Language Games: My latest preoccupation... Using
search-and-replace programs to reformat earlier Xanga entries.
This involves the use of "regular expressions," which lead to the
following thoughts.... It
seems that pure mathematics (i.e., the theory of finite automata) is
not without relevance even in very practical data formatting
problems. One of the first math books I ever Kleene's legacy includes regular expressions and Kleene's theorem. For further details, see Notes on James Power Department of Computer Science Here's more on Posted 5/31/2004 at 7:00 PM |
Ineluctable On the poetry of Geoffrey Hill: "... why read him? Because of the things he writes about—war and peace and sacrifice, and the search for meaning and the truths of the heart, and for that haunting sense that, in spite of war and terror and the indifferences that make up our daily hells, there really is some grander reality, some ineluctable presence we keep touching. There remains in Hill the daunting possibility that it may actually all cohere in the end, or at least enough of it to keep us searching for more. There is a hard edge to Hill, a strong Calvinist streak in him, and an intelligence that reminds one of Milton....." -- Paul Mariani, review in America of Geoffrey Hill's The Orchards of Syon "Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one." "A very short space of time through very short times of space.... Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?" -- James Joyce, Ulysses, Proteus chapter "Time has been unfolded into space." -- James O. Coplien, Bell Labs "Pattern and symmetry are closely related." -- James O. Coplien on Symmetry Breaking "... as the critic S. L. Goldberg puts it, 'the chapter explores the Protean transformations of matter in time . . . apprehensible only in the condition of flux . . . as object . . . and Stephen himself, as subject. In the one aspect Stephen is seeking the principles of change and the underlying substance of sensory experience; in the other, he is seeking his self among its temporal manifestations'.... -- Goldberg, S.L. 'Homer and the Nightmare of History.' Modern Critical Views: James Joyce. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. 21-38." -- from the Choate site of David M. Loeb In summary:
Posted 5/27/2004 at 10:10 AM |
A Form John Leonard in the June 10, 2004, New York Review of Books, on E. L. Doctorow: "... he's got urgent things to say and seeks some form to say them in, or a form that will tease and torture secret meanings out of what he thinks he already knows, or a form, like a wishing well, down which to dream, scream, or drown." 48. The WellThe Judgment
From Chuck Polisher's I Ching Lexicon: See also the following form, discussed in Balanchine's Birthday Art Theory Posted 5/22/2004 at 3:00 PM |
Star Wars In memory of Melvin J. Lasky, editor, 1958-1990, of the CIA-funded journal Encounter:
Lasky died on Wednesday, May 19, 2004. From a journal entry of my own on that date: This newly-digitized diagram is from a Note that the diagram's overall form is that of an eight-point star. Here is an excerpt from a Fritz Leiber story dealing with such a star, the symbol of a fictional organization:
From last year's entry,
Finally, from an excellent site
Posted 5/22/2004 at 6:14 AM |
Theme and Variations "Por ejemplo, con las posibles secuencias de sólo cuatro letras diferentes: A, R, O y M obtenemos cinco palabras con significados completamente distintos: MORA, ROMA, AMOR, RAMO y OMAR." — El Genoma Humano, For a deeper meditation on the genetic implications of four-letter words, see I personally prefer the following The significance of these Click on pictures "For the essence and the end Robinson Jeffers, Posted 5/21/2004 at 2:45 PM |
Parable, Part II The juxtaposition in this morning's Google news of the two wedding stories below calls for some commentary. The best I can do is the illustrations above the wedding stories, along with a link to some of the best Romani music I have ever heard, from See also this morning's comments "So what do we all do in this life which comes on so much like an empty voidness yet warns us that we will die in pain, decay, old age, When Ben and I sober up I say 'How goes it with all that horror everywhere?' 'It's Mother Kali dancing around to eat up everything she gave birth to, eats it right 'No diamonds.' 'No, that's beyond...' " — Desolation Angels, Posted 5/21/2004 at 10:26 AM |
Parable "A comparison or analogy. The word is simply a transliteration of the Greek word: parabolé (literally: 'what is thrown beside' or 'juxtaposed'), a term used to designate the geometric application we call a 'parabola.'.... The basic parables are extended similes or metaphors." -- http://religion.rutgers.edu/nt/ "If one style of thought stands out as the most potent explanation of genius, it is the ability to make juxtapositions that elude mere mortals. Call it a facility with metaphor, the ability to connect the unconnected, to see relationships to which others are blind." -- Sharon Begley, "The Puzzle of Genius," Newsweek magazine, June 28, 1993, p. 50 "The poet sets one metaphor against another and hopes that the sparks set off by the juxtaposition will ignite something in the mind as well. Hopkins’ poem 'Pied Beauty' has to do with 'creation.' " -- Speaking in Parables, Ch. 2, by Sallie McFague "The Act of Creation is, I believe, a more truly creative work than any of Koestler's novels.... According to him, the creative faculty in whatever form is owing to a circumstance which he calls 'bisociation.' And we recognize this intuitively whenever we laugh at a joke, are dazzled by a fine metaphor, are astonished and excited by a unification of styles, or 'see,' for the first time, the possibility of a significant theoretical breakthrough in a scientific inquiry. In short, one touch of genius—or bisociation—makes the whole world kin. Or so Koestler believes." -- Henry David Aiken, The Metaphysics of Arthur Koestler, New York Review of Books, Dec. 17, 1964 For further details, see Speaking in Parables: by Sallie McFague Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1975 Introduction "Perhaps every science must start with metaphor and end with algebra; and perhaps without metaphor there would never have been any algebra." -- attributed, in varying forms (1, 2, 3), to Max Black, Models and Metaphors, 1962 For metaphor and algebra combined, see "Symmetry invariance in a diamond ring," A.M.S. abstract 79T-A37, Notices of the Amer. Math. Soc., February 1979, pages A-193, 194 — the original version of the 4x4 case of the diamond theorem. Posted 5/20/2004 at 7:00 AM |
Style In memory of Lynn H. Loomis: The above diagram is from a It pictures the relationship of my own discovery, diamond theory (at center), to the field, harmonic analysis, of Professor Loomis, a writer whose style I have long admired. A quotation from the 1999 note: "...it is not impossible to draw a fairly sharp dividing line between our mental disposition in the case of esthetic response and that of the responses of ordinary life. A far more difficult question arises if we try to distinguish it from the responses made by us to certain abstract mental constructions such as those of pure mathematics.... Perhaps the distinction lies in this, that in the case of works of art the whole end and purpose is found in the exact quality of the emotional state, whereas in the case of mathematics the purpose is the constatation of the universal validity of the relations without regard to the quality of the emotion accompanying apprehension. Still, it would be impossible to deny the close similarity of the orientation of faculties and attention in the two cases." In other words, appreciating mathematics is much like appreciating art. (Digitized diagram courtesy of Violet.) Posted 5/19/2004 at 2:00 PM |
Different. Posted 5/19/2004 at 5:15 AM |
Language Game In memory of From a log24 entry of May 8, 2004, "Let us imagine a language ..." — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Okay... Moral of the story: See also The Unity of Mathematics, Posted 5/15/2004 at 4:23 AM |
Popcorn Theology, Justice at LeRoy Myers, tap dancer and From a log24 entry of April 26, 2004:
Posted 5/15/2004 at 2:06 AM |
Popcorn Theology Today is the birthday of Star Wars director George Lucas and also the date of Frank Sinatra's death. Two notes that may be From All Saints' Episcopal Church in Atlanta: POPCORN THEOLOGY From Chicago photographer Art Shay: His Kind of Town
"We are not saints" Posted 5/14/2004 at 11:01 PM |
Moral Hazard — Law Day, University of Southern California, Department of Professor Jean-Jacques Laffont "The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to modern contract and organization theory. Part 1 of the course focuses upon models with moral hazard and adverse selection." From the insurance page at http://ingrimayne.saintjoe.edu/: "The size of the insurance industry indicates that people are eager to pay to avoid risk. They pay and get nothing if fortune smiles on them, whereas if misfortune strikes, they break even because the insurance should just pay back the value lost in the misfortune. Sometimes, however, people do better than break even when misfortune strikes, and this possibility has greatly interested economists. If, for example, the misfortune costs a person $1000, but insurance will pay $2000, the insured person has no incentive to avoid the misfortune and may act to bring it on. This tendency of insurance to change behavior is called moral hazard. Sometimes moral hazard is dramatic.... People who know that they face large risks are more likely to buy insurance than people who face small risks. Insurance companies try to minimize the problem that only the people with big risks will buy their product, which is the problem of adverse selection ...." From today's New York Times: "Jean-Jacques Laffont, an economist known for developing mathematical models to estimate what something is worth in situations of deep uncertainty, died on May 1 in Toulouse, France. He was 57.... ...Jerry R. Green of Harvard said he was 'an architect of systems' and 'a very original figure.' Eric Maskin, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., called Dr. Laffont 'simply one of the major figures of our time.' 'Many people would say he was the leading economist in Europe,' he added, 'and that wouldn't be an unfair judgment.' Although Dr. Laffont's models were abstruse enough to satisfy the most theoretical economists, Dr. Green said they were adapted for practical purposes by companies, as well as by public television for scheduling programs." Posted 5/14/2004 at 6:36 PM |
The Wind and the Lion Pat Buchanan Fallujah: High Tide of Empire? For more about The Wind as a religious symbol, see Adolf Holl's Biography of The Holy Spirit. For more about The Lion as a religious symbol, see Charles Krauthammer Acceptance Speech, Guardian of Zion Award. For passionate views of the conflict between The Wind and The Lion, see The Passion and Its Enemies Gibson's Blood Libel, Posted 5/13/2004 at 12:25 PM |
x Posted 5/12/2004 at 7:11 PM |
Posted 5/11/2004 at 10:00 AM |
Click on the above for further details. "Jane Marie Law, professor of world religions at Cornell, who spoke at the funeral April 23 at Temple Beth-El in Ithaca, said Fuller had told her she believed a society is judged not by its artistic or scientific achievements but 'by how it treats its prisoners.' " -- Cornell Chronicle, April 29, 2004 Posted 5/10/2004 at 6:06 AM |
From Saturday's Mr. King died on Posted 5/9/2004 at 6:06 PM |
Anyone Want to Buy a See Zakaria's Posted 5/9/2004 at 7:28 AM |
Slab! Aphorism 2 from Wittgenstein's
Click on pictures for details. Posted 5/8/2004 at 9:00 AM |
Royal Roads "Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point, -- Albert Einstein "We'll try to understand -- Nathaniel Miller "People make up stories -- Richard J. Trudeau
Posted 5/8/2004 at 12:00 AM |
Religion of the Lottery: Ground Zero Revisited The midday New York lottery number for Thursday, May 6, 2004, the National Day of Prayer, was 000. Since the log24 entry for the preceding day (Wednesday) was written in gratitude for a new transcription of Bach, and the log24 entry for the following day (today) has the time 11:11, signifying peace, the following seems as good a religious interpretation of yesterday's lottery as any: "In the Mass in B-Minor, Bach constructs a twenty-one-movement symmetry in which the Crucifixus is placed precisely between the Gratias and the Dona Nobis Pacem." -- Timothy A. Smith, "Nothing is random." Posted 5/7/2004 at 11:11 AM |
Quartets
Posted 5/5/2004 at 4:00 AM |
Midnight in the Garden of Buddies Show Us
|
Campaign Song Review of previous themes: Masahiro: "Now -- music and movies are all America is good for." Charlotte: I just don't know what I'm supposed to be. From The Devil and Wallace Stevens: "Stevens pays ironic tribute to Aphrodite Pandemos, the fleshly passion, and then his respects to Aphrodite Ouranos, From a midlife crisis:
Select the best John Kerry To see if you have made the Campaign Song. Posted 5/3/2004 at 10:01 PM |
The Script Hollywood Writers, Producers Some scripts just write themselves. Falluja Plan in Doubt Our Man in Baghdad "My host was a Shiite cleric, Ayad Jamaluddin.... He lives on the river, in an imposing house supplied by the Coalition Provisional Authority, to which he has close ties.... Ayad Jamaluddin dismissed the idea of the Iraqis policing themselves any time in the near future. He believed that Iraq needed shock treatment, and that it would be best administered by the Americans.
'Iraqis are sick, you know, and what they need is a psychiatrist,' he said. 'For thirty-five years, Saddam Hussein didn’t allow Iraqis to think. The Iraqi people are missing something: they are missing a soul. They need a dictator—that is their problem. The Shia want their dictator; the Sunnis want theirs. Unfortunately for us, the Iraqi people’s only model of a leader is Saddam Hussein.' I remarked that his hopes for a sweeping transformation of a national psyche had few historical precedents, at least under modern American stewardship. The postwar transformations of Germany and Japan were possible only because there was a wholesale capitulation by the regimes in both countries after devastating military assaults. In Japan’s case, this had come about after the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and after Emperor Hirohito’s radio broadcast offering Japan’s unconditional surrender, and the admission that he was not a divine being. Jamaluddin smiled: 'Then maybe what we need is another Hiroshima for Iraq. Maybe Fallujah will be our Hiroshima. Inshallah.' ”
See, too, The New Yorker's press release for on the legal career of presidential candidate John Kerry: "Kerry says his background as a prosecutor made criminal-defense work unappealing. 'I took a court appointment once in a criminal case,' Kerry says, 'and I realized I just didn't want the guy out on the street. I knew he was guilty. It takes a certain kind of makeup as a lawyer to dedicate yourself to having someone like that out on the street. I know our system says someone has to represent everyone, but I just couldn't do it. I went to the court and asked them to take me off the case.' " Recall the conclusion of Devil's Advocate: "Vanity is definitely my favorite sin." Posted 5/2/2004 at 11:00 PM |
Trinity Test Some background on the previous entry, Honorable Bird.... A note on the Michael Douglas film in that previous entry: "This film is not to be confused with Japanese director Shohei Imamura's BLACK RAIN, which was produced around the same time. Imamura's film deals with the lives of a Japanese family who survived the nuclear-bombing of Hiroshima. The phrase 'black rain,' used in both films, refers to the deadly fallout caused by the detonation of an atomic weapon." For related material on the religion of Trinity, see Hiroshima Mayor Says US Worships Nukes, a news story quoted in Death of a Holy Man (8/10/03). The phrase "holy man" there is from John Steinbeck, who once wrote a sentence saying that sons of bitches, viewed from another perspective, are holy men. Here is the death of another holy man, Clayton S. White, a medical researcher who developed the field of blast biology — the study of how nuclear explosions affect people immediately and over time. This holy man died on April 26, 2004. A log24 entry of that date supplies an appropriate epitaph for the holy man, dead at 91, who has now joined his younger brother, the late Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White, in some region of the afterworld. Posted 5/2/2004 at 2:00 AM |
Honorable Bird Tonight at 8:00 PM on BRAVO: Black Rain Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia are New York detectives caught up in a gang war in Japan. Masahiro: Ken Takakura. Masahiro: "Now -- music and movies are all America is good for." From yesterday's entry Library: "... this is the Idea that is put forward for our response. There is nothing mythological about Christian Trinitarian doctrine: it is analogical. It offers itself freely for meditation and discussion; but it is desirable that we should avoid the bewildered frame of mind of the apocryphal Japanese gentleman who complained:
See, too, Inscape (4/22/04), The Proof and the Lie (11/30/03), and Hatched (4/21/04), and recall that the theme of Black Rain is counterfeiting. For a related meditation on the color black, see Kawabata's The Old Capital, quoted in an entry of Aug. 1, 2003. Posted 5/1/2004 at 9:29 PM |
Fallen from Heaven On today's stories: Recall, gentle readers, the reference to Lucifer in last midnight's story, "The Devil and Wallace Stevens," and the reference in yesterday's story, "Notes," to the film "2010" (1984). Here is a quote from a review of the story behind that film: "If the coming of Lucifer in this story doesn't set your pulse racing and your mind whirring, then I don't know what will." For some of us — students of Stephen King and Malcolm Lowry — the coming of Lucifer is not such a surprising event. See Posted 5/1/2004 at 7:00 PM |
Readings for Law Day Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life; Storytelling: Passport to the 21st Century; plus 1001 Arabian Stories! (Google News, ca. 7 AM EDT, May Day 2004) Posted 5/1/2004 at 7:30 AM |
See The Devil and Wallace Stevens. Posted 5/1/2004 at 12:00 AM |