diligence." Inter praerogativas instantiarum, ponemus loco decimo quarto Instantias Crucis; translato vocabulo a Crucibus, quae erectae in biviis indicant et signant viarum separationes. Has etiam Instantias Decisorias et Judiciales, et in casibus nonnullis Instantias Oraculi et Mandati, appellare consuevimus. Earum ratio talis est. Cum in inquisitione naturae alicujus intellectus ponitur tanquam in aequilibrio, ut incertus sit utri naturarum e duabus, vel quandoque pluribus, causa naturae inquisitae attribui aut assignari debeat, propter complurium naturarum concursum frequentem et ordinarium, instantiae crucis ostendunt consortium unius ex naturis (quoad naturam inquisitam) fidum et indissolubile, alterius autem varium et separabile ; unde terminatur quaestio, et recipitur natura illa prior pro causa, missa altera et repudiata. Itaque hujusmodi instantiae sunt maximae lucis, et quasi magnae authoritatis; ita ut curriculum interpretationis quandoque in illas desinat, et per illas perficiatur. Interdum autem Instantiae Crucis illae occurrunt et inveniuntur inter jampridem notatas; at ut plurimum novae sunt, et de industria atque ex composito quaesitae et applicatae, et diligentia sedula et acri tandem erutae. -- Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Book Two, "Aphorisms," Section XXXVI A Cubist Crucifixion An alternate translation: "When in a Search of any Nature the Understanding stands suspended, the Instances of the Fingerpost shew the true and inviolable Way in which the Question is to be decided. These Instances afford great Light..." From a review by Adam White Scoville of Iain Pears's novel titled An Instance of the Fingerpost: "The picture, viewed as a whole, is a cubist description, where each portrait looks strikingly different; the failings of each character's vision are obvious. However, in a cubist painting the viewer often can envision the subject in reality. Here, even after turning the last page, we still have a fuzzy view of what actually transpired. Perhaps we are meant to see the story as a cubist retelling of the crucifixion, as Pilate, Barabbas, Caiaphas, and Mary Magdalene might have told it. If so, it is sublimely done so that the realization gradually and unexpectedly dawns upon the reader. The title, taken from Sir Francis Bacon, suggests that at certain times, 'understanding stands suspended' and in that moment of clarity (somewhat like Wordsworth's 'spots of time,' I think), the answer will become apparent as if a fingerpost were pointing at the way. The final narrative is also titled An Instance of the Fingerpost, perhaps implying that we are to see truth and clarity in this version. But the biggest mystery of this book is that we have actually have no reason to credit the final narrative more than the previous three and so the story remains an enigma, its truth still uncertain." For the "162" enigma, see The Matthias Defense, and The Still Point and the Wheel. See also the December 2001 Esquire and the conclusion of my previous entry. Posted 8/19/2003 at 10:23 PM |
Intelligence Test From my August 31, 2002, entry quoting Dr. Maria Montessori on conciseness, simplicity, and objectivity: Above: Dr. Harrison Pope, Harvard professor of psychiatry, demonstrates the use of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale "block design" subtest. Another Harvard psychiatrist, Armand Nicholi, is in the news lately with his book The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.
For the meaning of the Old-Testament logos above, see the remarks of Plato on the immortality of the soul at For the meaning of the New-Testament logos above, see the remarks of R. P. Langlands at The Institute for Advanced Study. For the meaning of life, see The Gospel According to Jill St. John, whose birthday is today. "Some sources credit her with an I.Q. of 162." Posted 8/19/2003 at 5:23 PM |
Entries since Xanga's Sunday, August 17, 2003 2:00 PM A Thorny Crown of... From the first episode of
Going There, Part I
Going There, Part II
Saturday, August 16, 2003 6:00 AM Varnedoe's Crown Kirk Varnedoe, 57, art historian and former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, died Thursday, August 14, 2003. From his New York Times obituary: " 'He loved life in its most tangible forms, and so for him art was as physical and pleasurable as being knocked down by a wave,' said Adam Gopnik, the writer and a former student of his who collaborated on Mr. Varnedoe's first big show at the Modern, 'High & Low.' 'Art was always material first — it was never, ever bound by a thorny crown of ideas.' " For a mini-exhibit of ideas in honor of Varnedoe, see Verlyn Klinkenborg on Varnedoe: "I was always struck by the tangibility of the words he used.... It was as if he were laying words down on the table one by one as he used them, like brushes in an artist's studio. That was why students crowded into his classes and why the National Gallery of Art had overflow audiences for his Mellon Lectures earlier this year. Something synaptic happened when you listened to Kirk Varnedoe, and, remarkably, something synaptic happened when he listened to you. You never knew what you might discover together." Perhaps even a "thorny crown of ideas"?
Varnedoe's death coincided with "To what extent does this idea of a civic life produced by sense of adversity correspond to actual life in Brasília? I wonder if it is something which the city actually cultivates. Consider, for example the cathedral, on the monumental axis, a circular, concrete framed building whose sixteen ribs are both structural and symbolic, making a structure that reads unambiguously as a crown of thorns; other symbolic elements include the subterranean entrance, the visitor passing through a subterranean passage before emerging in the light of the body of the cathedral. And it is light, shockingly so...." -- Modernist Civic Space: The Case of Brasilia, by Richard J. Williams, Department of History of Art, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Friday, August 15, 2003 3:30 PM ART WARS: The Boys from Brazil It turns out that the elementary half-square designs used in Diamond Theory
also appear in the work of artist Nicole Sigaud. Sigaud's website The ANACOM Project has a page that leads to the artist Athos Bulcão, famous for his work in Brasilia. From the document Conceptual Art in an by Angélica Madeira: "Athos created unique visual plans, tiles of high poetic significance, icons inseparable from the city." As Sigaud notes, two-color diagonally-divided squares play a large part in the art of Bulcão. The title of Madeira's article, and the remarks of Anna Chave on the relationship of conceptual/minimalist art to fascist rhetoric (see my May 9, 2003, entries), suggest possible illustrations for a more politicized version of Diamond Theory:
Is it safe? These illustrations were suggested in part by the fact that today is the anniversary of the death of Macbeth, King of Scotland, and in part by the following illustrations from my journal entries of July 13, 2003 comparing a MOMA curator to Lady Macbeth:
Thursday, August 14, 2003 3:45 AM Famous Last Words The ending of an Aug. 14 Salon.com article on Mel Gibson's new film, "The Passion": " 'The Passion' will most likely offer up the familiar puerile, stereotypical view of the evil Jew calling for Jesus' blood and the clueless Pilate begging him to reconsider. It is a view guaranteed to stir anew the passions of the rabid Christian, and one that will send the Jews scurrying back to the dark corners of history." -- Christopher Orlet "Scurrying"?! The ghost of Joseph Goebbels, who famously portrayed Jews as sewer rats doing just that, must be laughing -- perhaps along with the ghost of Lady Diana Mosley (née Mitford), who died Monday. This goes well with a story that Orlet tells at his website: "... to me, the most genuine last words are those that arise naturally from the moment, such as
Voltaire's response to a request that he foreswear Satan: 'This is no time to make new enemies.' " For a view of Satan as an old, familiar, acquaintance, see the link to Prince Ombra in my entry last October 29 for Goebbels's birthday. Wednesday, August 13, 2003 3:00 PM Best Picture For some reflections inspired in part by
Tuesday, August 12, 2003 4:44 PM Atonement: A sequel to my entry "Catholic Tastes" of July 27, 2003. Some remarks of Wallace Stevens that seem appropriate on this date: "It may be that one life is a punishment -- Esthétique du Mal, Wallace Stevens "Unless we believe in the hero, what is there -- Examination of the Hero in a Time of War, Wallace Stevens Etymology of "Atonement": "Middle English atonen, to be reconciled, from at one, in agreement" At One "... We found, -- Asides on the Oboe, Wallace Stevens Tuesday, August 12, 2003 1:52 PM Franken & 'Stein, "Tue August 12, 2003 04:10 AM ET
For answers, click on the pictures Posted 8/18/2003 at 3:09 PM |
Diamond theory is the theory of affine groups over GF(2) acting on small square and cubic arrays. In the simplest case, the symmetric group of degree 4 acts on a two-colored diamond figure like that in Plato's Meno dialogue, yielding 24 distinct patterns, each of which has some ordinary or color-interchange symmetry . This symmetry invariance can be generalized to (at least) a group of order approximately 1.3 trillion acting on a 4x4x4 array of cubes. The theory has applications to finite geometry and to the construction of the large Witt design underlying the Mathieu group of degree 24. Further Reading:
Posted 8/17/2003 at 6:21 PM |
My Personal Thorny Crown Kirk Varnedoe, 57, art historian and former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, died Thursday, August 14, 2003. From his New York Times obituary: " 'He loved life in its most tangible forms, and so for him art was as physical and pleasurable as being knocked down by a wave,' said Adam Gopnik, the writer and a former student of his who collaborated on Mr. Varnedoe's first big show at the Modern, 'High & Low.' 'Art was always material first — it was never, ever bound by a thorny crown of ideas.' " For some background on the phrase "thorny crown of ideas," see the web page The phrase "thorny crown of ideas" is also of interest in the light of recent controversy over Mel Gibson's new film, "The Passion." For details of the controversy, see Christopher Orlet's Aug. 14 essay at Salon.com, For a real "thorny crown of ideas," consider the following remarks by another art historian: "Whether or not we can follow the theorist in his demonstrations, there is one misunderstanding we must avoid at all cost. We must not confuse the analyses of geometrical symmetries with the mathematics of combination and permutation.... The earliest (and perhaps the rarest) treatise on the theory of design drives home this insight with marvellous precision." -- E. H. Gombrich, 1979, in This is perhaps the most stupid remark I have ever read. The "treatise on the theory of design" that Gombrich refers to is
This is the title given at the web page Truchet & Types: which gives some background. Certain of the Truchet/Douat patterns have rather intriguing mathematical properties, sketched in my website Diamond Theory. These properties become clear if and only we we do what Gombrich moronically declares that we must not do: "confuse the analyses of geometrical symmetries with the mathematics of combination and permutation." (The verb "confuse" should, of course, be replaced by the verb "combine.") What does all this have to do with As jesting Pilate seems to have realized. whenever Jews (or, for that matter, Christians) tell stories, issues of truth may arise. Such issues, as shown by current events in that damned Semitic Hell-on-Earth that used to be referred to as "the Holy Land," can be of life-and-death importance.
The Roman soldiers may have fashioned a physical crown of thorns, but the Jews are quite capable of fashioning a very uncomfortable crown of, as Gopnik says, "ideas." Here is an example. "Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, who as an author went by the name E. H. Gombrich, was born in Vienna in 1909.... The Gombrich family was Jewish, but his parents felt this had no particular relevance. In later years Mr. Gombrich said that whether someone was Jewish or not was a preoccupation for the Gestapo." -- Michael Kimmelman's obituary for Gombrich in the New York Times. Kimmelman is chief art critic for the New York Times and author of the Times's Aug. 15 Varnedoe obituary. The web page Understanding cited above contains a link to Pilate, Truth, and Friday the Thirteenth, a page combining some religious remarks with a quotation of an extremely patronizing and superficial reference to my own work (and, in passing, to Truchet/Douat patterns). This reference, and the above-quoted remark by Gombrich, constitute my own modest claim to what the Jew Gopnik jokingly calls a "thorny crown of ideas." To me it is no joke. This partly accounts for the rather strained quality of the attempt at humor in a web page I put together yesterday in response to Varnedoe's obituary: Another reason for the strained quality is my being struck by the synchronicity of reading Varnedoe's obituary shortly after I had done a journal entry related to the death in July of an earlier Museum of Modern Art curator. Like Robert A. Heinlein, I think the God of the Jews is a lousy deity and an even worse father figure. I do, however, believe in synchronicity. Posted 8/16/2003 at 2:16 AM |
Moving to New Weblog I am now at log24.com. This was an archive site, but I am now using it as an active weblog. I have not been able to use Xanga since Sunday afternoon, apparently because of DDOS attacks (still unacknowledged by Xanga on their home page). Posted 8/12/2003 at 5:46 PM |
Death of a Holy Man Part I: An American Religion Hiroshima Mayor Says "HIROSHIMA -- Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba warned that the world is moving toward war and accused Washington of 'worshipping' nuclear weapons during Wednesday's ceremony marking the 58th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.... ... the Hiroshima mayor blamed the United States for making the world a more uncertain place through its policy of undermining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 'A world without nuclear weapons and war that the victims of the atomic bomb have long sought for is slipping into the shadows of growing black clouds that could turn into mushroom clouds at any moment,' Akiba said. 'The chief cause of this is the United States' nuclear policy which, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear strike and by starting research into small 'useable' nuclear weapons, appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.' " -- Mainichi Shimbun, Aug. 6, 2003 Part II: Holy Men and "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."
John Steinbeck describing Cannery Row in Monterey: "Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing." "Now we are all sons of bitches."
Part III: Death of a Holy Man
From a review of The Atomic Scientists: "... the authors try to add a personal element that can excite the reader about science." For more excitement, see Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Posted 8/10/2003 at 8:35 AM |
Bibles Today is the feast day of St. Hermann Hesse. A quotation from a work by Hesse that is to some a sort of Bible: "You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulae exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present." -- Father Jacobus, Benedictine priest, in The Glass Bead Game, ch. 4 (1943, translated 1960), by Hermann Hesse A Benedictine Archbishop's Apology: "Archbishop Weakland described his feelings 'at this moment' as 'remorse, contrition, shame and emptiness,' also noting that 'much self-pity and pride remain.' He contended he 'must leave that pride behind.' " C.P. Snow in his introduction to A Mathematician's Apology (also a Bible, or at least a book of a Bible, to some) quotes G. H. Hardy on hearing the chimes of Vespers: "It's rather unfortunate that some of the happiest hours of my life should have been spent within sound of a Roman Catholic church.'' A Bible for Benedictines: The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Mathematics, Posted 8/9/2003 at 6:29 PM |
Jews in the News
LOS ANGELES (AP) Aug. 9 --Howard Stern has settled a lawsuit against the producers of the television series "Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People,'' which he claimed was based on an idea stolen from his radio show. Stern was suing producer Mike Fleiss, cousin of Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss. From the Daily News, 4/30/03: In Emmy magazine, Mike Fleiss "cites Stern's work as an influence on his own and says he was inspired to get into TV after seeing Stern's series on WWOR/ Ch. 9. 'It was so irreverent, so brilliant, so satirical,' Fleiss says in the magazine. 'That viewing experience changed my life. I knew where I needed to go.' " See also yesterday's entry, Sewage. For related material, click here. Posted 8/9/2003 at 4:04 PM |
Beware of... An episode in the ongoing saga of the conflict between the "story theory of truth" and the "diamond theory of truth." The following set of pictures summarizes some reflections on truth and reality suggested by the August 9, 2003, New York Times obituary of writer William Woolfolk, who died on July 20, 2003. Woolfolk was the author of The Sex Goddess and was involved in the production of the comic book series The Spirit (see below). The central strategy of the three Semitic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- is to pretend that we are all characters in a story whose author is God. This strategy suggests the following Trinity, based on the work of William Woolfolk (The Sex Goddess and The Spirit) and Steven Spielberg ("Catch Me If You Can"). Like other Semitic tales, the story of this Trinity should not be taken too seriously.
A Confession of Faith: Theology Based On the Film The Son to God the Lutheran Father: "I'm nothing really, just a kid in love with your daughter." This is taken from a review of "Catch Me If You Can" by Thomas S. Hibbs. For some philosophical background to this confession, see Hibbs's book Shows About Nothing: By the way, today is the anniversary of the dropping on Nagasaki of a made-in-USA Weapon of Mass Destruction, a plutonium bomb affectionately named Fat Man. Fat Man was a sequel to an earlier Jewish story, Posted 8/9/2003 at 12:07 PM |
Sewage From The New Yorker magazine, issue dated August 11, 2003:
For more on this alleged "sewage," click on the names mentioned. Those who wish may easily find sites attacking some of these commentators (particularly Bob Grant). Others may feel that the word "sewage" might be better applied to The New Yorker itself under the recent editorship of Tina Brown. See Tina Brown and the Coming Decline at the Posted 8/8/2003 at 12:12 PM |
Allure and Bad News and Good News Today is, until sundown, Tish b'Av, a Jewish holy day. Bad News: "Tish b'Av is traditionally held by Jews around the world as a day of mourning for the loss of the First and Second Temples, as well as for the other tragedies which occurred on this day, such as the expulsion of the Spanish Jewry in 1492. As one of the two major fast days of the year, and in the middle of the hot summer, the day has taken on a character unique in the Jewish calender: dark, painful, and intensely sad." Good News: "It is passed down that the Messiah will be born on Tish b'Av.... The day, then, has an intrinsic meaning of transformation and hope, and can be seen as an opportunity to give birth to the messiah in each of us." Today's birthday: Billie Burke, Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.
Some Jews may, in view of her birth on this date, regard Burke as the Messiah... Among this sect is perhaps Adam Moss, who has just been appointed features editor of the New York Times. The picture of Moss above is from "Mr. Moss's appointment was announced [August 5] by Bill Keller, executive editor. In his new position, Mr. Moss, 46, will oversee coverage of the arts and style, as well as weekly sections including the magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Travel, Real Estate, Circuits and Escapes. 'It is past time for our magnificent coverage of culture and lifestyles, so essential to our present allure -- New York Times, August 6, 2003 Posted 8/7/2003 at 4:39 PM |
Morning Flight "I'm working on a morning flight to anywhere but here.... It's not the way you say you hear my heart -- Nanci Griffith on KHYI.com, 6:45 AM Click on the above yantra for deeper meditations from May 24 and 25, 2003. See entries of June 10-14, 2003, for more on the symbolism of the above figure's central two triangles, which represent Shiva and Kali united. For the symbolism of the eight petals, see the eight-ray star of Venus in my Oct. 23, 2002, entry. This is one interpretation of the eightfold "Spider" symbol which plays a major role in the Changewar stories of Fritz Leiber (my favorite mythology). This symbol, like the two-triangles symbol at the center of the eight-petal lotus above, represents "Shiva and Kali united in love," according to Leiber. (See my journal note "Biblical Proportions," written on this date in 1997.) For a Christian perspective on the Spider symbol, see Quine in Purgatory. For a different religious perspective on the two-triangles symbol in the lotus, see Posted 8/7/2003 at 6:45 AM |
Postmodern "I had a lot of fun with this audacious and exasperating book. ... [which] looks more than a little like Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces, a 'secret history' tracing punk rock through May 1968...." -- Michael Harris, Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu, Université Paris 7, review of Mathematics and the Roots of Postmodern Thought, by Vladimir Tasic, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, August 2003 For some observations on the transgressive predecessors of punk rock, see my entry Funeral March of July 26, 2003 (the last conscious day in the life of actress Marie Trintignant -- see below), which contains the following: "Sky is high and so am I, As I noted in another another July 26 entry, the disease of postmodernism has, it seems, now infected mathematics. For some recent outbreaks of infection in physics, see the works referred to below. "Postmodern Fields of Physics: In his book The Dreams of Reason, H. R. Pagels focuses on the science of complexity as the most outstanding new discipline emerging in recent years...." -- "The Semiotics of 'Postmodern' Physics," by Hans J. Pirner, in Symbol and Physical Knowledge: The Conceptual Structure of Physics, ed. by M. Ferrari and I.-O. Stamatescu, Springer Verlag, August 2001 For a critical look at Pagels's work, see Midsummer Eve's Dream. For a less critical look, see The Marriage of Science and Mysticism. Pagels's book on the so-called "science of complexity" was published in June 1988. For more recent bullshit on complexity, see The Critical Idiom of Postmodernity and Its Contributions to an Understanding of Complexity, by Matthew Abraham, 2000, which describes a book on complexity theory that, besides pronouncements about physics, also provides what "could very well be called a 'postmodern ethic.' " The book reviewed is Paul Cilliers's Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. A search for related material on Cilliers yields the following:
"That's the dumbest thing I ever heard." -- Ryan O'Neal in "What's Up, Doc?" A more realistic look at postmodernism in action is provided by the following news story:
" '...as a matter of fact, as we discover all the time, tomorrow never happens, man. It's all the same f...n' day, man!' --Janis Joplin, at live performance in Calgary on 4th July 1970 - exactly four months before her death. (apologies for censoring her exact words which can be heard on the 'Janis Joplin in Concert' CD)" -- Janis Joplin at FamousTexans.com All of the above fits in rather nicely with the view of science and scientists in the C. S. Lewis classic That Hideous Strength, which I strongly recommend. For those few who both abhor postmodernism and regard the American Mathematical Society Notices as a sort of "holy place" of Platonism, I recommend a biblical reading-- Matthew 24:15, CEV: "Someday you will see that Horrible Thing in the holy place...." See also Logos and Logic for more sophisticated religious remarks, by Simone Weil, whose brother, mathematician André Weil, died five years ago today. Posted 8/6/2003 at 10:23 AM |
More excellent poetry from KHYI.com: Another Texas-related link, this one for poet Conrad Aiken's birthday: Politics of Hell and Honorary Waco Wacko. Posted 8/5/2003 at 10:42 AM |
Venn's Trinity Today is the birthday of logician John Venn. From the St. Andrews History of Mathematics site: "Venn considered three discs R, S, and T as typical subsets of a set U. The intersections of these discs and their complements divide U into 8 non-overlapping regions, the unions of which give 256 different Boolean combinations of the original sets R, S, T." Last night's entry, "A Queer Religion," gave a Catholic view of the Trinity. Here are some less interesting but more fruitful thoughts inspired by Venn's diagram of the Trinity (or, indeed, of any three entities): "To really know a subject you've got to learn a bit of its history...." "We both know what memories can bring; For the "diamonds" brought by memories of the 28 combinations described above, consider how the symmetric group S8 is related to the symmetries of the finite projective space PG(3,2). (See Diamond Theory.) For the "rust," consider the following: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt...." The letters R, U, S, T in the Venn diagram above are perhaps relevant here, symbolizing, if you will, the earthly confusion of language, as opposed to the heavenly clarity of mathematics. As for MOTH, see the article Hometown Zeroes (which brings us yet again to the Viper Room, scene of River Phoenix's death) and the very skillfully designed website MOTHEMATICS. Posted 8/4/2003 at 1:00 PM |
Resurrection The previous entry, on Christian theology, does not imply that all religion is bad. Consider, for instance, the following from a memorial web page: "Al Grierson's song Resurrection was sung by Ray Wylie Hubbard, on his outstanding Dangerous Spirits album. The song is awesome, and fits right into Ray Wylie's spirit 'and an angel lay on a mattress and spoke of history and death with perfume on her lingerie and whiskey on her breath . . . he's loading up his saddlebags on the edge of wonder, one is filled with music and the other's filled with thunder.' Wow." Amen. My own favorite resurrection story is "Damnation Morning," by Fritz Leiber; see Why Me? For more on the Day of the Dead, see Under the Volcano. These are, of course, just stories, but may reflect some as yet unknown truth. By the way, thanks, Joni, for leading me to KHYI.com on the day of the Toronto Stones concert. Posted 8/4/2003 at 3:03 AM |
A Queer Religion August 4 headline: This suggests the following theological meditation by a gay Christian:
Amen to the conclusion, at least. The author of this meditation, "Pharsea," is a "traditional Catholic" and advocate of the Latin Mass -- just like Mel Gibson. One wonders how Gibson might react to Pharsea's theology. As for me... I always thought there was something queer about that religion. Posted 8/4/2003 at 2:00 AM |
Dancing at Lughnasa "The place outside the cosmos where I and my pals do our nursing job I simply call the Place. A lot of my nursing consists of amusing and humanizing Soldiers fresh back from raids into time. In fact, my formal title is Entertainer...." -- Fritz Leiber, The Big Time "And he sang: -- "Love at the Five and Dime," "Going up." -- Nanci Griffith Posted 8/3/2003 at 2:30 AM |
x Posted 8/3/2003 at 12:00 AM |
Late Night Grande Hotel "I feel like Garbo in this late night Grande Hotel "...the thought of those dark three -- Wallace Stevens, "I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star... but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own." -- Fritz Leiber, The Big Time
Thank you, KHYI.com, for playing Nanci Griffith on this, the feast day of Presbyterian saint Wallace Stevens. She is not Garbo or Marie Trintignant (see previous entry), but she will do. "Beauty is momentary in the mind -- Posted 8/2/2003 at 11:59 PM |
Dark Desire Film star dies after fight "...they seemed destined to become France's golden couple: the fragile and gifted film actress from one of the country's great theatrical families, and the radical rock star-poet with a genuine social conscience. But yesterday Marie Trintignant died in Paris of a cerebral haemorrhage, while her boyfriend, Bernard [sic] Cantat, lead singer of France's most popular rock band
was in jail... suspected of landing the blow that plunged her into a coma from which she never emerged. -- Jon Henley in Paris "Trintignant... was rushed to hospital at 7.30 on Sunday morning.... The singer, adored in France as much for his militant and public stands on issues such as racism, globalisation and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as for his powerful lyrics and charismatic stage presence, was admitted to hospital shortly afterwards with acute alcohol poisoning and a suspected overdose of prescription drugs. He had allegedly waited more than five hours since the midnight struggle before sounding the alarm...." Last Sunday's site music, for the entry Catholic Tastes, was... Nous Voici Dans La Ville - A Christmas song from 15th century France (midi by John Philip Dimick). It will serve as a memorial song for Marie. As for Cantat, see the These deal with substance abuse and postmodern French philosophy. The song I would recommend to memorialize the role of Cantat in this affair is American rather than French...
Religious meditation for today: As remarked in my "If there's a rock and roll heaven, Posted 8/2/2003 at 7:59 AM |
Jack of Diamonds KHYI plays the Jack of Diamonds again (see yesterday's entry, Killer Radio): "I knew a man with money in his hand. For another version of the Jack, see The Cube Paradigm. Posted 8/1/2003 at 5:21 PM |
For All Time "... and the Wichita lineman is still on the line..." (Reflection on a member of the Radcliffe Class of 1964 who lived near Wichita and now has her own home page... While listening to a song on my "home on The Range - KHYI 95.3FM, Plano, Texas.") Readings for a seminar we never really finished: "...that ineffable constellation of talents that makes the player of rank: a gift for conceiving abstract schematic possibilities; a sense of mathematical poetry in the light of which the infinite chaos of probability and permutation is crystallized under the pressure of intense concentration into geometric blossoms; the ruthless focus of force on the subtlest weakness of an opponent." -- Trevanian, Shibumi " 'Haven't there been splendidly elegant colors in Japan since ancient times?' 'Even black has various subtle shades,' Sosuke nodded.' " -- Yasunari Kawabata, The Old Capital Posted 8/1/2003 at 4:03 PM |
Fearful Meditation "The Max D. Barnes-penned title track, with its stark-reality lyrics, is nothing short of haunting: 'Time is a weapon, it’s cold and it’s cruel; It knows no religion and plays by no rules; Time has no conscience when it’s all said and done; Like a beast in the jungle that devours its young.' That’s so good, it hurts! Price’s still-amazing vocals are simply the chilling icing on the cake." -- Lisa Berg, NashvilleCountry.com O fearful meditation! Where, alack, — Shakespeare, Sonnet 65 Clue: click here. This in turn leads to my March 4 entry Fearful Symmetry, which contains the following:"Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery...." -- Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game "How strange the change from major to minor...." -- Cole Porter, "Every Time We Say Goodbye" Posted 8/1/2003 at 1:40 PM |