Project for the "A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice." -- Tim Robbins, speech to National Press Club, April 15, 2003 Resoluteness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for such a voice. Also needed is eloquence. Here is such a voice: Postscript: I wrote the above at 3:38 PM today, thinking I had finally found someone to admire whom my left-leaning friends might also admire. Perhaps resoluteness and eloquence suffice to stop a mob; they are not, however, sufficient to impress professional journalists, who, to be much impressed, require a third quality-- truthfulness. Since today's major Washington and New York papers indicate that a presidential scandal of Water- or Monica-gate proportions may be in the offing, some minimal fact-checking seems in order. Hence, at 3:40 PM today, I did a Google search on names Pitt discusses: "karl rove" That search indicates that unfortunately, mob-stopper Pitt seems, like many leftists, to be a liar. Here is an excerpt from Pitt on Karl Rove dated Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2003: The Most Insidious of Traitors
Here is an excerpt from columnist Robert Novak dated December 5, 2002:
I say Pitt seems to be lying because in today's editorial he never even mentions Novak's column of December 5, 2002, which is, as noted above, readily available. It is, of course, possible that Pitt and Suskind are right and Novak is wrong. It is also possible that Orwell was wrong, that Stalin was a great man, and that Communism is the wave of the future. Posted 9/30/2003 at 4:38 PM |
On the Beach On this date in 1954, the first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was commissioned. Related reading in today's New York Times:
Related reading from yesterday's entries: Related reading from the Song of Songs: "Love is strong as death." Related viewing: Today's birthday: Deborah Kerr. Posted 9/30/2003 at 3:16 AM |
Magic Hawaii Today, the birthday of singer Jerry Lee Lewis, is also the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. In honor of Lewis: Killer Radio, an entry of July 31, 2003, that contains the following...
In honor of the angels: Mathematics as an Adequate Language,
These qualities seem also to be sought by practitioners of religion and physics... for example, by the spiritually-minded physicist in Preuss's Broken Symmetries. Skeptics might prefer, to the word "religion," the word (pronounced with a sneer) "magic." What do we find if, following in the footsteps of Gelfand and Preuss, we do a Google search on the following words... The search yields two results:
These two selections, both on the theme of light and darkness, offer a language that is perhaps more adequate than mathematics for dealing with the nature of the High Holy Days. For a more lighthearted approach to these concerns, also with a Hawaiian theme, see Posted 9/29/2003 at 3:03 PM |
and Going Home Posted 9/29/2003 at 1:15 AM |
Spirit of East St. Louis On Miles Davis and Philly Joe Jones:
From The American Art Form:
See also Desmond and Mulligan, Two of a Mind, Google search, "musical telepathy," and a novel dealing with East St. Louis (where Miles Davis grew up) and telepathy, The Hollow Man, by Dan Simmons. From the jacket of The Hollow Man:
Posted 9/28/2003 at 4:13 PM |
Time is a Weapon "Time is a weapon, it’s cold and it’s cruel." — Max D. Barnes song lyric, 3:57 was the time of yesterday afternoon's entry,
"Only through time time is conquered." Posted 9/26/2003 at 9:26 PM |
A Mass for In memory of playwright Herb Gardner, who died on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2003, in honor of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sunset today, and in celebration of T. S. Eliot's birthday, which is today, here is an illustrated Mass from the Catholic News Service dated Sept. 24 (Saint Herb's Day):
See also the two previous entries, For a musical accompaniment to this Among
The Mass, at Max's Hawaiian Ecstasies The role of the congregation will, as usual, Posted 9/26/2003 at 3:28 PM |
In Memory of Playwright "Up for auction is a Hawaiian hula girl music box. It plays 'Tiny Bubbles' and spins around. It is approx. 12" tall and the top part of the body is made of hard plastic. It is in great condition." Aloha. Posted 9/25/2003 at 3:57 PM |
Bel Canto The conclusion of tonight's season- Related material: The Source: Tips On Popular Singing What prompted me to find this 40,000 Years of Music I picked up this book this afternoon See also Sinatra's remarks on bel canto For the religious significance of Added at 3:20 AM Sept. 25... In Related News: Source: Google News, about 3:15 AM 9/25/03 Posted 9/24/2003 at 10:01 PM |
Intelligence Test
Today's British Intelligence Award
Today's British Stupidity Award goes, Posted 9/23/2003 at 1:15 PM |
What Is Poetry? Posted 9/22/2003 at 4:23 AM |
Today in History Happy birthday, Ronna. Posted 9/21/2003 at 4:11 PM |
Contrapuntal Structure Click here for a web page based on my Sept. 16 entry The Form, the Pattern. Posted 9/20/2003 at 11:59 PM |
The Mysteries of 26 My entry of May 26, 2003 — dealt with the question of whether this number, said to be of significance (as a number of dimensions) in theoretical physics, has any purely mathematical properties of interest. That entry contained the above figure, a so-called Levi graph illustrating point/line incidence in the finite projective plane with 13 points and 13 lines, PG(2,3). It turns out that in a paper of April 7, 2000, John H. Conway and Christopher S. Simons discussed a close connection between this plane and the Monster group. See (Journal of Algebra. Vol. 235, no. 2. Conway had written about such a connection as early as 1985. I apologize for not knowing about this sooner, and so misleading any mathematical readers about the number 26, which it seems does have considerable purely mathematical significance. Posted 9/19/2003 at 3:57 AM |
Happy Ending From yesterday morning:
From Jesus College, Oxford — "... Filled with despair, Orpheus dragged himself back to earth with only his music left to him.... In death Orpheus once more entered the Underworld, still playing the lyre. He and Eurydice were permanently reunited. Many scholars see Orpheus as another pagan prototype of Christ." Amen. Posted 9/18/2003 at 2:45 AM |
Time's Breakdown "... even if we can break down time into component Walsh functions, what would it achieve?" -- The Professor, in "Passing in Silence," "Being is not a steady state but an occulting one: we are all of us a succession of stillness blurring into motion on the wheel of action, and it is in those spaces of black between the pictures that we find the heart of mystery in which we are never allowed to rest. The flickering of a film interrupts the intolerable continuity of apparent world; subliminally it gives us those in-between spaces of black that we crave." -- Gösta Kraken, Perception Perceived: an Unfinished Memoir (p. 9 in Fremder, a novel by Russell Hoban) "The Underground's 'flicker' is a mechanical reconciliation of light and darkness, the two alternately exhibited very rapidly." -- Hugh Kenner on T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" in Four Quartets From last year's entries: ART WARS September 12, 2002
For some further reflections on flickering time, the Geneva mechanism "At three o'clock in the morning For June Carter Cash as Eurydice, Let us pray that Jesus College Posted 9/17/2003 at 3:00 AM |
The Form, the Pattern "...the sort of organization that Eliot later called musical, in his lecture 'The Music of Poetry', delivered in 1942, just as he was completing Four Quartets: 'The use of recurrent themes is as natural to poetry as to music,' Eliot says:
-- Louis L. Martz, from "... Only by the form, the pattern, -- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets For a discussion of the above Posted 9/16/2003 at 2:56 PM |
Time Words move, music moves -- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets It is time that beats in the breast and it is time Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse -- Wallace Stevens, "The Pure Good of Theory" Only through time time is conquered. -- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets Posted 9/16/2003 at 2:56 AM |
All the King's Horses Johnny Cash's funeral was today. Today is also the feast day of the Protestant saint Robert Penn Warren. Here is how Stanley Kubrick might
The title of this entry, "All the King's Horses," is of course a slightly altered version of the title of Robert Penn Warren's famous novel. For the connection with horses, see my entries of September 12, 2003, and of See also as well as the beginning of Mark Helprin's novel "There was a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when snow covered the streets gently...." Posted 9/15/2003 at 4:15 PM |
Two More Skewed Mirrors Background: Previous three entries and
Ah, Christ, Johnny. Posted 9/15/2003 at 4:44 AM |
Skewed Mirrors Part I — Bill Moyers and Julie Taymor Director Taymor on her own passion play (see previous entry), "Frida": "We always write stories of tragedies because that's how we reach our human depth. How we get to the other side of it. We look at the cruelty, the darkness and horrific events that happened in our life whether it be a miscarriage or a husband who is not faithful. Then you find this ability to transcend. And that is called the passion, like the passion of Christ. You could call this the passion of Frida Kahlo, in a way." — 10/25/02 interview with Bill Moyers
Part II — Inside and Outside: Transformation (Research note, July 11, 1986)
Click on the above typewritten note to enlarge. Summary of "We're not here to stick a mirror on you. Anybody can do that, We're here to give you a more cubist or skewed mirror, where you get to see yourself with fresh eyes. That's what an artist does. When you paint the Crucifixion, you're not painting an exact reproduction." — Julie Taymor on "Frida" (AP, 10/22/02) "She made 'real' an oxymoron, — "Arizona Star," Guy Clark / Rich Alves Posted 9/14/2003 at 9:12 PM |
The Graces of Paranoia The New Yorker on Mel Gibson's filmed passion play:
On the later plays of August Strindberg:
For the Grace that I prefer to Gibson's looney ravings, see my entries for this date last year. Posted 9/14/2003 at 2:56 PM |
For the Man in Black Lyrics: Arizona Star "Shinin' like a diamond A picture: Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor A book: Dark Ladies, by Fritz Leiber This offers a gentler form of the alcoholic experience than Malcolm Lowry's classic Under the Volcano: "I've had hallucinations from alcohol, too.... But only during withdrawal oddly, the first three days. In closets and dark corners and under tables — never in very bright light — I'd see these black and sometimes red wires, about the thickness of telephone cords, vibrating, whipping around. Made me think of giant spiders' legs and such. I'd know they were hallucinations — they were manageable, thank God. Bright light would always wipe them out." -- Fritz Leiber, "Our Lady of Darkness," in Dark Ladies Related entries: The Feast of Kali, the Dark Lady, and Architecture of Eternity, For a more serious Dark Lady portrait, see the site of artist John de la Vega. Posted 9/13/2003 at 1:44 AM |
Into the Sunset I just learned of Johnny's Cash's death. On Google News, the headline was Johnny Cash rides into sunset. The source was the Bangkok Post. "Don't you know that -- One Night in Bangkok (midi) "They are the horses of a dream. -- The Hex Witch of Seldom, page 16
The Magnificent Seven: CLICK HERE for "the adventures of filming this epic
"Words are events." -- Walter J. Ong, Society of Jesus "...search for thirty-three and three..." Posted 9/12/2003 at 3:33 PM |
Commentary On 4:04:08: "Je ne connais que deux sortes d’êtres immuables sur la terre: les géomètres et les animaux; ils sont conduits par deux règles invariables la démonstration et l’instinct; et encore les géomètres ont-ils eu quelques disputes, mais les animaux n’ont jamais varié." -- Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, "Des Contradictions dans les Affaires et dans les Hommes"
On 4:04:08 "El pan que se come no es pan." -- Voltaire quoting Montesquieu Posted 9/12/2003 at 3:06 PM |
Particularity
Upon learning of the recent death of Walter J. Ong, S. J., philosopher of language, I ordered a copy of his book Hopkins, the Self, and God As the reader of my previous entry will discover, I have a very low opinion of the literary skills of the first Christians. This sect's writing has, however, improved in the past two millennia. Despite my low opinion of the early Christians, I am still not convinced their religion is totally unfounded. Hence my ordering of the Ong book. Since then, I have also ordered two other books, reflecting my interests in philosophical fiction (see previous entry) and in philosophy itself: Philosophical fiction -- The Hex Witch of Seldom, Philosophy -- Definition, Following the scientific advice of Niels Bohr and Freeman Dyson, I articulated on April 25, 2003, a mad theory of the mystical significance of the number 162. Here is that theory applied to the three works named above, all three of which I received, synchronistically, today. Page 162 of Hopkins, the Self, and God is part of the long list of references at the back of the book. Undiscouraged by the seeming insignificance (vide my note Dogma) of this page, I looked more closely. Behold, there was Christ... Carol T. Christ, that is, author of The Finer Optic: The Aesthetic of Particularity in Victorian Poetry, Yale University Press, 1975. "Particularity" seemed an apt description of my "162" approach to literature, so I consulted Christ's remarks as described in the main body of Ong's book. Particularity according to Christ -- "Victorian particularist aesthetics has prospered to the present time, and not only in novels. The isolated, particularized, unique 'good moment' [Christ, 105], the flash of awareness at one particular instant in just the right setting, which Hopkins celebrates...." -- Ong, Hopkins, the Self, and God, p. 14 I highly recommend the rest of Ong's remarks on particularity. Turning to the other two of the literary trinity of books I received today.... Page 162 of The Hex Witch of Seldom has the following: "There was a loaf of Stroehmann's Sunbeam Bread in the grocery sack also; she and Witchie each had several slices. Bobbi folded and compressed hers into little squares and popped each slice into her mouth all at once." The religious significance of this passage seems, in Ong's Jesuit context, quite clear. Page 162 of Definition has the following: "Real Definition as the Search for a Key. Mr. Santayana, in his book on The Sense of Beauty, made the following extremely large demands on real definition: 'A definition <of beauty> that should really define must be nothing less than the exposition of the origin, place, and elements of beauty as an object of human experience. We must learn from it, as far as possible, why, when, and how beauty appears, what conditions an object must fulfil to be beautiful, what elements of our nature make us sensible of beauty, and what the relation is between the constitution of the object and the excitement of our sensibility. Nothing less will really define beauty or make us understand what aesthetic appreciation is. The definition of beauty in this sense will be the task of this whole book, a task that can be only very imperfectly accomplished within its limits.' " Here is a rhetorical exercise for Jesuits that James Joyce might appreciate: Discuss Bobbi's "little squares" of bread as the Body of Christ. Formulate, using Santayana's criteria, a definition of beauty that includes this sacrament. Refer, if necessary, to Refrain from using the phrase Posted 9/11/2003 at 6:25 PM |
4:04:08 The title refers to my entry of last April 4, and to the time of this entry. From D. H. Lawrence and the Dialogical Principle: "Plato's Dialogues...are queer little novels....[I]t was the greatest pity in the world, when philosophy and fiction got split. They used to be one, right from the days of myth. Then they went and parted, like a nagging married couple, with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and that beastly Kant. So the novel went sloppy, and philosophy went abstract-dry. The two should come together again, in the novel." -- pp. 154-5 in D. H. Lawrence, "The Future of the Novel," in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays. Ed. Bruce Steele. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1983. 149-55. "The wild, brilliant, alert head of St. Mawr seemed to look at her out of another world... the large, brilliant eyes of that horse looked at her with demonish question.... 'Meet him half way,' Lewis [the groom] said. But halfway across from our human world to that terrific equine twilight was not a small step." -- pp. 30, 35 in D. H. Lawrence, "St. Mawr." 1925. St. Mawr and Other Stories. Ed. Brian Finney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. Katherine Neville's novel The Eight, referred to in my note of April 4, is an excellent example of how not to combine philosophy with fiction. Lest this be thought too harsh, let me say that the New Testament offers a similarly ludicrous mixture. On the other hand, there do exist successful combinations of philosophy with fiction... For example, The Glass Bead Game, Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Under the Volcano, the novels of Charles Williams, and the C. S. Lewis classic That Hideous Strength. This entry was prompted by the appearance of the god Pan in my entry on this date last year, by Hugh Grant's comedic encounters with Pan in "Sirens," by Lawrence's remarks on Pan in "St. Mawr," and by the classic film "Picnic at Hanging Rock." Posted 9/10/2003 at 4:04 PM |
Now for the grand finale... Edward Teller Is Dead at 95; Two links... Patrick's Rune Patrick's Rune ...and a quote from Ross's home page: The truth shall make you free. — The Caltech motto and John 8:32 Posted 9/10/2003 at 4:00 AM |
"Dr. Jose Barchilon, a psychoanalyst and educator who studied the unconscious roots of creativity and mental illness, died on at his home in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 90. In addition to training and teaching in New York and Denver, Dr. Barchilon wrote extensively, including early studies of psychosomatic illness and psychoanalytic studies of novels by Jane Austen, Albert Camus, Mark Twain and others. He also trained a generation of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts...." — The New York Times, Sept. 9, 2003
Posted 9/10/2003 at 1:09 AM |
— Walter J. Ong, S. J. Gisele Marie Louise Marguerite La Fleche, better known as Gisele MacKenzie, star of "Your Hit Parade," died on
From my entry of Saturday, Sept. 6, 2003: 'That person who is to be known, Cover illustration for The Spirit is Willing... Posted 9/9/2003 at 11:19 PM |
Olympic Style For Dr. Mary McClintock Dusenbury, Three occurrences of the same Posted 9/9/2003 at 9:37 PM |
Reply to Lucifer The New York State Lottery evening number for Saturday, September 6, 2003, was 666. See last year's entries for Mary Shelley's birthday, These were written partly in response to the New York State Lottery midday number for Monday, August 26, 2002, which was also 666. In reply to that occurrence, I commented on the website
In reply to last Saturday's return of the beastly lottery number, I recommend the following links on software guru Bill Joy: Sept. 9 - Sun Co-founder Joy Steps Down:
and Joy's April 2000 Wired article, titled
Joy says "I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil...." I, too, can date, at least approximately, an encounter with the philosophy of transhumanism (a Lucifer Media link) that Kurzweil embraces... It was sometime in the first half of January, 1989... I know this because January 9, 1989, is the date of The New Yorker's review of Hans Moravec's Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Harvard University Press). Brad Leithauser, reviewing Mind Children, says that if Moravec "is correct in supposing that human minds will be transferred into or otherwise fused with machines, it seems likely that traditional religious questions -- and traditional religions themselves -- will either melt away or suffer wholesale metamorphosis. Debates about Heaven or Hell -- to take but one example -- would hold little relevance for an immortal creature." Au contraire. Immortal creatures-- such as, according to Christianity, human beings-- are the only creatures for whom such debates hold relevance. For an example of such a debate, see The Contrasting Worldviews of by Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi. For more on Nicholi, see my entry of August 19, 2003, For the temple tablet associated with Nicholi in that entry, see my entry of September 6, 2003 (the NY Lottery "666" date), To sum up this entry, a phrase of C. S. Lewis seems appropriate: Posted 9/9/2003 at 6:23 PM |
Story Theory The conflict between the Euclidean, or "diamond" theory of truth, and the Trudeau, or "story" theory of truth, continues. On this, Hugh Grant's birthday, let us recall last year's log24 entry for this date. On Roger Ebert's review of the Hugh Grant film "Sirens" about the artist Norman Lindsay:
This year's offering for Grant's birthday is an illustrated prayer by a great defender of the religious, or "story," theory of truth, Madeleine L'Engle:
Posted 9/9/2003 at 4:04 PM |
Goodbye and Hello Larry Rodgers "If any musician can look death in the eye and smile, it's California-based songwriter extraordinaire Warren Zevon." From April 7, 2003: April is Math Awareness Month. From an entry yesterday on looking death in the eye and smiling: Such serenity "is indestructible and only increases with age and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art." From an entry earlier today on a circle of souls in the sun: "they lovingly welcome two more into their company."
Frost died on September 1. Posted 9/8/2003 at 4:07 PM |
Pre- and Post-Cognition From an entry from Sept. 13, 2002, linked to in last night's ART WARS notes: "In the sun, Dante and Beatrice find themselves surrounded by a circle of souls famous for their wisdom on earth. They appear as splendid lights and precious jewels who dance and sing as they lovingly welcome two more into their company." Doonesbury, Monday morning, Sept. 8, 2003:
For more chanting, Posted 9/8/2003 at 1:25 PM |
ART WARS Sept. 1, 2003: Sir Terry Frost Dies A noted English abstract painter died at 87 on Monday, September 1. From a memorial essay on Sir Terry Frost, born in 1915, in The Daily Telegraph: "He was educated at Leamington Spa Central School where he edited the art magazine, but left at 15 to work...." His first jobs included, the Telegraph says, painting "the red, white and blue targets on to fighter planes." The "target" the Telegraph refers to It may indeed have functioned as a target, but it was originally intended only as a distinctive identifying mark. Some of Frost's later work may be viewed at the British Government Art Collection. For some of Frost's work more closely related to his early "target" theme, see the Badcock's Gallery site. An example:
For related religious Pilate, Truth, and Friday the Thirteenth, a meditation for Good Friday of 2001, a meditation for Friday the Thirteenth and from the day Frost died, which concludes 2001: Posted 9/8/2003 at 4:24 AM |
Horse Sense Mathematicians are familiar with the emblem of Springer Verlag, the principal publisher of higher mathematics. Ferdinand Springer, son of Julius Springer, founder of Springer Verlag, "was a passionate chess player and published a number of books on the subject. In 1881 this personal hobby and the name Springer led the company to adopt the knight in chess (in German, Springer) as its colophon." Hermann Hesse on a certain sort of serenity: "I would like to say something more to you about cheerful serenity, the serenity of the stars and of the mind.... neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses; it is a virtue of saints and of knights; it is indestructible and only increases with age and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art." A saint and a knight, Jeanne d'Arc, was memorably portrayed by Milla Jovovich in The Messenger. (Jovovich seems fated to play more-than-human characters in religious epics; see The Fifth Element.) Another Springer, related to horses and to the accusation of witchcraft faced by Jeanne d'Arc, is Nancy Springer, the author of Springer has written a number of books about horses, as well as other topics. All of the above.... especially the parts having to do with mathematics and horses... was prompted by my redrawing today of a horse-shape within mathematics. See my entry The Eight of April 4, 2003, and the horse-figure redrawn at right below.
Believers in the story theory of truth may wish to relate the gifts of Jeanne d'Arc and of the girl in The Hex Witch of Seldom to the legend of Pegasus. See, for instance, Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. For another connection between mathematics and horses, see Sangaku. Posted 9/7/2003 at 11:11 PM |
Pictures for Kurosawa
Five years ago on this day, director Akira Kurosawa died. The above pictures are offered as a remembrance of Kurosawa and also of Charlotte Selver, who died on August 22, 2003. The picture at right is from an entry of August 22. As one obituary of Selver says, "She was very sharp and very precise." The picture at left is the cover of Alan Watts's book The Spirit of Zen (a religion that is also very sharp and very precise).
The picture at right above is intended as a sangaku, or Japanese temple tablet. The picture at left above on the cover of Watts's book may be regarded as illustrating the following: "As these flowing rivers that go towards the ocean, when they have reached the ocean, sink into it, their name and form are broken, and people speak of the ocean only, exactly thus these sixteen parts of the spectator that go towards the person (purusha), when they have reached the person, sink into him, their name and form are broken, and people speak of the person only, and he becomes without parts and immortal. On this there is this verse: 'That person who is to be known, he in whom these parts rest, like spokes in the nave of a wheel, you know him, lest death should hurt you.' " Posted 9/6/2003 at 2:56 PM |
The Tempest A tropical storm over Florida (lower left) as described by William Shakespeare in 1611. "Wind over Water" in the I Ching, Dissolving: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you,
were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air: and, like the
baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous
palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it
inherit, shall dissolve and, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and
our little life is rounded with a sleep. (Prospero, IV.i) Posted 9/6/2003 at 12:00 AM |
For Grace Paley: Hexagram 59 of the I Ching comprises the trigrams for wind and water (as in the environmental art of Feng Shui). The name of the hexagram, Huan, means dispersion or dissolution. The character Huan may be written as shown at right above. The picture of the character Huan is taken from Essentially the same picture is shown at where it is explained as follows: "At the top is a person or people , a flattened version of the more familiar . In the center an eye looks out from a cave or cavern. At the bottom a hand holds a stick or club as though ready to strike something. represents flowing water." The creature in the cave holding a club is reminiscent of my previous entry for today, on the "bone people," or ancestors, of mankind. For a transition, in the Kubrick 2001 style, to a more modern scene, see my next entry. Posted 9/5/2003 at 11:59 PM |
Da Capo "The story bent and climbed and went into weird areas. For instance, at one time Simon Peter was a cave-dweller; at another, he only appeared in other characters' dreams...." — Keri Hulme on The Bone People "Words are events." In East Asian traditions, "Rocks are seen as events--rather slow-moving events--but as events...." — Graham Parkes, professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii Parkes is working on a translation of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra and is the author of "The Overflowing Soul: Images of Transformation in Nietzsche's Zarathustra." He is also the translator, with David Pellauer, of Nietzsche and Music, by Georges Liébert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Posted 9/5/2003 at 8:23 PM |
Recommended Reading for Cullinane College:
"The Talented form their own society and that's as it should be: birds of a feather. No, not birds. Winged horses! Ha! Yes, indeed. Pegasus... the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy. A bloody good symbol for us. You'd see a lot from the back of a winged horse..." — To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey. "Born in Cambridge, MA, on April Fool's Day 1926 ('I've tried very hard to live up to being an April-firster,' she quips), McCaffrey graduated from Radcliffe College in 1947." Born on March 9, 1947, in Christchurch, Keri Hulme won the Pegasus Prize for her Maori novel, The Bone People. Posted 9/5/2003 at 3:28 PM |
Epitaphs The late philosopher Donald Davidson (see previous entry) had a gift for titles. For example: "The Folly of Trying to Define Truth" "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs" For my thoughts on the former, see Pilate, Truth, and Friday the Thirteenth, The Diamond Theory of Truth, and Sept. 2, 2002 (Laurindo Almeida's Birthday). For my thoughts on the latter, see Happy Birthday, Mary Shelley (2003), For Mary Shelley's Birthday (2002), and, in honor of J. R. R. Tolkien, who died on the date September 2, at Wikipedia Encyclopedia, which contains the following: "J. R. R. Tolkien is buried next to his wife, and on their tombstone the names 'Beren' and 'Luthien' are engraved, a fact that sheds light on the love story of Beren and Luthien which is recorded in several versions in his works." A nice derangement, indeed. Posted 9/4/2003 at 4:23 PM |
Monolith "Music can name the unnameable — Quotation attributed to Leonard Bernstein "Finally we get to Kubrick's ultimate trick.... His secret is in plain sight.... The film is the monolith. In a secret that seems to never have been seen by anyone: the monolith in the film has the same exact dimensions as the movie screen on which 2001 was projected." — Alchemical Kubrick 2001, by Jay Weidner My entry of Saturday, August 30, My entry of Monday, September 1, "There is little doubt that the black monolith — Alchemical Kubrick 2001, by Jay Weidner The philosopher Donald Davidson The New York Times says that as an undergraduate, Davidson "persuaded Harvard to let him put on 'The Birds' by Aristophanes and played the lead, Peisthetairos, which meant memorizing 700 lines of Greek. His friend and classmate Leonard Bernstein, with whom he played four-handed piano, wrote an original score for the production." Perhaps they are still making music together. Posted 9/4/2003 at 2:42 AM |
Reciprocity From my entry of Sept. 1, 2003: "...the principle of taking and giving, of learning and teaching, of listening and storytelling, in a word: of reciprocity.... ... E. M. Forster famously advised his readers, 'Only connect.' 'Reciprocity' would be Michael Kruger's succinct philosophy, with all that the word implies." -- William Boyd, review of Himmelfarb, New York Times Book Review, October 30, 1994 Last year's entry on this date:
The picture above is of the complete graph Diamond theory describes how the 15 two-element subsets of a six-element set (represented by edges in the picture above) may be arranged as 15 of the 16 parts of a 4x4 array, and how such an array relates to group-theoretic concepts, including Sylvester's synthematic totals as they relate to constructions of the Mathieu group M24. If diamond theory illustrates any general philosophical principle, it is probably the interplay of opposites.... "Reciprocity" in the sense of Lao Tzu. See Reciprocity and Reversal in Lao Tzu. For a sense of "reciprocity" more closely related to Michael Kruger's alleged philosophy, see the Confucian concept of Shu (Analects 15:23 or 24) described in Kruger's novel is in part about a Jew: the quintessential Jewish symbol, the star of David, embedded in the Click on the design for details. Those who prefer a Jewish approach to physics can find the star of David, in the form of A Graphical Representation The star of David also appears, if only as a heuristic arrangement, in a note that shows generating partitions of the affine group on 64 points arranged in two opposing triplets. Having thus, as the New York Times advises, paid tribute to a Jewish symbol, we may note, in closing, a much more sophisticated and subtle concept of reciprocity due to Euler, Legendre, and Gauss. See Posted 9/3/2003 at 3:00 PM |
One Ring to Rule Them All In memory of J. R. R. Tolkien, who died on this date, and in honor of Israel Gelfand, who was born on this date. Leonard Gillman on his collaboration with Meyer Jerison and Melvin Henriksen in studying rings of continuous functions: "The triple papers that Mel and I wrote deserve comment. Jerry had conjectured a characterization of beta X (the Stone-Cech compactification of X) and the three of us had proved that it was true. Then he dug up a 1939 paper by Gelfand and Kolmogoroff that Hewitt, in his big paper, had referred to but apparently not appreciated, and there we found Jerry's characterization. The three of us sat around to decide what to do; we called it the 'wake.' Since the authors had not furnished a proof, we decided to publish ours. When the referee expressed himself strongly that a title should be informative, we came up with On a theorem of Gelfand and Kolmogoroff concerning maximal ideals in rings of continuous functions. (This proved to be my second-longest title, and a nuisance to refer to.) Kolmogoroff died many years ago, but Gelfand is still living, a vigorous octogenarian now at Rutgers. A year or so ago, I met him at a dinner party in Austin and mentioned the 1939 paper. He remembered it very well and proceeded to complain that the only contribution Kolmogoroff had made was to point out that a certain result was valid for the complex case as well. I was intrigued to see how the giants grouse about each other just as we do." -- Leonard Gillman: An Interview This clears up a question I asked earlier in this journal....
A response by Richard Cudney:
Posted 9/2/2003 at 1:11 PM |
The Unity of Mathematics, or "Shema, Israel" A conference to honor the 90th birthday (Sept. 2) of Israel Gelfand is currently underway in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following note from 2001 gives one view of the conference's title topic, "The Unity of Mathematics."
Related ReadingFor four different proofs of Euler's result, see the inexpensive paperback classic by Konrad Knopp, Theory and Application of Infinite Series (Dover Publications).
Related WebsitesEvaluating Zeta(2), by Robin Chapman (PDF article) Fourteen proofs! Zeta Functions for Undergraduates Reciprocity Laws Recent Progress on the Langlands Conjectures For more on Posted 9/1/2003 at 3:33 PM |