Hat Tip Today's New York Times on the Sept. 22 death of William D. Rogers, architect of United States policy on Latin America-- When Rogers died during a Virginia fox hunt, "An Episcopal
priest was called, 'One by one, they rode past him Posted 9/30/2007 at 2:00 PM |
Trinity Church "Funeral services will be held at Trinity Church, Upperville, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30." The source: Today's previous entry had a different image of Rogers with a quotation from Wallace Stevens's "The Rock." Stevens, though raised as a Presbyterian, was a secular poet. Since Rogers's funeral is to take place in a Christian church, it seems fitting to grant equal time to a Christian poet of at least equal stature:
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Death on Yom Kippur "William D. Rogers, a lawyer who helped plan the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations' approach to Latin America and then served as a
principal policymaker for the region during the Ford administration,
died Sept. 22 near his home in Upperville, Va. He was 80.
Mr. Rogers, a devotee of fox hunting, died during a hunt after suffering a heart attack while riding his favorite horse, Isaiah, his son William said.... His son William said his father was declared dead almost immediately by a doctor participating in the fox hunt. An Episcopal priest was called, the hounds were collected and the hunters gathered for a short service on the spot. 'One by one, they rode past him and tipped their hats,' William said." -- Douglas Martin and Sarah Abruzzese, New York Times, Sept. 30, 2007 "Enter the rock...."
Posted 9/30/2007 at 3:14 AM |
From The New York Times on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels: Recommended reading in the afterlife for Rabbi Shapira: "The Man as Pure as Lucifer," by Graham Greene Recommended viewing in the afterlife for Dr. Panofsky, son of Erwin Panofsky: "Pray for the grace of accuracy." -- Robert Lowell, quoted in a web page titled "Is Nothing Sacred?" "The page numbers are generally reliable." -- Steven H. Cullinane, "Zen and Language Games" Related material: Sacred Passion: The Art of William Schickel, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1998 Click on the fingerpost for further details. Posted 9/29/2007 at 3:09 AM |
8:20 PM ET:
See Venn Diagrams and Finite Geometry and today's comments at my Wikipedia page. This update replaces the original Log24 entry of 6:25 AM today. Posted 9/28/2007 at 6:25 AM |
This afternoon I added a new page to finitegeometry.org and updated the Geometry of Logic page. These changes are due to my coming across the Usenet postings of Carol
von der Lin. Posted 9/27/2007 at 4:00 PM |
The Holy Spook
continues: Classics 101 -- (See September 15. ) "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living." -- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets The Boston Globe, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2007 "When Boston psychiatrist Jonathan Shay wanted to understand the psychological toll of the Vietnam War on the veterans he treated, he turned to the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey.' The classical Greek epics perfectly encapsulate
the mental damage of combat, said Shay, who works for the Department of
Veterans Affairs in Boston.... Today, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation will announce that Shay, 65, has been selected as a 2007 MacArthur fellow 'for his work in using literary parallels from Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey" to treat combat trauma suffered by Vietnam veterans.'.... 'I was hearing elements of the story of Achilles over and over again,' Shay said. Achilles, the hero of the 'Iliad,' is mistreated by his commander, who takes a girl, a prize of war, from him. Achilles is also tormented by the loss of his best friend in the Trojan War. With his ethical universe upended, he goes berserk. Soon, Shay began to work on his first book, 'Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.' In
the book, he interspersed the story of Achilles with examples of his
patients' losses and contentious relationships with their commanders in
Vietnam to illustrate some of the causes of the troops' psychological
wounds." Menin, is written in Greek on Professor Silk's blackboard in the photo at top. It means "wrath." Related material: The wrath of a Vietnam veteran, portrayed by Ed Harris, in the film "The Human Stain," and a calmer Harris in the illustration below, from Log24, Oct. 8, 2005: A History of Death Adapted from the film "A History of Violence" Posted 9/27/2007 at 6:29 AM |
A Song is a Terrible Thing to Waste "Teach us to number our days." -- The New Yorker, Oct. 1, 2007 Link from previous entry: on a day numbered 2/10 ... "Come, Mister Tally Man..." Related material: The Crimson Passion and this morning's Harvard Crimson: Faust's Kickoff See also the home page of today's online New Yorker-- -- as well as Harvard at the Grammys (2/12/07), The Fullness of Time (7/29/04), and Soul at Harvard (9/18/04). Posted 9/25/2007 at 8:00 AM |
Psalm from
the Underworld I reserved the time slot of this entry, 1:06 (a reference to Epiphany), on Sept. 24 after encountering the following passages in The New Yorker, issue dated Oct. 1, 2007-- James Wood on Robert Alter's new translation of the Psalms:
The reference to "numbering our days" recalled Saturday morning's Yom Kippur entry on the days numbered 8/09 and 9/12. Here is another such entry, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Lottery: For a midrash, see last year's 7/07 and 2/10 as well as this year's 7/07 and 2/10. For another psalm from the underworld see Toy Soldiers. Posted 9/24/2007 at 1:06 AM |
The New Yorker, issue dated Sept. 24, 2007: FALL PREVIEW READINGS On Oct. 10, Stephen King opens the new season of "Selected Shorts" at Symphony Space as the host of readings from "The Best American Short Stories 2007," which he guest-edited. (www.symphonyspace.org.) Related material: "When you care enough..." (Aug. 20 in Summer Reading) Update of 5:00 PM EDT Monday, Sept. 24, 2007: See also King's essay "What Ails the Short Story" on the inside back page of next Sunday's (Sept. 30) New York Times Book Review. Posted 9/23/2007 at 11:07 PM |
Autumn Equinox-- 5:51 AM EDT today. On Stephen King's Birthday, 2001-- A Reading List "to observe King's birthday, the High Holy Days, the autumn equinox, et cetera" On Stephen King's Birthday, 2007-- The Pennsylvania Lottery numbers were 809 and 912. For parts of a story about these numbers, see "Summer Reading" (Aug. 7 - Sept. 22). Posted 9/23/2007 at 5:51 AM |
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Retrospect "It was only in retrospect that the silliness became profound." -- Review of Faust in Copenhagen Posted 9/22/2007 at 6:23 AM |
The Magic of Numbers
"Emphasis will be placed on discovery through conjecture and experimentation." -- Elena Mantovan, pre-2007 undated Harvard syllabus for Quantitative Reasoning 28, "The Magic of Numbers" "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, said Shakespeare, are of imagination all compact. He forgot the mathematician.... Those who win through to the end of The Magic of Numbers will be for the rest of their lives in touch with the accessible mystery of things." -- Review, Harvard Magazine, Jan/Feb 2004 "Lear becomes almost lyrical. 'When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down/ And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh/ At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues/ Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too/ Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out-- And take upon's the mystery of things/ As if we were God's spies.' That is a remarkable, haunting passage." -- Father James V. Schall, Society of Jesus, Georgetown Hoya, undated column (perhaps, the URL indicates, from All Hallows' Eve, 2006) Posted 9/22/2007 at 6:22 AM |
Word and Object "We may recall the ideal of 'dryness' which we
associate with the symbolist movement, with writers such as T. E. Hulme
and T. S. Eliot, with Paul Valery, with Wittgenstein. This 'dryness'
(smallness, clearness, self-containedness) is a nemesis of
Romanticism.... The temptation of art... is to console. The
modern writer... attempts to console us by myths or by stories."
-- Iris Murdoch "The consolations of form, the clean crystalline work" -- Iris Murdoch, "Against Dryness" "As a teacher Quine was carefully organized, precise, and conscientious, but somewhat dry in his classroom style." -- Harvard Gazette Word: Object: Myth and Story: The five entries ending on Jan. 27, 2007 "There is such a thing as a tesseract." -- Madeleine L'Engle Posted 9/21/2007 at 8:28 AM |
x Posted 9/21/2007 at 8:23 AM |
x Posted 9/20/2007 at 3:00 AM |
Einstein, God, and
the Consolation of Form
"The kind of thing that would make Einstein gag"
-- Peter Woit, Sept. 18, 2007 "-- ...He did some equations that would make God cry for the sheer beauty of them. Take a look at this.... The sonofabitch set out equations that fit the data. Nobody believes they mean anything. Shit, when I back off, neither do I. But now and then, just once in a while... -- He joined physical and mental events. In a unified mathematical field. -- Yeah, that’s what I think he did. But the bastards in this department... bunch of goddamned positivists. Proof doesn’t mean a damned thing to them. Logical rigor, beauty, that damned perfection of something that works straight out, upside down, or sideways-- they don’t give a damn." -- "Nothing Succeeds," in The Southern Reporter: Stories of John William Corrington, LSU Press, 1981 "The search for images of order and the loss of them constitute the meaning of The Southern Reporter." -- Louisiana State University Press "By equating reality with the metaphysical abstraction 'contingency' and explaining his paradigm by reference to simple images of order, Kermode [but see note below] defines the realist novel not as one which attempts to get to grips with society or human nature, but one which, in providing the consolation of form,* makes the occasional concession to contingency...." -- Richard Webster on Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending "We are here in the
Church of St. Frank." -- Marjorie Garber, Harvard University * "The consolations of form" is a phrase Kermode quoted from Iris Murdoch. Webster does not mention Murdoch. Others have quoted Murdoch's memorable phrase, which comes from her essay "Against Dryness: A Polemical Sketch," Encounter, No. 88, January 1961, pp. 16-20. The essay was reprinted in a Penguin paperback collection of Murdoch's work, Existentialists and Mystics. It was also reprinted in The Novel Today, ed. Malcolm Bradbury (Manchester, Manchester U. Press, 1977); in Revisions, ed. S. Hauerwas and A. MacIntyre (Notre Dame, U. of Notre Dame Press, 1981); and in Iris Murdoch, ed. H. Bloom (New York, Chelsea House, 1986).
Posted 9/19/2007 at 5:00 AM |
x Posted 9/18/2007 at 9:00 AM |
x Posted 9/16/2007 at 6:00 AM |
Classics 101: The Holy Spook Prof. Coleman Silk introducing freshmen to academic values The Course Begins: Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, was recently invited, then disinvited, to speak at a politically correct UC campus. A Guest Lecturer Speaks: "This is so pathetic. I used to write long disquisitions on the ethical
dimensions of behavior like this, but years of it can make a girl get
very tired. And that's because this stuff is
tiresome, and boring, and wrong, and pathetic, and so very indicative
of the derailed character of academic life. It's more important to keep
punishing Summers for a comment he made years ago-- and apologized for
many times over, and essentially lost the presidency of Harvard
over-- than it is just to move on and let free exchange happen on
campuses. I doubt Summers would have devoted his time before the
Regents to theorizing gender (not that I would personally care much if
he did-- I was not so mortally wounded by his observations as others
were), and he is a brilliant man with much of value to bring to a visit
with the Regents. But what does that matter when the opportunity to mob
a politically incorrect academic presents itself?" --Erin O'Connor on Sept. 15, 2007
Illustration of the Theme:Clarinetist Ken Peplowski plays "Cry Me a River" as Nicole Kidman focuses the students' attention. A sample Holy Spook, Kurt Vonnegut, was introduced by Peplowski on the birthday this year of Pope Benedict XVI. "Deeply vulgar" -- Academic characterization of Harvard president Summers "Do they still call it the licorice stick?" -- Kurt Vonnegut Related Material:
Midnight Drums for LarryPosted 9/15/2007 at 8:00 PM |
Scorsese Is Kennedy Center Honoree "Scorsese, 64, a native New Yorker, thought of being a priest and went
to the seminary after high school. But he changed his mind and built a
catalogue of great films, many of which are considered the best of
their time." -- Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2007
His Life. My Card. Columbus Day, 2005 Click on image to enlarge. Posted 9/13/2007 at 3:57 AM |
Lease Renewed
The New York Times, Thursday, September 13, 2007-- Burt Hasen, Artist Inspired by Maps, Dies at 85 Burt Hasen, a New York
painter who drew inspiration from his experience working with maps as a
military technician during World War II, died on Friday [September 7, 2007] in Manhattan.
He was 85 and lived in Lower Manhattan.... During the war he served in the Air Force in the Pacific, where his duties involved close study of aerial maps, an activity that lastingly influenced his work. His densely worked canvases often had an overhead perspective....Toward the end of his life, many of his seemingly abstract paintings were based directly, and in detail, on maps.... In 2006 Mr. Hasen, his wife and the other tenants of a five-story
building at 7 Dutch Street near the South Street Seaport made news when
they organized against their landlord’s attempt to evict them from the
rent-regulated lofts they had occupied for more than 30 years. They
subsequently had their leases renewed. "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Gravity's Rainbow Posted 9/13/2007 at 2:02 AM |
Vector Logic I learned yesterday from Jonathan Westphal,
a professor of philosophy at Idaho State University, that he and a
colleague, Jim Hardy, have devised another geometric approach to logic:
a system of arrow diagrams that illustrate classical propositional
logic. The diagrams resemble those used to illustrate Euclidean
vector spaces, and Westphal and Hardy call their approach "a vector
system," although it does not involve what a mathematician would regard
as a vector space. See "Logic as a Vector System," Journal of Logic and Computation 15(5) (October, 2005), pp. 751-765. Related material: (1) Quilt Geometry, (2) the quilt pattern below (click for the source) -- and (3) yesterday's entry "Christ! What are patterns for?" -- Amy Lowell Posted 9/12/2007 at 5:01 PM |
x
Posted 9/11/2007 at 9:00 PM |
Battlefield Geometry
"The general, who wrote the Army's book on counterinsurgency, said he and his staff were 'trying to do the battlefield geometry right now' as he prepared his troop-level recommendations." -- Steven R. Hurst, The Associated Press, Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007 "'... we are in the process of doing the battlefield geometry to determine the way ahead.'" -- Charles M. Sennott, Boston Globe, Friday, Sept. 7, 2007 "Based on these considerations, and having worked the battlefield -- United States Army, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007 Related material: Log24 entries of June 11 and 12, 2005: "In the desert you can remember your name 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain." Posted 9/11/2007 at 12:07 AM |
The Story Theory of Truth -- "I'm a gun for hire, I'm a saint, I'm a liar, because there are no facts, there is no truth, just data to be manipulated." -- The Garden of Allah Data The data in more poetic form: To 23, For 16. Commentary: 23: See The Prime Cut Gospel. 16: See Happy Birthday, Benedict XVI. Related material: The remarks yesterday of Harvard president Drew G. Faust to incoming freshmen. Faust "encouraged the incoming class to explore Harvard’s many opportunities. 'Think of it as a treasure room of hidden objects Harry discovers at Hogwarts,' Faust said." -- Today's Crimson For a less Faustian approach, see the Harvard-educated philosopher Charles Hartshorne at The Harvard Square Library and the words of another Harvard-educated Hartshorne: "Whenever one approaches a subject from two different directions, there is bound to be an interesting theorem expressing their relation." -- Robin Hartshorne Posted 9/10/2007 at 11:07 AM |
May 25, 2007: "Let's give 'em somethin' to talk about, A little mystery to figure out" -- Scarlett Johansson singing on Saturday Night Live, April 21, 2007 Related material: Today's previous entry Posted 9/8/2007 at 7:11 PM |
The Intensest Rendezvous
"There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling.... Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling, Do not forget what flowers The great boar trampled down in ivy time. Her brow was creamy as the crested wave, Her sea-blue eyes were wild But nothing promised that is not performed. " -- Robert Graves, To Juan at the Winter Solstice The Devil and Wallace Stevens:
"In a letter to Harriet Monroe, written December 23, 1926, Stevens refers to the Sapphic fragment that invokes the genius of evening: 'Evening star that bringest back all that lightsome Dawn hath scattered afar, thou bringest the sheep, thou bringest the goat, thou bringest the child home to the mother.' Christmas, writes Stevens, 'is like Sappho's evening: it brings us all home to the fold.' (Letters of Wallace Stevens, 248)" -- "The Archangel of Evening," Chapter 5 of Wallace Stevens: The Intensest Rendezvous, by Barbara M. Fisher, The University Press of Virginia, 1990, pages 72-73 "Evening. Evening of this day. Evening of the century. Evening of my own life....
At Christmastime my parents held open house on Sunday evenings, and a dozen or more people gathered around the piano, and the apartment was full of music, and theology was sung into my heart." -- Madeleine L'Engle, Bright Evening Star: Mystery of the Incarnation From the date of
L'Engle's death: Some enchanted evening... Posted 9/8/2007 at 2:02 PM |
x Posted 9/8/2007 at 1:49 PM |
This place was reserved at 9:29 PM Sept. 7, 2007. The place now seems suitable to note a memorial to Burt Hasen, an artist who died on Sept. 7, 2007. For the memorial itself, see Sept. 13, 2007, 2:02 AM. Posted 9/7/2007 at 9:29 PM |
The New York Times online,
Friday, Sept. 7, 2007: Madeleine L’Engle, Children’s Writer, Is Dead Her death, of natural causes, was announced today by her publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux." Related material: Log24 entries of "That is how we travel." -- and of "There is such a thing Posted 9/7/2007 at 2:02 PM |
Posted 9/6/2007 at 11:00 AM |
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