Quarter to Three continued: A Little Story So make it one for my baby (8/19) And one more for the road (7/13). 8/19: 7/13: Posted 9/30/2006 at 2:45 AM |
Values
for the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashanah began at sundown September 22; Yom Kippur begins at sundown October 1. --holidays.net) Mark Finkelstein today:
Less controversial values are provided by yesterday evening's Pennsylvania lottery-- namely, the values 4, 5, and 6. For a discussion of these values under the guise of musical intervals, see Professor Kagan again, in a paper (pdf)
he wrote with Marcel R. Zentner, "Infants' Perception of Consonance and
Dissonance in Music" (Infant Behavior & Development, Vol. 21, No.
3, 1998): Adults judge as most consonant either the octave (difference of 12 semitones) [or the unison, difference of 0 semitones], the fifth (7 semitones), or the major third (4 semitones). Illustration (see also yesterday evening):
Notes and frequency ratios The paper discusses consonant intervals Related material on universals Shining Forth and The material in Shining Forth
The above three Times items, Click on picture for further details. Posted 9/29/2006 at 8:00 AM |
Immovable Feast Today is the feast of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels. Posted 9/29/2006 at 12:25 AM |
Grace Notes
Today's evening lottery number in the state of Grace was 546... or, digit by digit, Posted 9/28/2006 at 8:28 PM |
Grace Background on today's noon entry:
Posted 9/28/2006 at 2:27 PM |
In her honor, a "page visited" link from
Xanga Footprints for Log24 this morning--
-- and a memento of
the 1952 film "Macao"-- Memorable Quotes: Halloran: You don't want that junk. Diamonds would only cheapen you. Margie: Yeah. But what a way to be cheapened. Posted 9/28/2006 at 12:00 PM |
A Table
A check on the Rumi quote yields this, on a culinary organization:
A Field and a Table: From "Communications Toolbox" at MathWorks.com For more on this field in a different context, see Generating the Octad Generator and "Putting Descartes Before Dehors" in my own diary for December 2003. Descartes
Let us pray to the Holy Trinity that Posted 9/28/2006 at 9:15 AM |
Posted 9/26/2006 at 9:00 AM |
Today's Birthdays:
T. S. Eliot and Linda Hamilton
Posted 9/26/2006 at 8:48 AM |
Adapted from Pierre Le-Tan in The New Yorker of 8/28/06 Posted 9/25/2006 at 10:00 AM |
Tequila!
for Kylie "Time disappears with tequila. It goes elastic, then vanishes." -- Kylie Minogue From today's AP "Obituaries in the News"--
Related material: "Echoes (Aug. 11)" -- -- and Posted 9/23/2006 at 12:24 PM |
Whether any of the above will be of use in comforting the families of those killed in yesterday morning's train wreck in Germany is not clear. Pope Benedict XVI, like C. S. Lewis, seems to think Greek philosophy may be of some use to those dealing with train wrecks:
Posted 9/23/2006 at 9:00 AM |
The Grace of Accuracy In this morning's New York Times: The Times describes yesterday's memorial to Cy Feuer, producer, notably, of the 1972 film version of "Cabaret"-- "Joel Grey sang 'Willkommen....'" Related material: a Log24 entry
(August 11, 2006). The New York Times on Sven Nykvist, a cinematographer who died on Wednesday: "In his films, especially those with Mr. Bergman, light assumed a metaphysical
dimension that went beyond mood. It distilled and deepened the feelings of
torment and spiritual separation that afflicted Bergman characters." --Stephen Holden
"Pray for the grace of accuracy Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination...." -- "Epilogue," by Robert Lowell, in Day by Day, 1977 For further remarks on light, see Shining Forth as well as Tombstone (from May 17, the date of Feuer's death). Posted 9/22/2006 at 7:00 AM |
Religious Symbolism continued from Oct. 14, 2004 See also the previous entry. A related symbol, in memory of two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who died yesterday: (See Why Me?, Show Business, Posted 9/21/2006 at 8:00 AM |
Public Space "... the Danish cartoons crisis last March showed 'two world views colliding in public space with no common point of reference.'" -- George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, quoted in today's London Times. Related material: Geometry and Christianity (Google search yielding "about 1,540,000" results) Geometry and Islam (Google search yielding "about 1,580,000" results) MySpace.com/affine A Public Space -- Motto of Plato's Academy Background from Log24 on Feb. 15, 2006:
For the relevance of Plato to Islam, see David Wade's Pattern in Islamic Art and a Google search on Plato and Islam ("about 1,680,000" results). "We should let ourselves be guided by what is common to all. Yet
although the Logos is common to all, most men live as if each
had a private intelligence of his own."
-- Heraclitus of Ephesus, about 500 B.C. Posted 9/20/2006 at 8:00 AM |
For a Dark Lady, Soledad O'Brien, Who Turns 40 Today: Jerezana, by Paco de Lucia (Requires RealPlayer and broadband) From a 1967 album. For a more recent look at de Lucia, see his Cositas Buenas video (wmv format) at flamenco-world.com. Posted 9/19/2006 at 10:00 AM |
Movie Date continued... Taking Christ to the Movies, by Anna Megill, Princeton '06 Related material: "Prepare for the Weirdness." -- Hunter S. Thompson (see entry of Sept. 17, At Midnight), The Presbyterian Exorcist, and NBC's "Crazy Christians" Show (or, "Taking Christ to Studio 60") 10 PM ET tonight on NBC. Posted 9/18/2006 at 1:00 PM |
Apology
A Living Church, Apology: An Exercise in Rhetoric Related material:
and
Posted 9/18/2006 at 9:14 AM |
At Midnight "At midnight
-- From Byzantium, by "The only hope, or else despair
-- From Four Quartets, by "Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and Uncertainty that comes with once reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in..." -- Prepare for the Weirdness, by Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in a sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 2005 "If you passed, you got to live, and if you failed you were burned alive on a pyre that's now the Transgender Studies Building." -- Baccalaureate address at the interfaith worship service, Princeton University, on Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 2006 Review: "At midnight on the Emperor's pavement...." Posted 9/17/2006 at 12:00 AM |
The Pope in Plato's Cave Those who find the Pope's recent remarks (see the previous entry) on a Byzantine emperor lacking in literary depth may consult the writings of William Butler Yeats on Byzantium quoted in Log24 entries of February 14-16, 2003. Those entries also refer to a modern version of Plato's cave-- the movie theater-- and the film "The Recruit." See also a more recent Log24 discussion of that film:
Posted 9/16/2006 at 4:00 PM |
Pandora's Box Part I: The Pandora Cross "There is no painter in the
West who can be unaware of the symbolic power of the cruciform shape
and the Pandora's box of spiritual reference that is opened once one
uses it."
-- Rosalind Krauss in "Grids" (See Log24, Sept. 13) Part II: The Opening Remarks by the Pope on Sept. 12, as reported by the Vatican: Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections For the result of the Pope's remarks, see a transcript of yesterday's Google News and the following from BBC today: Click to enlarge the screenshot. Part III: Hope The New Yorker (issue of June 5, 2006) on the late Oriana Fallaci:
"In September [2005], she had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence outside Rome. She had criticized John Paul II for making overtures to Muslims, and for not condemning terrorism heartily enough, but she has hopes for Joseph Ratzinger." For further details, see yesterday's Log24. Part IV: The Sibyl's Song -- From The Magic Circle, a spiritual narrative by Katherine Neville For more on "the long-mute voice of the past," on "darkness beneath the volcano," and on uncorking, see Glory Season and Harrowing. Related material from Log24 on Dec. 2, 2005: Benedict XVI, before he became Pope: "... a purely
harmonious concept of beauty is not enough.... Apollo, who for Plato's Socrates was 'the God' and the
guarantor of unruffled beauty as 'the truly divine' is absolutely no
longer sufficient."
A symbol of Apollo: and a related Christian symbol, the Greek Cross (adapted from Ad Reinhardt). Moral of the Pandora Cross: "Nine is a very powerful Nordic number." -- Katherine Neville in The Magic Circle... quoted in The Nine, a Log24 entry for Hermann Weyl's birthday, November 9, 2004. Posted 9/16/2006 at 11:07 AM |
"In September [2005], she had a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence outside Rome. She had criticized John Paul II for making overtures to Muslims, and for not condemning terrorism heartily enough, but she has hopes for Joseph Ratzinger. (The meeting was something of a scandal in Italy, since Fallaci has always said that she is an atheist; more recently, she has called herself a 'Christian atheist,' out of respect for Italy's Catholic tradition.) Last December, the Italian government presented her with a gold medal for 'cultural achievement.'" Fallaci's book The Force of Reason was published in March. For more on the "medal" pictured above, see Log24 entries of September 13 and 14 and of D-Day 2006. Update of 4 PM Sept. 15-- Click for further details: "She has hopes for Joseph Ratzinger...." Posted 9/15/2006 at 7:11 AM |
Today is the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross (Based on Weyl's Symmetry) and the birthday of an expert on primitive roots, the late I. M. Vinogradov. Happy birthday. Click on pictures for further details. Posted 9/14/2006 at 7:11 PM |
The Krauss Cross "If we open any tract-- Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World, for instance-- we will find that Mondrian and Malevich are not discussing canvas or pigment or graphite or any other form of matter. They are talking about Being or Mind or Spirit. From their point of view, the grid is a staircase to the Universal, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example, we could think about Ad Reinhardt who, despite his repeated insistence that 'Art is art,' ended up by painting a series of black nine-square grids in which the motif that inescapably emerges is a Greek cross. There is no painter in the West who can be unaware of the symbolic power of the cruciform shape and the Pandora's box of spiritual reference that is opened once one uses it." Rebecca Goldstein on "I don't write exclusively on Jewish themes or about Jewish characters. My collection of short stories, Strange Attractors, contained nine pieces, five of which were, to some degree, Jewish, and this ratio has provided me with a precise mathematical answer (for me, still the best kind of answer) to the question of whether I am a Jewish writer. I am five-ninths a Jewish writer." Jacques Maritain, "The passion of Israel E. L. Doctorow, "In the Garden of Adding Posted 9/13/2006 at 9:28 PM |
Octobers for Fest In memory of Joachim Fest, a noted biographer of Hitler who died on 9/11 at age 79-- A link from 5/27, 2005 (a date mentioned in Monday's Log24 9/11 entry): A search on this inelegant phrase from Sartre's Being and Nothingness leads, surprisingly, to remarks by the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain said to have been published in the month of October in the fateful year 1941. According to Telegraph.co.uk today, Fest was "the most celebrated historian and the most distinguished journalist of the post-war generation in Germany." The Telegraph says he
For a view of Christian politics closer to that of the Frankfurt school, see a review by Charles Isherwood in the 9/11 New York Times of a play, "The Man Himself." Related material: A Log24 entry
and Echoes Posted 9/13/2006 at 2:56 AM |
A Sermon for Sartre A sequel to "Words and numbers
"Time and chance -- Ecclesiastes 9:11 Hermeneutics: This interpretation is of course Related material: Update of 1:29 AM 9/12: Posted 9/11/2006 at 11:00 PM |
Sontag's Sermon "My image of myself since age 3 or 4-- the genius-schmuck. I allow one to pay off the other. Develop relationships to satisfy principally one or the other.... Sartre (cf. 'Les Mots') the only other person I know of who had this 'certainty' of genius. Living already a posthumous life, even as a childhood. (The childhood of a famous man.) A kind of Sartre was very ugly-- and knew it. So he didn't have to develop 'the schmuck' to pay off the others for being 'the genius.' Nature had taken care of the problem for him. He didn't have to invent a cause of failure or rejection by others. As I did, by making myself 'stupid' in personal relations. (For 'stupid,' also read 'blind.')" -- Susan Sontag in The New York Times Magazine yesterday Meanwhile, back at MIT: Doonesbury 9/11 Related material from MIT's School of "'For the modern post-religious man,' Susan Sontag wrote in a 1961 essay, 'the religious museum, like the world of the modern spectator of art, is without walls; he can pick and choose as he likes, and be committed to nothing except his own reverent spectatorship.'" -- "The Moralist," by Scott McLemee, The Boston Globe, July 16, 2006 The last words from the people in the towers and on the planes, over and over again, were 'I love you.' Over and over again, the message was the same, 'I love you.' .... Perhaps this is the loudest chorus from The Rock: we are learning just how powerful love really is, even in the face of death."Posted 9/11/2006 at 6:00 AM |
ART WARS Sources: Related material: My Life among the Deathworks: See also Nicole Kidman in Posted 9/10/2006 at 2:56 PM |
And the "For the Aeron and other designs, -- Today's New York Times Stumpf died on August 30, Related material: From From the From Log24 on the Pictorial version of Posted 9/10/2006 at 4:00 AM |
x Posted 9/10/2006 at 3:57 AM |
For Frank Morley's Birthday: The Board "As Boileau-Narcejac* admirably said: 'The creator invents the chessboard, the serial writer invents the moves.'" --Moez Lahmedi * Quoted by Marc Lits in Pour lire le roman policier, Bruxelles-Paris, De Boeck-Duculot, 1989, p. 7. The Moves "Problems are the poetry of chess. Posted 9/9/2006 at 4:07 PM |
Today's Birthday: Richard I of England (Coeur de Lion) In his honor, a small correction will be made this morning to the Wikipedia article on Harvard University. The date of the founding of Harvard will be changed from today, September 8, to the apparently more correct date October 28 (1636). "... the Massachusetts -- TIME, Sept. 28, 1936 "Only through time Update of 7:14 PM Sept. 8: Democracy has prevailed, and my correction has now been made politically correct. Here is my comment at Wikipedia:
Posted 9/8/2006 at 7:20 AM |
Today's Birthday: Elizabeth I of England "What, nephew," said the king, -- Epigraph to Vaine the ambition of Kings, -- John Webster, From Eliot's
Eliot's note: The line cited in Eliot's note Posted 9/7/2006 at 2:56 PM |
A Game of Chess for Isak Dinesen, Meanwhile... Click on pictures for details. Posted 9/7/2006 at 4:04 AM |
Hamlet's Transformation "O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell Background:
The transformation:
Related material:
Posted 9/6/2006 at 5:26 PM |
Bad Dreams Happy birthday, Robert M. Pirsig. Readings for the hour of the wolf:
Yesterday was Arthur Koestler's birthday. "By groping toward the light Posted 9/6/2006 at 4:00 AM |
The King of Infinite Space was published today. Click on picture for details. Posted 9/5/2006 at 1:00 AM |
In a Nutshell: The Seed "The symmetric group S6 of permutations of 6 objects is the only symmetric group with an outer automorphism.... This outer automorphism can be regarded as the seed from which grow about half of the sporadic simple groups...." -- Noam Elkies, February 2006 This "seed" may be pictured as within what Burkard Polster has called "the smallest perfect universe"-- PG(3,2), the projective 3-space over the 2-element field. Related material: yesterday's entry for Sylvester's birthday. Posted 9/4/2006 at 7:20 PM |
Click on picture See also Saturday's entry Related material:
Posted 9/4/2006 at 1:00 PM |
The following figure from a June 11, 1986, note illustrates Sylvester's "duads" and "synthemes" using the concept of an "inscape" (part B of the figure). As R. T. Curtis and Noam Elkies have explained, the duads and synthemes lead to constructions of many of the sporadic simple groups. Posted 9/3/2006 at 1:00 PM |
Today's birthdays: Salma Hayek "Shinin' like a diamond
and Keanu Reeves (For the above figure, Related material:
Posted 9/2/2006 at 7:31 AM |
Dirty Business
"Some friends of mine "And if the band you're in -- Quoted in Log24 on the Last night's entry on Glenn Ford, freemasonry, and the business of narrative leads to the following meditation. This morning's New York Times obituary of the Apollo 11 launch director brings back memories of Dean Martin's classic refrain "when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...." This in turn is a reminder of one of the great subtitles-- Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (by Nick Tosches, published by Secker & Warburg on November 9, 1992). I respect the launch director, Rocco A. Petrone, who later headed the successful recovery of Apollo 13 (and also headed the entire Apollo program), but I also greatly respect Nick Tosches as a guide to the dark side of humanity. Secular humanism and the religion of scientism are all very well as cheerleaders for physics, but Tosches and the Roman Catholic Church have a much better understanding of human nature and original sin. Posted 9/1/2006 at 7:59 AM |