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Saturday Night to Sunday Morning
Posted 4/30/2006 at 1:11 AM |
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In Memoriam Harvard mathematician George Mackey The five Log24 entries ending at 7:00 PM on March 14, 2006, the last day of Mackey's life: Posted 4/29/2006 at 2:00 PM |
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Not Harvard Bound "Some of America’s most promising youth are seeking an even higher education." -- Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity Amen. Posted 4/29/2006 at 4:00 AM |
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Exercise Review the concepts of integritas, consonantia, and claritas in Aquinas: "For in respect to beauty three things are essential: first of all, integrity or completeness, since beings deprived of wholeness are on this score ugly; and [secondly] a certain required design, or patterned structure; and finally a certain splendor, inasmuch as things are called beautiful which have a certain 'blaze of being' about them...." -- Summa Theologiae Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, I, q. 39, a. 8, as translated by William T. Noon, S.J., in Joyce and Aquinas, Yale University Press, 1957 Review the following three publications cited in a note of April 28, 1985 (21 years ago today): (1) Cameron, P. J., Parallelisms of Complete Designs, Cambridge University Press, 1976. (2) Conwell, G. M., The 3-space PG(3,2) and its group, Ann. of Math. 11 (1910) 60-76. (3) Curtis, R. T., A new combinatorial approach to M24, Math. Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 79 (1976) 25-42. Discuss how the sextet parallelism in (1) illustrates integritas, how the Conwell correspondence in (2) illustrates consonantia, and how the Miracle Octad Generator in (3) illustrates claritas. Posted 4/28/2006 at 12:00 PM |
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Poetry Month, continued A partial answer: Yesterday's Pennsylvania Lottery evening number was 432. Poets and others who seek meaning in random numbers may, if they wish, consult page 432 of The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. They may also, having studied the Log24 entries of Holy Saturday (April 15, 2006), consult page 432 of A Flag For Sunrise. Those who prefer the dictionary method of interpreting random numbers may consult page 432 of Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition of 1960. This page has a special meaning for those aware that Aslan's How is "home to the deepest magic Narnia has ever known." (Everything2.com) Posted 4/28/2006 at 2:19 AM |
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Excerpt The Blue Buildings in the Summer Air by Wallace Stevens (Collected Poems, p. 216) Look down now, Cotton Mather, from the blank. Was heaven where you thought? It must be there. It must be where you think it is, in the light On bed-clothes, in an apple on a plate. It is the honey-comb of the seeing man. It is the leaf the bird brings back to the boat. Posted 4/27/2006 at 7:08 PM |
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Charmed From today's online Harvard Crimson:  From an Amazon.com review of McCafferty's latest book: "Charmed Thirds was a HUGE disappointment! The main character I once
loved has turned into someone vulgar and annoying. Far from the
intelligent young woman she was in the first two books, she is now a
cliche: a drunken, promiscuous, directionless bubblehead of a college
coed." "For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross." -- Gravity's Rainbow -- and an entry of April 8 3 PM  Posted 4/27/2006 at 4:08 PM |
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Also in today's Times: "'Lestat,' the maiden Broadway production of Warner Brothers Theater Ventures, is the third vampire musical to open in the last few years, and it seems unlikely to break the solemn curse that has plagued the genre. Directed by Robert Jess Roth from a book by Linda Woolverton, the show admittedly has higher aspirations and (marginally) higher production values than the kitschy 'Dance of the Vampires' (2002) and the leaden 'Dracula: The Musical' (2004), both major-league flops." -- Ben Brantley Related material:
See Log24, "I faced myself that day with -- Joan Didion, "On Self-Respect," "For every kind of vampire, -- Thomas Pynchon,
See also Posted 4/26/2006 at 3:09 PM |
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Plagiarist or Fraud? The weekly Harvard Independent points out that Kaavya Viswanathan's recent novel may have been ghostwritten. Therefore the ghostwriter, rather than the purported author, may have committed the original plagiarism. Viswanathan maintains that she herself wrote the novel, and said that "any phrasing similarities... were completely unintentional and unconscious." (Harvard Crimson, April 24) (The use of ghostwriters is not generally called plagiarism, although one definition says plagiarism is "passing off someone else's work as your own." This would of course make all recent U.S. presidents guilty of the crime.) Related material:
Posted 4/26/2006 at 2:00 PM |
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Mathematics and Narrative, continued
"There is a pleasantly discursive treatment of Pontius Pilate's unanswered question 'What is truth?'" -- H. S. M. Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Richard J. Trudeau's remarks on the "Story Theory" of truth as opposed to the "Diamond Theory" of truth in The Non-Euclidean Revolution A Serious Position "'Teitelbaum,' in German, is 'date palm.'" -- Generations, Jan. 2003 "In Hasidism, a mystical brand of Orthodox Judaism, the grand rabbi is revered as a kinglike link to God...." -- Today's New York Times obituary of Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, who died on April 24, 2006 (Easter Monday in the Orthodox Church) From Nextbook.org, "a gateway to Jewish literature, culture, and ideas":
NEW BOOKS: 02.16.05
Proofs and Paradoxes Alfred Teitelbaum changed his name to Tarski in the early 20s, the same time he changed religions, but when the Germans invaded his native Poland, the mathematician was in California, where he remained. His "great achievement was his audacious assault on the notion of truth," says Martin Davis, focusing on the semantics and syntax of scientific language. Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic, co-written by a former student, Solomon Feferman, offers "remarkably intimate information," such as abusive teaching and "extensive amorous involvements." From Wikipedia, an unsigned story: "In 1923 Alfred Teitelbaum and his brother Wacław changed their surnames to Tarski, a name they invented because it sounded very Polish, was simple to spell and pronounce, and was unused. (Years later, he met another Alfred Tarski in northern California.) The Tarski brothers also converted to Roman Catholicism, the national religion of the Poles. Alfred did so, even though he was an avowed atheist, because he was about to finish his Ph.D. and correctly anticipated that it would be difficult for a Jew to obtain a serious position in the new Polish university system."  Posted 4/25/2006 at 3:09 PM |
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A Trinity for Rebecca (For Rebecca Goldstein of Trinity College)  Sources: today's New York Times and the five Log24 entries ending on the morning of April 7, 2006: ART WARS in Poetry Month Of what use the above trinity might be to Rebecca, I am unsure. I find it helpful in traveling back to a summer night on 52nd St. in 1948...  Posted 4/25/2006 at 7:35 AM |
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Finis Coronat Opus continued from Saturday, April 22 Finis  Opus  Sweet Little Sixteen She's just got to have About half a million Famed autographs...  www.davidgregharth.com/press/article_38.html Her wallet's filled with pictures She gets 'em one by one -- Chuck Berry, 1958 "We are all Paris Hilton now." -- Ana Marie Cox, Sweet 16 and Spoiled Rotten, in TIME Magazine, the April 24 Opus Dei issue Related material in the Harvard Crimson: The $500,000 sophomore’s debut novel is on the shelf... But is it a gift or a curse? Publisher 'Certain' of 'Literal Copying' in Sophomore's Novel The Crimson Passion Posted 4/24/2006 at 10:00 PM |
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Incoming!
 Boston Globe photo by David L. Ryan Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan, author of Opal Mehta From the novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life, excerpt in USA Today: "If our incoming student body is capable only of immersing themselves in book learning, then I'm not doing my job." From The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr., 1918: Student body. A needless and awkward expression, meaning no more than the simple word students. Related material in today's Harvard Crimson: Student's Novel Faces Plagiarism Controversy. Also of interest:
Posted 4/24/2006 at 12:00 PM |
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Hollywood Easter Part 8
Back in "Send magazines!"-- in today's "... a spate of sex magazines... "We are all Paris Hilton now."
-- Flora Poste in Posted 4/23/2006 at 11:07 AM |
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Dark Lady Today is Shakespeare's birthday. In his honor, a death from April 9: George C. Minden, 85, Dies; Led a Cold War of Words. "Mr. Minden was president of the International Literary Center, an
organization financed by the Central Intelligence Agency,
which tried to win influential friends by giving them reading material
unavailable in their own countries. The material ranged from
dictionaries, medical texts and novels by Joyce and Nabokov to art
museum catalogs and Parisian fashion magazines."
"Send magazines!" -- Kate Beckinsale as Flora Poste Posted 4/23/2006 at 1:29 AM |
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x Posted 4/22/2006 at 11:29 PM |
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Finis Coronat Opus continued  See the essay by Ana Marie Cox on the final page of this week's TIME magazine. Related material: Jung and the Imago Dei, Log24 entries of Feb. 20, 2004, Space, Time, and Scarlett, and Crystal's Sweet Sixteen (Saturday Night Live sketch starring Scarlett Johansson-- also featured as the clerk in "Once in a Lifetime Jewelers"-- broadcast on Jan. 14, 2006.)  "Her wallet's filled with pictures, She gets 'em one by one." Posted 4/22/2006 at 2:02 PM |
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On Muriel Spark Kelly Jane Torrance Roger Kimball Posted 4/21/2006 at 5:24 PM |
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Department of Defense (Found in Translation continued, Lust und Freud continued, and Here's Donny continued) "When a person has uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, they may project these onto other people, assigning the thoughts or feelings that they need to repress to a convenient alternative target.... Projection is one of Freud's original defense mechanisms." -- ChangingMinds.org  The portrait at right is from "Donny's Ramblings: Diary of a Pornographer." Also from that diary -- "This is the evening when yours truly, your friendly neighborhood pornographer, becomes your next hope for American Idol success...." Posted 4/21/2006 at 2:02 PM |
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Another Opening of Another Show  "Sound familiar?" -- USA Today, April 20, 2006 "I'm the decider." -- President Bush, April 18, 2006 Posted 4/20/2006 at 11:07 PM |
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Headline in tonight's online New York Times:
"Tonight is Karaoke night at one of our local sports bars. This is the evening when yours truly, your friendly neighborhood pornographer, becomes your next hope for American Idol success...."3. From Log24 on Good Friday: "Little Red Ridin' Hood, Posted 4/18/2006 at 11:30 PM |
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Piedra y Luz This morning's New York Times tells of Philip J. Hyde, wilderness photographer, who died on March 30. The following, taken from the website Sister Earth, is in his honor.
(From "Piedra Nativa," by Octavio Paz, quoted in the Sierra Club book Baja California and the Geography of Hope, by Joseph Wood Krutch and Eliot Porter.) Related material: Posted 4/18/2006 at 2:00 AM |
Sub Specie Aeternitatis "Pynchon's mind is the steel trap -- Lorrie Moore, from Related material: Posted 4/17/2006 at 2:00 PM |
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A Hollywood Easter Part I: Good Friday morning Hollywood turns to divine inspiration Updated 4/14/2006 9:55 AM ET By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES -- In God, Hollywood is trusting it will find big profits.
Inspired by box-office smashes such as The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
studios are not only casting an eye to more religious-themed stories,
but they're also marketing movies more aggressively than ever to
churchgoers. Part II: Log24, 3 PM Good Friday, 2006. Easter in Hollywood Latest "Scary" spoof leads box office Sun Apr 16, 2006 8:02 PM ET By Dean Goodman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The joke may be wearing a little thin for critics but the fourth installment of the "Scary Movie" spoof franchise managed to open atop the weekend box office in North America with sizable ticket sales. According to studio estimates issued on Sunday,
"Scary Movie 4" earned $41.0 million in the three days beginning April
14, setting a new record for the Easter weekend. Part IV: Now Blog search for SubSpecies23. Posted 4/17/2006 at 4:30 AM |
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Easter Conundrum: Three Days, Three Nights? One of Christianity's many internal contradictions is as follows: Jesus supposedly said he would be in the tomb for "three days and three nights," yet most Christians accept without question the story that he died on a Friday afternoon and rose on the following Sunday morning. I was surprised to find this afternoon that at least one subdivision of the Jesus cult has found an ingenious way around this difficulty. The United Church of God (an offshoot of the sect founded by Herbert W. Armstrong) argues that Jesus died on a Wednesday afternoon (just before Passover) and rose on a Saturday afternoon. I do not recommend any of the subdivisions of the Jesus cult, but this one has at least managed to construct an intelligent argument. For details, see The Good Friday - Easter Sunday Question. Posted 4/16/2006 at 4:00 PM |
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High Society (See previous entry,
on Francis L. Kellogg) More bookmarks, in the spirit of Hemingway rather than Fitzgerald, from the date of Kellogg's death-- New York State lottery on April 6, 2006: Mid-day: 338 Evening: 323 From A Flag for Sunrise, page 338: "She seemed, superficially, to have thrown every grain of her energy into the driving.... She was stone beautiful, he thought; to his eye outrageously and provocatively beautiful...."
Those who prefer a different sort of high may also prefer a different page in A Flag for Sunrise: 323. "He was very high, higher than he had ever been. His thoughts twisted off into spools, arabesques, snatches of music."
Posted 4/15/2006 at 2:02 PM |
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For the Late Francis L. Kellogg Kellogg is said to have lived "at the epicenter of New York City society." Here, in his honor, is a social bookmark--  Princeton University, Latin 338: Latin Prose Fiction "To study the two surviving novels in classical Latin, Petronius' Satyricon and Apuleius' Metamorphoses, as works of literary genius, as major influences in Western fiction, and as documents of contemporary society." We may imagine Kellogg in Heaven returning to college for a version of this course taught by Petronius, Apuleius, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Posted 4/15/2006 at 4:15 AM |
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x Posted 4/14/2006 at 9:29 PM |
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Last Temptation:
 Click on picture for details. "Little Red Ridin' Hood, You sure are lookin' good...." See also today's Log24 guestbook entries. Posted 4/14/2006 at 3:00 PM |
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Posted 4/13/2006 at 4:50 AM |
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Posted 4/13/2006 at 4:07 AM |
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A Coffin for Passover Posted 4/12/2006 at 7:20 PM |
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Eternal Franklin Delano Roosevelt: "Eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation." -- AP, Today in History, apparently quoted from an address at the University of Pennsylvania, Sept. 20, 1940 Related material: Gravity's Rainbow, the beginning of page 373*: "white and geometric capital before the destruction" Gravity's Rainbow, the end of page 373*: "Slothrop was going into high school when FDR was starting out in the White House. Broderick Slothrop professed to hate the man, but young Tyrone thought he was brave." See also the Log24 entry for Dec. 20, 2003 -- White, Geometric, and Eternal -- and the entry for 8 PM on the feast of St. John Paul II -- Miracle, April 2, 2006. Posted 4/12/2006 at 4:07 PM |
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x Posted 4/12/2006 at 2:02 AM |
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Dallas
Part II: Today's birthday: Joel Grey  Grey in "Conundrum," the final episode of Dallas Related material: Log24 on March 20, 2006--  -- and the 5 previous entries. Posted 4/11/2006 at 3:33 PM |
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"Ich bin ein Berliner" -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy Related material: the previous 4 entries and this morning's New York Times story "Boston Mob: Party of 4" Posted 4/11/2006 at 1:09 AM |
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"What other colleges call fraternities, Princeton calls Eating Clubs." Illustrated below: The Restaurant  Related etymology: OF. from L. -- Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 Related material: (1) A symbol of symmetry that might have pleased Hermann Weyl:  Source -- Timothy A. Smith on Bach's Fugue No. 21, the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II (pdf or Shockwave) (2) The remarks of Noam D. Elkies on his "Brandenburg Concerto No. 7": "It is of course an act of chutzpah, some would say almost heresy, to challenge Bach so explicitly on his own turf." (3) The five Log24 entries culminating on Pi Day, March 14, 2006 (4) The following event at the Harvard University mathematics department on March 14, 2006, also featuring Noam D. Elkies:  "At 3:14 p.m., six contestants began a pie-eating contest.... Contestants had exactly three minutes and 14 seconds to eat as much pie as they could. 'Five, four, pi, three, two, one,' Elkies counted down as the contestants shoved the last mouthful of pie into their mouths...."  Noam D. Elkies (5) The Magic Schmuck Posted 4/10/2006 at 9:20 PM |
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Backstory for the previous entry, "Once Upon a Time"
Posted 4/10/2006 at 12:00 PM |
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Once Upon
a Time
 Tom's diner in last year's "A History of Violence"
Palm Sunday Sermon
Richie Cusack: Posted 4/9/2006 at 12:00 AM |
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ART WARS from April 9 two years ago: 3 PM For an explanation
of this icon, see and
Posted 4/8/2006 at 4:09 PM |
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April 8 two years ago: Art is magic delivered from The director, Carol Reed, makes... Posted 4/8/2006 at 4:08 PM |
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April 7 two years ago: Welcome to our imaginative and inspiring toy catalog! Today is Wednesday 7-April 2004. On this day in 30 Jesus crucified by Roman troops in Jerusalem (scholars' estimate). Posted 4/8/2006 at 4:07 PM |
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April 6 two years ago: Ideas and Art The first idea was not our own. Adam -- Wallace Stevens, from Posted 4/8/2006 at 4:06 PM |
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Story There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling.... -- Robert Graves, "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" "To many, mathematicians have come to resemble an esoteric sect, whose members alone have access to secret otherworldly mysteries. All of us who came to Mykonos believed that this is an unfortunate situation. Mathematics is an inseparable part of human culture, and should be viewed and treated as such. Our underlying assumption was that mathematical reasoning had something important in common with that quintessential human activity – story-telling. But what this means, and what kind of connections can be drawn between the two, remained to be sorted out."
-- Amir Alexander on
last summer's Mykonos meeting Flashback to Harrison Ford's birthday a year earlier: 
"He's a Mad Scientist and
"If you have ever loved a book These last two quotations
Story Theory and
by Steven H. Cullinane on Related material: See Lucky(?) Numbers, Posted 4/8/2006 at 12:00 AM |
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Posted 4/7/2006 at 7:59 PM |
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ART WARS in Poetry Month  Tomorrow is the final day for the Liza Lou exhibit at London's White Cube gallery. For related material, see Log24, March 24-26, and the entries culminating on Pi Day. Posted 4/7/2006 at 9:27 AM |
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Posted 4/6/2006 at 7:48 PM |
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Harmony and Conciseness "Problems are the poetry of chess. They demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, harmony, conciseness, complexity, and splendid insincerity." -- Vladimir Nabokov Harmony: Yesterday's NY mid-day lottery: 456 Conciseness: Yesterday's NY evening lottery: 808 Posted 4/6/2006 at 11:07 AM |
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Trinities
Unholy and Holy 
Posted 4/5/2006 at 4:09 PM |
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April is Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month. Three Joni Mitchell on the Trinity: He is three One's in the middle unmoved Waiting To show what he sees To the other two Related material: Perichoresis, or Coinherence, Is Nothing Sacred?, and A Contrapuntal Theme. Posted 4/5/2006 at 3:00 PM |
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Quarter to Three (continued from Dec. 20, 2003, and from April 3, 2006) ... so put another nickel in the machine.... Related material:
Posted 4/5/2006 at 2:45 AM |
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Changes For jazz artist Jackie McLean, who died on Friday according to today's New York Times. From Log24 on Dec. 20, 2003:     (St. Emil's Day) Click on various parts of the picture to see related material. Those who wish to can find a discussion of the geometric "changes" figure among the Log24 entries of March 23, 2006. Posted 4/3/2006 at 3:09 AM |
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Miracle Looking for a Miracle: The Beatification of John Paul II Background:
Today's lottery in the State of Grace (Kelly, of Philadelphia)-- Mid-day: 008 Evening: 373. Done. Posted 4/2/2006 at 8:00 PM |
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x Posted 4/1/2006 at 3:00 PM |
