Divine Right of Empire
Sunday Lottery
Posted 3/31/2003 at 11:30 AM |
The Ideology of Empire and There has been much talk lately of the establishment of a new American Empire. An empire needs an ideology. The Bush family, which has strong ties to various right-wing Christian organizations, may favor an ideology best described as "Christian Zionism." For an excellent overview of this ideology, see the following Christ Church website: Christian Zionism: In view of the strong influence of Christian Zionism on the United States government, the following festival should perhaps be known as "Springtime for Jesus" — The National Cherry Blossom Festival, A Christian Zionist haiku Cherry blossoms bloom. Personally, I side with Henry David Thoreau, Aldous Huxley, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Andre Weil in preferring the Hindu Holy Scripture The Bhagavad-Gita to any Abrahamic religious text. The Gita deals, at one level, with a particular incarnation of the Aryan god Vishnu. Holi 2003, a springtime festival associated with Vishnu, will be celebrated tonight in Carteret, New Jersey. "The old Aryan god, Vishnu, was portrayed as coming to Earth periodically in the form of Krishna, the embodiment of Spring...." — The Classical Empires, a website of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, Kansas (final home of William S. Burroughs)
Follow-up of Sunday, March 30, 2003: See With God on His Side, by Garry Wills, Posted 3/29/2003 at 9:26 AM |
Bright Star From a Spanish-English dictionary:
Today is Reba McEntire's birthday. " 'I know what it is you last saw,' she said; 'for that is also in my mind. Do not be afraid! But do not think that only by singing amid the trees, nor even by the slender arrows of elven-bows, is this land of Lothlórien maintained and defended against the Enemy. I say to you, Frodo, that even as I speak to you, I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But still the door is closed!' — J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Related material on telepathy: Shining Forth and Naturalized Epistemology Related material on rings, and another musical Reba: Leonard Gillman interview, Part I and Part II Gillman, a pianist, is co-author of Rings of Continuous Functions. Posted 3/28/2003 at 10:16 AM |
Sixteen war protesters, handcuffed together, blocked traffic near 47th Street and 5th Avenue in New York City Wednesday. They chanted "Occupation is a Crime, Free Iraq and Palestine!" — Newsday, March 26, 2003 Forty-seventh Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues is known as the diamond district (or, in Buddhist parlance, "Diamond Way").
Posted 3/27/2003 at 2:35 PM |
Orwell's question, according to
"First of all, I'd like to thank the Academy...." The New Yorker of March 31, 2003, discusses leftist academic Noam Chomsky. The online edition provides a web page listing pro-Chomsky links. Chomsky's influence is based in part on the popularity of his half-baked theories on linguistics, starting in the 1950's with "deep structure" and "transformational," or "generative," grammar. Chomsky has abandoned many of his previous ideas and currently touts what he calls The Minimalist Program. For some background on Chomsky's recent linguistic notions, see the expository essay "Syntactic Theory," by Elly van Gelderen of the Arizona State University English Department. Van Gelderen lists her leftist political agenda on her "Other Interests" page. Her department may serve as an example of how leftists have converted many English departments in American universities to propaganda factories. Some attacks on Chomsky's scholarship: Forty-four Reasons Why the Chomskians Are Mistaken Chomsky's (Mis)Understanding of Human Thinking Anatomy of a Revolution... Chomsky in 1962 ...Linguistic Theory: The Rationality of Noam Chomsky Some attacks on Chomsky's propaganda: Destructive Generation excerpt Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers Chomsky and Plato's Diamond Like another purveyor of leftist nonsense, Jacques Derrida, Chomsky is fond of citing Plato as a precedent. In particular, what Chomsky calls "Plato's problem" is discussed in Plato's Meno. For a look at the diamond figure that plays a central role in that dialogue, see Diamond Theory. For an excellent overview of related material in Plato, see Theory of Forms. Posted 3/24/2003 at 12:52 PM |
Remember Me to Herald Square...
Posted 3/22/2003 at 2:00 PM |
ART WARS: Readings for Bach's Birthday Larry J. Solomon:
In Solomon's work, a sequence of notes is represented as a set of positions within a Latin square:
Transformations of the Latin square correspond to transformations of the musical notes. For related material, see The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse, and Charles Cameron's sites on the Game. Steven H. Cullinane: Dorothy Sayers:
Edward Sapir:
Posted 3/21/2003 at 9:29 AM |
In memory of Herbert Aptheker, theoretician of the American Communist Party, who died on St. Patrick's Day, 2003 — From The New Yorker, issue dated March 24, 2003, Louis Menand on Edmund Wilson's To the Finland Station: "Wilson did know what was going on in the Soviet Union in the nineteen-thirties, as his pages on Stalin in To the Finland Station make clear. The problem wasn’t with Stalin; the problem was with Lenin, the book’s ideal type of the intellectual as man of action. Wilson admitted that he had relied on publications controlled by the Party for his portrait of Lenin. (Critical accounts were available; for example, the English translation of the émigré Mark Landau-Aldanov’s Lenin was published, by Dutton, in 1922.) Lenin could create an impression of selfless humanitarianism; he was also a savage and ruthless politician—a 'pail of milk of human kindness with a dead rat at the bottom,' as Vladimir Nabokov put it to Wilson in 1940, after reading To the Finland Station. In the introduction to the 1972 edition, Wilson provided a look at the rat. He did not go on to explain in that introduction that the most notorious features of Stalin’s regime—the use of terror, the show trials, and the concentration camps—had all been inaugurated by Lenin. To the Finland Station begins with Napoleon’s betrayal of the principles of the French Revolution; it should have ended with Lenin’s betrayal of European socialism." From Herbert Aptheker, "More Comments on Howard Fast": "We observe that in the list of teachers whom Howard Fast names as most influential in his own life there occur the names of fourteen individuals from Jefferson to Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair to Marx, Douglass to Engels, but there is no room for Lenin. For more on Howard Fast, see my entry For a look at the pail of milk, see For a more cheerful look at geometry "There is such a thing as a tesseract." Posted 3/19/2003 at 4:04 AM |
It is said that God is in the details. The details: Purim is the holiday celebrating Esther. For more on that name, see Three in One. From The New Yorker, issue dated March 24, 2003:
Sounds familiar, somehow. _____________________________ See also the entry Homer that precedes it... in honor of † Added March 20: ‡ Added March 20: Posted 3/18/2003 at 6:25 AM |
Posted 3/17/2003 at 2:14 AM |
Letter On this date in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel
See also my note of two years ago, "Random Thoughts for St. Patrick's Eve." For more on Oppenheimer and the Bhagavad Gita, see Posted 3/16/2003 at 11:19 AM |
The Producers, Part Deux: The Consumers
See also my Tuesday, March 11, entry, and my entry from 2001, Random Thoughts for St. Patrick's Eve. The illustration above, a tribute to Meg Ryan on Einstein's birthday, may serve as a counterpoint to the "Producers" entry of March 11, the date of Lippman's death. The St. Patrick's Eve note contains a rather different meditation on the letter "A." See too The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, an intriguing speculation by Leonard Shlain, who claims to show that "patriarchy and misogyny have moved contrapuntually to goddess veneration." Well, maybe not quite yet; but blessed are the peacemakers. Posted 3/14/2003 at 2:20 AM |
ART WARS: From The New Yorker, issue of March 17, 2003, Clive James on Aldous Huxley: “The Perennial Philosophy, his 1945 book compounding all the positive thoughts of West and East into a tutti-frutti of moral uplift, was the equivalent, in its day, of It Takes a Village: there was nothing in it to object to, and that, of course, was the objection." For a cultural artifact that is less questionably perennial, see Huxley's story "Young Archimedes."
From the New Yorker Contributors page for St. Patrick's Day, 2003: "Clive James (Books, p. 143) has a new collection, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002, which will be published in June." See also my entry "The Boys from Uruguay" and the later entry "Lichtung!" on the Deutsche Schule Montevideo in Uruguay. Posted 3/13/2003 at 4:44 PM |
Death Knell In memory of Howard Fast, novelist and Jewish former Communist, who died yesterday, a quotation:
See also
Posted 3/13/2003 at 5:24 AM |
Birthday Song Today is the birthday of the late Jewish media magnate and art collector Walter H. Annenberg, whose name appears on a website that includes the following text:
Symmetries of patterns such as the above are the subject of my 1976 monograph " Diamond Theory," which also deals with "shape and space in geometry," but in a much more sophisticated way. For more on Annenberg, see my previous entry, "Daimon Theory." For more on the historical significance of March 13, see Neil Sedaka, who also has a birthday today, in " Jews in the News." Sedaka is, of course, noted for the hit tune "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen," our site music for today. See also Geometry for Jews and related entries. For the phrase "diamond theory" in a religious and philosophical context, see "It's quarter to three...." — Frank Sinatra Posted 3/13/2003 at 2:45 AM |
Daimon Theory Today is allegedly the anniversary of the canonization, in 1622, of two rather important members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits): Ignatius Loyola... Francis Xavier... We can thank (or blame) a Jesuit (Gerard Manley Hopkins) for the poetic phrase "immortal diamond." He may have been influenced by Plato, who has Socrates using a diamond figure in an argument for the immortality of the soul. Confusingly, Socrates also talked about his "daimon" (pronounced dye-moan). Combining these similar-sounding concepts, we have Doctor Stephen A. Diamond writing about daimons — a choice of author and topic that neatly combines the strategic intelligence of Loyola with the strategic stupidity of Xavier. The cover illustration is perhaps not of Dr. Diamond himself. A link between diamond theory and daimon theory is furnished by the charitable legacy of the non-practicing Jew Walter Annenberg. For Annenberg and diamond theory, see this site on the elementary geometry of quilt blocks, which credits the Annenberg Foundation for support. For Annenberg and daimon theory, see this site on Socrates, which has a similar Annenberg support credit.
Posted 3/12/2003 at 2:03 AM |
ART WARS: The Producers
Simon and Garfunkel's Tribute to Synchronicity:
For more on Jung, see
See also the Synchronicity album of The Police, Posted 3/11/2003 at 4:09 PM |
ART WARS: Art at the Vanishing Point Two readings from The New York Times Book Review of Sunday, 2003 are relevant to our recurring "art wars" theme. The essay on Dante by Judith Shulevitz on page 31 recalls his "point at which all times are present." (See my March 7 entry.) On page 12 there is a review of a novel about the alleged "high culture" of the New York art world. The novel is centered on Leo Hertzberg, a fictional Columbia University art historian. From Janet Burroway's review of What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt: "...the 'zeros' who inhabit the book... dramatize its speculations about the self.... the spectator who is 'the true vanishing point, the pinprick in the canvas.''' Here is a canvas by Richard McGuire for April Fools' Day 1995, illustrating such a spectator.
For more on the "vanishing point," or "point at infinity," see Connoisseurs of ArtSpeak may appreciate Burroway's summary of Hustvedt's prose: "...her real canvas is philosophical, and here she explores the nature of identity in a structure of crystalline complexity." For another "structure of crystalline For a more honest account of the Posted 3/10/2003 at 5:45 AM |
Symbols — Broadway:
See also the footnote on the Halmos "tombstone" symbol in the previous entry, the entry "Dustin in Wonderland" of Feb. 24, the film "Marathon Man," and the entry "Geometry for Jews" of March 6. Posted 3/9/2003 at 4:01 PM |
Lovely, Dark and Deep On this date in 1923, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost, was published. On this date in 1999, director Stanley Kubrick died. On this date in 1872, Piet Mondrian was born. "....mirando il punto -- Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 17-18 Chez Mondrian 6:23 PM Friday, March 7: From Measure Theory, by Paul R. Halmos, Van Nostrand, 1950: "The symbol
is used throughout the entire book in place of such phrases as 'Q.E.D.'
or 'This completes the proof of the theorem' to signal the end of a
proof." Posted 3/7/2003 at 4:00 AM |
ART WARS: Geometry for Jews Today is Michelangelo's birthday. Those who prefer the Sistine Chapel to the Rothko Chapel may invite their Jewish friends to answer the following essay question: Discuss the geometry underlying the above picture. How is this geometry related to the work of Jewish artist Sol LeWitt? How is it related to the work of Aryan artist Ernst Witt? How is it related to the Griess "Monster" sporadic simple group whose elements number 808 017 424 794 512 875 886 459 904 961 710 757 005 754 368 000 000 000? Some background:
Posted 3/6/2003 at 2:35 AM |
Eat at Joe's In honor of the 50th anniversary of the
National Student Strike * March 5th Courtesy of the Young Communist League Posted 3/5/2003 at 11:38 PM |
"Teach us to care and not to care." From The Jerusalem Post, August 6, 2001:
The date of the above analysis, August 6, was the date of the Christian Feast of the Transfiguration and the anniversary of the first use in warfare of a nuclear weapon. "And the light shone in darkness and Where shall the word be found, where will the word — T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday," 1930 Hiroshima, perhaps? See also my entries for Transfiguration 2002. * Eliot does not say what "Word" he is talking about. Perhaps it is "Arieh," the name of the journalist who wrote the perceptive Havana passage above. A search for the meaning of this word reveals that it means "an adult lion, having paired, in search of his prey (Nahum 2:12; 2 Sam 17:10; Num 23:24)." This is from The Witness of the Stars, a work that views the constellation Leo as a symbol of the Messiah. A particularly relevant passage: "The brightest star... marks the heart of the Lion (hence sometimes called by the moderns, Cor Leonis, the heart of the Lion)." Cor Leonis, Corleone. Is this the "Word" you meant, T. S.? Posted 3/5/2003 at 5:38 PM |
Ash Wednesday Brace Yourself, Maureen From Maureen Dowd's New York Times column today: "During the innocent summer before 9/11, the defense secretary's office sponsored a study of ancient empires — Macedonia, Rome, the Mongols — to figure out how they maintained dominance. What tips could Rummy glean from Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan?" Background briefing, added at 6:29 AM: See also the use of the hyperbolic paraboloid in Mexican church architecture by Félix Candela and an essay on saddle surfaces by Joseph F. MacDonnell, Society of Jesus, who spent eight years in Iraq teaching physics and mathematics at two Jesuit schools in Baghdad: Baghdad College and Al Hikma University. He writes that "since the 1968 Baathi takeover of the two Jesuit schools and expulsion of all Jesuits from Iraq in 1969" he has been teaching mathematics at Fairfield University. MacDonnell notes that there are only three doubly ruled surfaces (in real 3-space): the hyperboloid (used for nuclear cooling towers), the hyperbolic paraboloid (used, as noted, for Mexican churches), and the plane (used widely). The geometry here is perhaps less relevant than the existence of the Society of Jesus as a sort of intelligence agency within the Church -- an agency the current Pope has never understood how to use. Opus Dei is a greatly inferior substitute. Posted 3/5/2003 at 12:07 AM |
Fearful Symmetry I just Googled this phrase and found the following site, which turns out to be related to my previous entry on the Bead Game and the death of John P. Thompson. Fearful Symmetry: by Daniel d'Quincy. This in turn links to an excerpt from The Glass Bead Game that includes this passage: "I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. 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, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created." It is very easy to get dangerously confused about holiness, but here are some relevant quotes: "You will have to allow me to digress a bit in order to bring ourselves to a sufficiently elevated perspective... I warn you, it will require an attitude of playfulness on your part. Our approach will aim more at sincerity than seriousness. The attitude I'm aiming at is best expressed, I suppose, in the playing of a unique game, known by its German name as Das Glasperlenspiel, and which we may translate as the Glass Bead Game." — Daniel d'Quincy, Fearful Symmetry "7:11" — God himself said this, at least according to the previous entry and to my Jan. 28 entry, State of the Communion. "Seven is heaven." — See my web page Eight is a Gate. "An excellent example of a 'universal' in the sense of Charles Williams, Jung, or Plato is Hexagram 11 in China's 3,000-year-old classic, the I Ching:
— S. H. Cullinane, Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star Thus we may associate the numbers 7 and 11 with the notions of heaven and peace; for a somewhat darker association of the time 7:11 with Kali as Time the Destroyer, see my last entry and also my previous entries Fat Man and Dancing Girl (Feb. 18, 2003), and Time and Eternity (Feb. 1, 2003). Posted 3/4/2003 at 9:25 PM |
New York District,
Posted 3/4/2003 at 4:20 PM |
7:20 PM CALI Time The Bus and the Bead Game: On this date in 1955, "Bus Stop," a play by William Inge, opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. "I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street." — C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, opening sentence Today's birthdays: Sam Houston and many others. "Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear..." — Karen Carpenter singing "Superstar" "And if I find me a good man, See (and hear) also "Seven Come Eleven," played by St. Charlie Christian. One might (disregarding separation in time and space -- never major hindrances to the saints) imagine C. S. Lewis in Heaven listening to a conversation among the four saints listed above. For more on the communion of saints, see my entry "State of the Communion" of Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003. This entry, quoting an old spiritual, concluded with "Now hear the word of the Lord" -- followed by this notation: 7:11 PM. See also the N.Y. Times obituary of John P. Thompson of Dallas, former 7-Eleven chairman, who died, as it happened, on that very day (Jan. 28). See also Karen Carpenter's "first take luck." The sort of association of ideas described in the "Communion" entry is not unrelated to the Glasperlenspiel, or Glass Bead Game, of Hermann Hesse. For a somewhat different approach to the Game, see by John S. Wilson, group theorist and head of the Pure Mathematics Group at the University of Birmingham in England. Wilson is "not convinced that Hesse's... game is only a metaphor." Neither am I. For the association-of-ideas approach, see the page cited in my "Communion" entry, "A Game Designer's Holy Grail," and (if you can find a copy) one of the greatest forgotten books of the twentieth century, The Third Word War, by Ian Lee (A&W Publishers, Inc., New York, 1978). As Lee remarks concerning the communion of saints and the association of ideas, "The association is the idea." Posted 3/2/2003 at 10:20 PM |