Symmetry and Change, Part 1... Early Evening, Hexagram 01
The ImageHeaven
Heaven
The movement of heaven Click on picture The Clare Lawler Prize
Posted 8/31/2004 at 7:31 PM |
For student
For teacher The Green and For the Voice of Gollum, For further details, click on ... y eres tú y soy yo dimensión de arco (This last picture, taken by Posted 8/31/2004 at 10:01 AM |
Agon for Penelope Doob, "How much story do you want?" Posted 8/30/2004 at 4:01 PM |
Q.E.D. A Log24 entry of Aug. 17, 2004, on the
Author biography Father Cornelius ("Neil") Horan "Neil Horan was born in 1947, in Scartaglen, County Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland. After schooling in Ireland he was ordained a Catholic Priest in Saint Mary's Cathedral, Killarney, in 1973. A Glorious New World "Are there passages in the Bible that foretell events that were, at the time it was written, far in the future? Father Neil Horan argues eloquently, knowledgeably and persuasively in this book, first published in 1985, that this is so. It is easy to scoff at predictions of events that were, according to the book, to have taken place a few years ago but which have not happened, but to do that would be wrong. With only the most subtle changes of emphasis in interpretation, it could just as easily be argued that events in the Middle East particularly have to a large degree fulfilled the prophecies for the years since 1985.
Posted 8/30/2004 at 12:07 PM |
Olympic Arc Thomas Becker, president of Chautauqua Institution, on Friday, Aug. 27, 2004: "I'm really proud of this lecture platform this year. We started with Phil Wilcox on the first day of the season and finished with Sandra Day O'Connor. The arc of participation between them was really amazing." Phil Wilcox: See Israel and Palestine: Sandra Day O'Connor: See The Majesty of the Law: The O'Connor link above is to a page at the Chautauqua Bookstore. For Justice O'Connor: Reflections on Themis For Wilcox: The Zen of Abraham I personally was at Chautauqua only one day this season -- Friday, the 13th of August. My stops of course included the Chautauqua Bookstore, where I purchased the following: Human cultural activity is mostly what Walker Percy astutely called "symbol-mongering." Of the three books above, the central one offers the best symbols. My own version of a For further details, see the For an "arc" symbol, see Posted 8/29/2004 at 11:07 AM |
History of Mathematics On the history of the relationship between orthogonality (in the Latin-square sense) and skewness (in the projective-space sense)-- See the newly updated Orthogonal Latin Squares as Skew Lines. Posted 8/28/2004 at 5:01 PM |
A Matched Pair of Stories From today's Los Angeles Times:
From today's New York Times:
Posted 8/22/2004 at 1:11 PM |
5:01:58 AM ET: A link for Jill St. John's birthday -- The Geometrics of Brilliance
and for everyone else:
Posted 8/19/2004 at 5:01 AM |
Angel of the A few words for M.C.C.
Elmer Bernstein, Film Composer, Dies at 82By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LOS ANGELES (AP)-- Elmer Bernstein, the versatile, Oscar-winning composer who scored such movie classics as "The Ten Commandments," "The Magnificent Seven,"' "To Kill a Mockingbird,"' "The Great Escape" and "True Grit," died Wednesday. He was 82. That, M.C.C., is what Posted 8/19/2004 at 3:09 AM |
Instantia Crucis "Francis Bacon used the phrase instantia crucis, 'crucial instance,' to refer to something in an experiment that proves one of two hypotheses and disproves the other. Bacon's phrase was based on a sense of the Latin word crux, 'cross,' which had come to mean 'a guidepost that gives directions at a place where one road becomes two,' and hence was suitable for Bacon's metaphor." -- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition The high notes hit by Harriet Wheeler, Jen Slocumb, and Alanis Morissette can, I am sorry to say, be excruciating. (See previous entry.) I greatly prefer the mellow tones of Mary Chapin Carpenter:
From an entry of 12/22/02:
A white horse comes as if on wings. -- I Ching, Hexagram 22: Grace See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star, Shining Forth, and Music for Pegasus. Posted 8/19/2004 at 1:06 AM |
A Cross Between
"The only way to describe her voice is a cross between Harriet Wheeler of The Sundays & Alanis Morissette." -- Review of Jen Slocumb of Martha's Trouble by Diane Matay "Apostrophe Theory is a cross between." -- Ian Lee, The Third Word War Posted 8/18/2004 at 11:25 PM |
Dyer, Part II: From Here to Eternity "Dying, at its best, might be something like this. Everything was a memory, and everything was still happening in some extended present, and everything was still to come." -- Geoff Dyer, quoted (in part of an entry, Dyer, for yesterday-- the day mathematician Shizuo Kakutani died) by Ruth Franklin in A Koan for Kakutani-- In a comment on the previous entry, a Xangan asks, "How many drunk men could migrate to Argentina without a map?" My answer: At least one. Posted 8/18/2004 at 11:07 AM |
Drunk Bird
"A drunk man will find his way home, but a drunk bird may get lost forever." -- Shizuo Kakutani, quoted by J. Chang in Stochastic Processes (ps), p. 1-19. Chang says the quote is from an R. Durrett book on probability. Meaning: A random walk in d dimensions is recurrent if d = 1 or d = 2, but transient if d is greater than or equal to 3. From a web page on Kylie Minogue:
From a web page on Malcolm Lowry's classic novel Under the Volcano: The day begins with Yvonne’s arrival at the Bella Vista bar in Quauhnahuac. From outside she hears Geoffrey’s familiar voice shouting a drunken lecture this time on the topic of the rule of the Mexican railway that requires that "A corpse will be transported by express!" (Lowry, Volcano, p. 43). For further literary details in memory of Shizuo Kakutani, Yale mathematician and father of book reviewer Michiko Kakutani, see Of course, Kakutani himself would probably prefer the anti-Santa, Michael Shermer. For a refutation of Santa by this high priest of Scientism, see (Scientific American, July 26, 2004). Posted 8/18/2004 at 3:00 AM |
Train of Thought
"Oh, my Lolita. I have only words "This is the best toy train set "As the quotes above by Nabokov and Welles suggest, we need to be able to account for the specific functions available to narrative in each medium, for the specific elements that empirical creators will 'play with' in crafting their narratives." Posted 8/18/2004 at 2:18 AM |
Tribute "Un train peut encacher un autre."
Modern Times:
ART WARS September 27, 2002 -- From the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, October 2002, p. 563: "To produce decorations for their weaving, pottery, and other objects, early artists experimented with symmetries and repeating patterns. Later the study of symmetries of patterns led to tilings, group theory, crystallography, finite geometries, and in modern times to security codes and digital picture compactifications. Early artists also explored various methods of representing existing objects and living things. These explorations led to.... [among other things] computer-generated movies (for example, Toy Story)." -- David W. Henderson, Cornell University From an earlier Log24.net note:
John Frankenheimer's "The Train" -- Und was für ein Bild des Christentums Posted 8/17/2004 at 7:29 PM |
Dyer "Dyer's writing is searching and melancholic and sometimes profound. In the beautiful title essay, he has a fling with a girl named Kate on a beach in Thailand: for her it is a one-night stand, for him something more. 'There is something about leaving a place on a small boat--something about the movement of the waves, the noise of the engine: it is like you are leaving your life behind and yet, since you are part of the life you have left behind, part of you is still there,' he writes after they have said good-bye. 'Dying, at its best, might be something like this. Everything was a memory, and everything was still happening in some extended present, and everything was still to come.'" -- Journey Without Maps, by Ruth Franklin, The New Republic Online, posted Friday the 13th of August, 2004 "The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither indicates clearly nor conceals, but gives a sign." Note the time in the Log24 illustration for Monday, August 16, 2004, and consult the entry for 12/05, 2003. Posted 8/17/2004 at 7:11 PM |
The Zen of Abraham Today's Zen Chautauqua, prompted by the fact that this is Abrahamic week at the real Chautauqua, consists of links to Happy Birthday, Kate and Kevin. The real Chautauqua's program this week is, of course, Christian rather than Zen. Its theme is "Building a Global Neighborhood: The Abrahamic Vision 2004." One of the featured performers is Loretta Lynn; in her honor (and, of course, that of Sissy Spacek), I will try to overcome the fear and loathing that the Semitic (i. e., "Abrahamic") religions usually inspire in me. To a mathematician, the phrase "global neighborhood" sounds like meaningless politico-religious bullshit -- a phrase I am sure accurately characterizes most of the discourse at Chautauqua this week. But a Google search reveals an area of This article includes the following: Given the sophistication of his writing, I am surprised at Schlansker's Christian background: A good omen for the future is the fact that Schlansker balances the looney Semitic (or "Abrahamic") teachings of Christianity with good sound Aryan religion, in the form of the goddess Themis. Themis, often depicted as "Justice" For those who must have an Abraham, Schlansker's paper includes the following: A Themis figure I prefer to the above: For more on religious justice For material on Aryan religion that is far superior to the damned nonsense at Chautauqua, New York, this week, see Jane Ellen Harrison's Themis: a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, with an excursus on the ritual forms preserved in Greek tragedy by Gilbert Murray and a chapter on the origin of the Olympic games by F. M. Cornford. Rev. 2nd ed., Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1927. Those who prefer the modern religion of Scientism will of course believe that Themis is purely imaginary, and that truth is to be found in modern myths like that of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, illustrated below. Jodie Foster (an admirer of "Heraclitus.... says: 'The ruler whose prophecy occurs at Delphi oute legei oute kryptei, neither gathers nor hides, alla semainei, but gives hints.'" Posted 8/17/2004 at 12:00 AM |
Classic to Romantic "Ben Webster is probably best known for his eloquent ballad playing. On JAZZ 'ROUND MIDNIGHT, we are treated to no less than 15 ballads, all of which are performed superbly. Webster is one of the great jazz romantics...." Posted 8/16/2004 at 12:00 AM |
The Line Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Ch. 6 (italics are mine): "A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance." STRANGER - We are far from having exhausted the more exact thinkers who treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to leave them, and proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and we shall find as the result of all, that the nature of being is quite as difficult to comprehend as that of not-being. THEAETETUS - Then now we will go to the others. STRANGER - There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence. THEAETETUS - How is that? STRANGER - Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body. THEAETETUS - I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they are. STRANGER - And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these matters. THEAETETUS - True. -- Translated by Benjamin Jowett Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Ch. 18: "The wave of crystallization rolled ahead. He was seeing two worlds, simultaneously. On the intellectual side, the square side, he saw now that Quality was a cleavage term. What every intellectual analyst looks for. You take your analytic knife, put the point directly on the term Quality and just tap, not hard, gently, and the whole world splits, cleaves, right in two... hip and square, classic and romantic, technological and humanistic...and the split is clean. There's no mess. No slop. No little items that could be one way or the other. Not just a skilled break but a very lucky break. Sometimes the best analysts, working with the most obvious lines of cleavage, can tap and get nothing but a pile of trash. And yet here was Quality; a tiny, almost unnoticeable fault line; a line of illogic in our concept of the universe; and you tapped it, and the whole universe came apart, so neatly it was almost unbelievable. He wished Kant were alive. Kant would have appreciated it. That master diamond cutter. He would see. Hold Quality undefined. That was the secret." What Pirsig means by "quality" is close to what Yagoda means, in the previous entry, by "style." Posted 8/15/2004 at 3:17 PM |
In memory of Julia Child, Elements of Style "Born Julia McWilliams in 1912, she was the product of the best American genetic engineering, bouncing out of an old-money, privileged Pasadena childhood like a kind of WASP merry prankster...." -- Dorothy Kalins in Newsweek, issue dated Aug. 23, 2004 When I read this, admiring the style of both Julia Child and Dorothy Kalins, I thought of a blurb I'd seen yesterday in aldaily.com:
I didn't click on the blurb then, but the spirit of Julia prompted me to click just now. This is what I found, in an essay written while Child was still alive, as examples of style: "Think of Michael Jordan and Jerry West each making a 20-foot jump shot, of Charlie Parker and Ben Webster playing a chorus of 'All the Things You Are,' of Julia Child and Paul Prudhomme fixing a duck à l'orange, or of Pieter Brueghel and Vincent van Gogh painting the same farmhouse." -- Ben Yagoda in Chronicle of Higher Education, issue dated Aug. 13, 2004 Posted 8/15/2004 at 2:29 AM |
Battle of Gods and Giants, The Invisible Made Visible "Leon Golub, an American painter of expressionistic, heroic-scale figures that reflect dire modern political conditions, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 82.... In the 1960's he produced a series, called 'Gigantomachies,' of battling, wrestling figures. They were based on classical models, including the Hellenistic Altar of Pergamon. But there was nothing idealized about them." The Hellenistic Altar of Pergamon, Golub's New York Times obituary concludes with a quote from a 1991 interview:
From Tuesday's Battle of Gods and Giants:
Perhaps, if Golub is fortunate enough to escape from the afterlife version of Plato's Cave, he will also be fortunate enough to enter Purgatory, where there awaits a course in reality, in the form of... Posted 8/12/2004 at 7:26 AM |
Battle of Gods and Giants, Wonders of the Invisible World Yesterday at about 5 PM I added a section titled "Invariants" to the 3:01 PM entry Battle of Gods and Giants. Within this added section was the sentence
Now, at about 5 AM, I see in today's New York Times a review of a book titled The Invisible Century, by Richard Panek. The reviewer, David Gelernter, says the "invisible" of the title refers to
The book concerns the research of Einstein and Freud. Gelernter says
The reader who clicks on the word "invariants" in Battle of Gods and Giants will receive the same information. Gelernter's conclusion:
As is synchronicity, a topic in the work of a greater man than Freud-- Carl Jung. The above remarks may be viewed as "synchronicity made visible." All of this was, of course, foreshadowed in my web page "A Mathematician's Aesthetics" of August 2000:
Posted 8/11/2004 at 5:35 AM |
Battle of Gods and Giants In checking the quotations from Dante in the previous entry, I came across the intriguing site Gigantomachia: "A gigantomachia or primordial battle between the gods has been retold in myth, cult, art and theory for thousands of years, from the Egyptians to Heidegger. This site will present the history of the theme. But it will do so in an attempt to raise the question of the contemporary relevance of it. Does the gigantomachia take place today? Where? When? In what relation to you and me?" Perhaps atop the Empire State Building? (See An Affair to Remember and Empire State Building to Honor Fay Wray.) Perhaps in relation to what the late poet Donald Justice called "the wood within"? Perhaps in relation to T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and the Feast of the Metamorphosis? Or perhaps not. Perhaps at Pergamon: Perhaps at Pergamon Press: "What modern painters are trying to do, An example of invariant structure:
The three line diagrams above result from the three partitions, into pairs of 2-element sets, of the 4-element set from which the entries of the bottom colored figure are drawn. Taken as a set, these three line diagrams describe the structure of the bottom colored figure. After coordinatizing the figure in a suitable manner, we find that this set of three line diagrams is invariant under the group of 16 binary translations acting on the colored figure. A more remarkable invariance -- that of symmetry This sort of mathematics illustrates the invisible "form" or "idea" behind the visible two-color pattern. Hence it exemplifies, in a way, the conflict described by Plato between those who say that "real existence belongs only to that which can be handled" and those who say that "true reality consists in certain intelligible and bodiless forms." For further details, see a section on Plato in the Gigantomachia site. Posted 8/10/2004 at 3:01 PM |
But all things then were oracle and secret. I say the wood within is the dark wood.... In memory of Justice, Canto INel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Midway in the journey of our life Canto IIIPer me si va ne la città dolente, Through me you enter the woeful city, -- Translation by Charles S. Singleton, Justice moved my high maker... From the day Justice died, Posted 8/10/2004 at 5:24 AM |
Posted 8/9/2004 at 10:00 PM |
Hollywood Ending "... they will meet at the top of Posted 8/9/2004 at 5:45 PM |
Shape Note A variation on the theme of the previous entry, Quartet.
As in the previous entry, the illustration on the left is from a Log24 entry on the date of death of the person on the right. Relevant quotations: "It was rather like solving a crossword puzzle." -- Derek Taunt, on breaking the Enigma Code "... history is a pattern "He [Dr. Taunt] and Angela [his wife] founded the Friends of Kettle's Yard when the Arts Council cut its grant in 1984 and together organised countless fundraising activities for the museum and gallery." "How do we relate to the past? How are our memories affected by the cultural context that shapes our present? How many, and what kind of narratives compete in the representation of a historical moment? Rear View Mirror sets out to explore these questions and examine the devices we use to reconstruct events and people through different lenses...." -- On a future Kettle's Yard exhibition Time past and time future "The diamonds will be shining,
See the Log24 remarks on Jesus College-- Taunt's college-- in a web page for June Carter Cash, The Circle is Unbroken. Posted 8/9/2004 at 4:00 AM |
Quartet An illustration from July 26,
"... legend has it, supported by Casals himself, that he was conceived when Brahms began his B-flat Major Quartet, of which Casals owned the original manuscript, and that he was born when Brahms completed its composition." -- http://www.bach-cantatas.com/ Posted 8/8/2004 at 6:08 AM |
Consacré François Furet: Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur "Il a consacré l'essentiel de ses travaux à l'histoire de la Révolution française." "St. Pierre-Toirac, in the Lot valley, has only minor entries in the Guide vert and the Guide bleu; because it has no hotel it is not in the red Michelin guide. The sole monument is a Romanesque church, a hybrid between a village church and the fortified churches of the region. It was, when we first visited, in very bad shape. François said he would see that it was restored, and so it eventually was." -- David P. Jordan, François Furet: A Personal Reminiscence See also an entry for Aug. 6, Incense, Wine, Candles
Three's Not a Crowd "Mr. James's wild rise came to an ignominious halt in 1993, when he was convicted of assaulting two women. The first attack occurred in 1991, when he and girlfriend Tanya Anne Hijazi restrained and burned a young woman with a hot crack pipe during a week-long cocaine binge at his house in West Hollywood. He was free on bail when the second assault occurred in 1992, in his West Hollywood hotel room. A music executive, Mary Sauger, testified that she had gone to his room for a business meeting with Mr. James and Hijazi and that the couple beat her and held her prisoner for 20 hours. Mr. James could have been sentenced to life in prison had he been convicted of a torture charge." Incense, wine, candles... Some would say Posted 8/8/2004 at 4:01 AM |
The Color of John Lahr (Log24 on 1/26 2003): "The play's narrator and general master of artifice is the Stage Manager, who gives the phrase 'deus ex machina' a whole new meaning. He holds the script, he sets the scene, he serves as an interlocutor between the worlds of the living and the dead, calling the characters into life and out of it; he is, it turns out, the Author of Authors, the Big Guy himself. It seems, in every way, apt for Paul Newman to have taken on this role." "It's not easy being green." Posted 8/7/2004 at 3:00 PM |
Communion Ian Lee on the communion of saints and the association of ideas (in The Third Word War, 1978)
Herman Melville on the association of ideas: "In me, many worthies recline, and converse." Stephen Hunter yesterday on the protagonist of the new film Collateral: "He dresses Italian, shoots German (suits by Versace, pistol by Heckler & Koch), talks like Norman Mailer's White Negro and improvises brilliantly." Anagram by Dante (Filipponi, that is) on the name of Gianni Versace: Can Give a Siren Sirens, true sirens verily be, -- Herman Melville, quoted Siren and White Negro: See Gates's essay on "... there are many associations of ideas which do not correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in the world of phenomena...." -- John Fiske, "The Primeval Ghost-World," quoted in the Heckler & Coch weblog And, finally, brilliance:
Posted 8/7/2004 at 4:07 AM |
Really Advanced French --
From Google:
From Jill O'Hara and Company: From Room 714 and Bastille Day:
From The Society for From Room 714, Hunter College:
From Log24, Jan. 16, 2004:
From "Dead End": Dead end Posted 8/6/2004 at 10:01 PM |
x Posted 8/6/2004 at 8:00 PM |
Epistle and Hymns In the spirit of Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, we conclude our Hiroshima Day service with a link to The Epistle of Jeremiah and a deadly trinity of singers:
Posted 8/6/2004 at 6:29 PM |
Sermon for Hiroshima Day In a comment, a Xangan recently made a pun on the name "Gennifer" (as in Flowers)... "geno-pher." I am still not sure what he meant, but I appreciate his prompting me to look up the etymology of gen words, one of which is...
This ties in with the end of the previous entry, which recommended that the reader consult Log24 entries of Aug. 6, 2002. Taking my own advice, I did so, and found that the current pope on Aug. 6, 1993, cited Genesis 1:26 --
Taking the chapter and verse numbers as also having deep religious significance, let us consult the Log24 entries for 1/26 2003 and 1/26 2004. In Our Image We find that 1/26 2003, and the entries on earlier days that lead up to it, deals with Paul Newman, Our Town, The Hustler, Super Bowl Sunday, and God. After Our Likeness We find that 1/26 2004 deals with God's self-definition on Mount Sinai. Lucifer also appears. Karol Wojtyla would do well to click on the following link for an expert characterization of Lucifer: hypocrite lecteur! Posted 8/6/2004 at 5:01 PM |
See, too, the Log24 entries Posted 8/6/2004 at 2:29 AM |
In the beginning "Words are events." "Words are events." Walter J. Ong was a Jesuit. The Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, is celebrated on July 31 each year. "Recursive, Wide, and Loopy 2", a Heckler & Coch entry dated July 31, 2004, leads to the following:
"The grammar or syntax of human language is certainly unique. Like an onion or Russian doll, it is recursive: One instance of an item is embedded in another instance of the same item. Recursion makes it possible for the words in a sentence to be widely separated and yet dependent on one another. 'If-then' is a classic example.... Are animals capable of such recursion? Fitch and Hauser have reported that tamarin monkeys are not capable of recursion. Although the monkeys learned a nonrecursive grammar, they failed to learn a grammar that is recursive. Humans readily learn both." -- David Premack (Science 2004 303:318, quoted in ScienceWeek) These citations by Heckler & Coch show that inability to understand complex language is not limited to monkeys. The examples given by Wren in the audio samples are of alternating female (Hi) and male (Lo) voices, thus -- FSG: Hi Lo Hi Lo Hi Lo PSG: Hi Hi Hi Lo Lo Lo As these examples show, neither monkeys nor humans heard the sound of parentheses (or square brackets) as Wren describes them: "structures like [female [female, male] male]." There of course is, in ordinary language (which does not include the monologues of Victor Borge), no such thing as the sound of parentheses. Thus the research of Hauser and Fitch is not only invalid, but ridiculous. This point is driven strongly home by the following two articles: Greg Kochanski, Research Fellow, Is a Phrase Structure Grammar and Mark Liberman, Professor, Language Log, Hi Lo Hi Lo, Posted 8/5/2004 at 4:06 PM |
Everything that ever summered forth starts -- Richard Powers, "The Perpetual Calendar," Posted 8/4/2004 at 8:04 PM |
Shell Beach "It was a dark and stormy night...." -- Opening of A Wrinkle in Time, a classic novel by Madeleine L'Engle. For those who seek religious significance in the name of Hurricane Alex: "Alex Proyas directs this futuristic thriller about a man waking up to find he is wanted for brutal murders he doesn't remember. Haunted by mysterious beings who stop time and alter reality, he seeks to unravel the riddle of his identity." -- Description of the 1998 film Dark City
See also ART WARS of June 19, 2002. Posted 8/4/2004 at 12:29 AM |
Science and Fiction: Attica to GATTACA "There is no gene for fate." The film GATTACA was discussed in a Log24 entry for Saturday, July 31, 2004-- the date of death of Frank Smith, also known as Big Black, a prominent figure in the events at Attica in 1971. He died in Kinston, North Carolina, a town of about 24,000 about halfway between Raleigh and the Atlantic Ocean. See today's 6:01 AM entry for some details of Mr. Smith's life. In his memory, here are three links. The first is to Screening DNA: by Stephen Nottingham This online book, from which the above GATTACA quote was taken, discusses genetics in film more generally... Specifically, from Part 7 of Screening DNA: In Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace-- "Midi-chlorians are essentially genes for the force, which determine whether one will become either a Jedi or else a dark shadow of one. In particular, they evoke mitochondrian genes, as mitochondria once lived symbiotically in human cells. Mitochondria are a cell's energy-producing 'power plant,' in which a positive mutation could lead to an individual having greater strength and stamina. Mitochondrial genes are also now known to control many critical stages in human development." The second link in memory of Mr. Smith, one he would probably prefer, is to another book, less academic in nature, that also deals with mitochondria:
The third link is to the aforementioned Wind. Posted 8/3/2004 at 7:59 PM |
Southern Strategy, Da Capo "Why are you based in North Carolina?"
Posted 8/3/2004 at 7:00 PM |
Death of Big Black (Sequel to yesterday's entry and to
Posted 8/3/2004 at 6:01 AM |
Bob Herbert, in today's New York Times, on the central problem of democracy: "It may well be that candidates can't tell voters the truth and still win."
Posted 8/2/2004 at 12:48 AM |
From USA Today Bush 50%, Kerry 46%, in a Friday-Saturday Before the Democratic convention, which ended Thursday night, Bush and Kerry were essentially tied. From a July 12 Log24 entry: Democratic Political Art:
Motherhood and Apple Pie
"It was... a stunning result, the first time in the Gallup Poll since the 1972 Democratic convention that a candidate seemed to lose ground at his convention." -- Susan Page, USA TODAY
Added at 10 PM ET Aug. 1: The Susan Page story has been altered since 1:30 PM, and no longer calls the above "a stunning result." For the original story, see this Google Groups search. Posted 8/1/2004 at 2:22 PM |