I Have a Dreamtime Noting today that the time was 11:32 (AM ET), a portentous number in Finnegans Wake, I decided to practice a bit of chronomancy (use of time for augury). My weblog's server infomed me when I pressed "enter" that it thought the exact time was 11:32:39. Consulting (as in Symmetry and Change in the Dreamtime) the I Ching for the meaning of (hexagram) 39, I found the following: The hexagram pictures a dangerous abyss lying before us and a steep, inaccessible mountain rising behind us.... One must join forces with friends of like mind and put himself under the leadership of a man equal to the situation: then one will succeed in removing the obstacles. For the abyss and the mountain, see the five log24 entries ending on July 5, 2005, with "The Edge of Eternity." As for "friends of like mind," see the previous entry's references to July 2005. "The leadership of a man equal to the situation" is more difficult to interpret. Perhaps it refers, as a politician recently noted, to "a king who took us to the mountain-top and pointed the way to the promised land." Or perhaps to a different king. Click on image for details. Posted 2/29/2008 at 11:32 AM |
Popularity of MUB's From an entry today at the weblog of Lieven Le Bruyn (U. of Antwerp): "MUBs (for Mutually Unbiased Bases) are quite popular at the moment. Kea is running a mini-series Mutual Unbias...." The link to Kea (Marni Dee Sheppeard (pdf) of New Zealand) and a link in her Mutual Unbias III (Feb. 13) lead to the following illustration, from a talk, "Discrete phase space based on finite fields," by William Wootters at the Perimeter Institute in 2005: This illustration makes clear the close relationship of MUB's to the finite geometry of the 4x4 square. See also "Reflections on Symmetry," "Quantum Information Theory Related to Finite Geometry," and a comment at The n-Category Cafe, On Spekkens' toy system and finite geometry. The Wootters talk was on July 20, 2005. For related material from that July which some will find more entertaining, see "Steven Cullinane is a Crank," conveniently reproduced as a five-page thread in the Mathematics Forum at groupsrv.com. Posted 2/28/2008 at 7:20 PM |
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For Scarlett: A campaign song in memory of Buddy Miles: Click on image for details. With a wink to Lois Wyse and a nod to Woody Allen -- "Listen, I tell you a mystery...." Posted 2/28/2008 at 2:00 PM |
What you mean "we"?
"After the credits, a close-up of a lottery list shows the winning numbers
drawn in the Mexican National Lottery, dated February 14, 1925. The camera
pulls back to the hands of a man holding a lottery ticket and comparing his
number with the posted winners."
-- Review of Treasure of the Sierra Madre by Tim Dirks at filmsite.org "One heart will wear a valentine." -- Sinatra Posted 2/28/2008 at 12:00 PM |
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Last Things A link for William F. Buckley, who died today at 82: The five Log24 entries ending at 3:48 PM on Nov. 25, 2005. Posted 2/27/2008 at 12:00 PM |
The Plot "Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly" -- Four Quartets "Dear friends, would those of you who know what this is all about please raise your hands? I think if God is dead he laughed himself to death. Because, you see, we live in Eden. Genesis has got it all wrong-- we never left the Garden. Look about you. This is paradise. It's hard to find, I'll grant you, but it is here. Under our feet, beneath the surface, all around us is everything we want. The earth is shining under the soot. We are all fools. Ha ha! Moriarty has made fools of all of us. But together-- you and I, tonight-- we'll bring him down." The earth is shining under the soot...
Ah! bright wings
"Whoever owns the Boeing 707 parked on La Brea Avenue, your landing lights are on." [John Travolta runs on stage and rushes for the door.] -- Oscar Night, Feb. 24, 2008 For a religious interpretation of the number 707, see To Announce a Faith (All Hallows' Eve, 2006) and the following link to a Tom Stoppard line from the previous entry: "Heaven, how can I believe in Heaven?" she sings at the finale. "Just a lying rhyme for seven!" Posted 2/27/2008 at 11:07 AM |
Eight is a Gate (continued)
Related material: In the previous entry -- "Father Clark seizes at one place (p. 8) upon the fact that...." Father Clark's reviewer (previous entry) called a remark by Father Clark "far fetched." This use of "place" by the reviewer is, one might say, "near fetched." Posted 2/26/2008 at 8:00 PM |
The Just Word The title of the previous entry, "Where Entertainment is God," comes (via Log24, Nov. 26, 2004) from Frank Rich. The previous entry dealt, in part, with a dead Jesuit whose obituary appears in today's Los Angeles Times. The online obituaries page places the Jesuit, without a photo, beneath a picture of a dead sitcom writer and to the left of a picture of a dead guru. "Walter John Burghardt was born July 10, 1914, in New York, the son of immigrants from what is now Poland. He entered a Jesuit seminary in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., at 16, and in 1937 received a master's degree from Woodstock College in Maryland. He was ordained in 1941." He died, by the way, on Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008. The reference to Woodstock College brings to mind a fellow Jesuit, Joseph T. Clark, who wrote a book on logic published by that college. From a review of the book: "In order to show that Aristotelian logicians were at least vaguely aware of a kind of analogy or possible isomorphism between logical relations and mathematical relations, Father Clark seizes at one place (p. 8) upon the fact that Aristotle uses the word, 'figure' (schema), in describing the syllogism and concludes from this that 'it is obvious that the schema of the syllogism is to serve the logician precisely as the figure serves the geometer.' On the face of it, this strikes one as a bit far fetched...." -- Henry Veatch in Speculum, Vol. 29, No. 2, Part 1 (Apr., 1954), pp. 266-268 (review of Conventional Logic and Modern Logic: A Prelude to Transition (1952), by Joseph T. Clark, Society of Jesus) Posted 2/26/2008 at 7:00 PM |
Sitcom Baer died Friday, Feb. 22. Some thoughts from the preceding Friday, the birthday of actor Kevin "You're Next" McCarthy:
Related material: The obituary of Burghardt and The Four Last Things. "Hell is other people." -- Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit With a laugh track. Posted 2/26/2008 at 11:00 AM |
The Passion of the Children Today is the fourth anniversary of the opening-- Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004-- of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. "Tonight we look beyond the dark days to focus on happier fare, this year’s slate of Oscar-nominated psychopathic-killer movies.... I was happy to see Atonement nominated this year for best picture, quite frankly. Very happy. Atonement: finally, a story that captured the passion and raw sexuality of Yom Kippur." -- Jon Stewart's Oscar monologue yesterday Related material:
A Story of Yom Kippur, 2006 Posted 2/25/2008 at 9:29 PM |
"I was happy to see Atonement nominated this year for best picture quite frankly. Very happy. Atonement: finally a story that captured the passion and raw sexuality of Yom Kippur." -- Jon Stewart's Oscar monologue yesterday Posted 2/25/2008 at 9:26 PM |
A System of Symbols A book from Yale University Press discussed in Log24 four years ago today: Click on image for details. The book is titled Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative. For a narrative about relativity and cubes, see Knight Moves. Related material: Geek chic in this week's New Yorker-- "... it takes a system of symbols to make numbers precise-- to 'crystallize' them...." -- and a mnemonic for three days in October 2006 following a memorial to the Amish schoolchildren slain that month: Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate, Nine is a Vine. Posted 2/25/2008 at 4:00 PM |
Related material: In memory of who died on See also yesterday's entry for Oscar night (the fourth anniversary of Axelrod's death and of The Crimson Passion). Posted 2/25/2008 at 12:00 PM |
Labyrinth of Solitude Chapel, Cuernavaca, Mexico "A labyrinthine man never seeks the truth, but always, only, his Ariadne.... Who besides myself knows what Ariadne is?" -- Nietzsche, epigraph to Ariadne's Lives, by Nina daVinci Nichols (See yesterday's entry.) Related material: Entries of Feb. 13 and Feb. 19 at Log24 and the entry of Feb. 13 at Ariachne's Broken Woof Troilus and Cressida in Act 5, Scene 2: "And yet the spacious breadth of this division Posted 2/24/2008 at 12:00 PM |
Jumpers "An acute study of the links between word and fact" -- Nina daVinci Nichols Thanks to a Virginia reader for a reminder:
The link is to a Log24 entry
that begins as follows... An Exercise of Power Johnny Cash: "And behold, a white horse." Chess Knight (in German, Springer) This, along with the "jumper" theme in the previous two entries, suggests a search on springer jumper.
That search yields a German sports phrase, "Springer kommt!" A search on that phrase yields the following:
Background of "Frau vBayern" from thePeerage.com:
The date of the above "Liebe Frau vBayern" inquiry, Feb. 1, 2007, suggests the following: From Log24 on St. Bridget's Day, 2007: The quotation "Science is a Faustian bargain" and the following figure-- Change From a short story by the above Princess: "'I don't even think she would have
wanted
to change you. But she for sure did not want to change herself. And her
values were simply a part of her.' It was true, too. I would even go so
far as to say that they were her basis, if you think about her as a
geometrical body. That's what they couldn't understand,
because in this
age of the full understanding for stretches of values in favor of
self-realization of any kind, it was a completely foreign concept." To make this excellent metaphor mathematically correct, change "geometrical body" to "space"... as in "For Princeton's Class of 2007"-- Review of a 2004 production of a 1972 Tom Stoppard play, "Jumpers"-- Related material: Knight Moves (Log24, Jan. 16), Kindergarten Theology (St. Bridget's Day, 2008), and (Click on image for details.) Posted 2/23/2008 at 12:00 PM |
Philosophers Ponder "Philosophers
ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday...." -- Bernard Holland in The New York Times Monday, May 20, 1996 In 1564, Non ha l'ottimo artista in se alcun concetto, Ch'un marmo solo in se non circoscriva Col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva La man che ubbidisce all'intelletto. (The best artist has in himself no concept in a single block of marble not contained; only the hand obeying mind will find it.) -- Michelangelo, as quoted by Erwin Panofsky in Idea: A Concept in Art Theory ... Todo lo sé por el lucero puro -- Rubén Darío Related material:Yesterday's entry and Anthony Lane in this week's New Yorker: "... the whole of 'Jumper' comes across as vastly incurious about the
cultures at its command. When David takes Millie (Rachel Bilson), a
school friend from Michigan, for a dirty day out in Rome, she stands in
awe before the Colosseum. 'This place is amazing,' she declares. 'It’s
so cool.' I wasn’t expecting Ernst Gombrich...." Posted 2/22/2008 at 11:00 AM |
The New Yorker's Anthony Lane reviewing the new film "Jumper"-- "I wasn’t expecting Ernst Gombrich, but surely three writers, among them, could inject a touch of class." The "Jumper" theme, teleportation, has been better developed by three other writers-- Bester, Zelazny, and King-- "As a long-time fan of both Alfie Bester and Roger Zelazny, I was delighted to find this posthumous collaboration. Psychoshop is, I think, true to both authors' bodies of work. After all, Bester's influence on Zelazny is evident in a a number of works, most notably Eye of Cat with its dazzling experimental typography so reminiscent of what Bester had done in The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination." -- Amazon.com customer review "'This is the last call for Jaunt-701,' the pleasant female voice echoed through the Blue Concourse of New York's Port Authority Terminal." -- Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
"What happened?"
one of the scientists shouted.... "It's eternity in there," he said, and dropped dead.... -- Stephen King, "The Jaunt" As for Ernst Gombrich, see his link in the Log24 entries of June 15, 2007. Related material: the previous entry. Posted 2/21/2008 at 11:07 AM |
About Five Years Ago:
The custom-made asterisk ... Todo lo sé por el lucero puro -- Rubén Darío Related material: The previous five entries Time of this entry: Posted 2/20/2008 at 11:48 AM |
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Sumerian Cuneiform An: sky, heaven also digir (dingir): god, goddess "The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines,,,, An X superimposed on a plus sign. It looked permanent." -- Fritz Leiber, "Damnation Morning," 1959 short story in Changewar Ace edition, May 1, 1983 Posted 2/19/2008 at 8:00 AM |
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The timestamp of this entry, 11:07 PM on Feb. 18, was reserved for a later entry. The appropriate entry now (3:09 PM on Feb. 24, Oscar Day) seems to be a link in (belated) honor of Anthony Hopkins's performance in Nixon: The Comeback Kid. Posted 2/18/2008 at 11:07 PM |
This entry's timestamp, 3 PM on Feb. 18, was reserved for a later entry. Feb. 18 is the date of Robert Oppenheimer's death. The appropriate entry now (Feb. 24-- Oscar Day-- at 3 PM) seems to be a link to Nov. 6, 2003: The Most Violent Poem. Posted 2/18/2008 at 3:00 PM |
Big Time Log24 on Feb. 13: New York Times today-- "Plot Would Thicken, if the Writers Remembered It" "We've lost the plot!" -- Slipstream
the previous entry. Posted 2/17/2008 at 9:15 AM |
Bridges Between Two Worlds From the world of mathematics... "... my advisor once told me, 'If you ever find yourself drawing one of those meaningless diagrams with arrows connecting different areas of mathematics, it’s a good sign that you’re going senile.'" -- Scott Carnahan at Secret Blogging Seminar, December 14, 2007 Carnahan's remark in context: "About five years ago, Cheewhye Chin gave a great year-long seminar on Langlands correspondence for GLr over function fields.... In the beginning, he drew a diagram.... If we remove all of the explanatory text, the diagram looks like this: I was a bit hesitant to draw this, because my advisor once told me, 'If you ever find yourself drawing one of those meaningless diagrams with arrows connecting different areas of mathematics, it’s a good sign that you’re going senile.' Anyway, I’ll explain roughly how it works. Langlands correspondence is a 'bridge between two worlds,' or more specifically, an assertion of a bijection...." Compare and contrast the above... ... to the world of Rudolf Kaehr: The above reference to "diamond theory" is from Rudolf Kaehr's paper titled Double Cross Playing Diamonds. Another bridge...Carnahan's advisor, referring to "meaningless diagrams with arrows connecting different areas of mathematics," probably did not have in mind diagrams like the two above, but rather diagrams like the two below-- From the world of mathematics... "A rough sketch of how diamond theory is related to some other fields of mathematics" -- Steven H. Cullinane Related material: For further details on Finite Geometry of the For further details on Those who prefer entertainment
Posted 2/16/2008 at 9:29 AM |
Door Step: "Many dreams have been brought to your doorstep. They just lie there and they die there." -- Lyricist Ray Evans, who died at 92 one year ago today Associated Press - Today in History - Thought for Today: "Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth." --Jean-Paul Sartre The Return of the Author, by Eugen Simion: On Sartre's Les Mots -- "Writing helps him find his own place within this vast comedy. He does not take to writing seriously yet, but he is eager to write books in order to escape the comedy he has been compelled to take part in. The craft of writing appeared to me as an adult activity, so ponderously serious, so trifling, and, at bottom, so lacking in interest that I didn't doubt for a moment that it was in store for me. I said to myself both 'that's all it is' and 'I am gifted.' Like all dreamers, I confused disenchantment with truth." This is given in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) as Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth. Also from the AP's Today's Birthdays: Related material: Hopkins at Heaven's Gate (In context: October 2007)-- "Dolly's Little Diner-- Home from Home" Posted 2/15/2008 at 10:10 AM |
"Hanging from the highest limb of the apple tree are the three God's Eyes Quiston and Caleb made out of yarn at Camp Nebo. The eyes aren't moving a wink in the thick hot air, but they likely see the world spinning around as well as any Fool's." -- Ken Kesey, "Last Time the Angels Came Up," in Demon Box Posted 2/14/2008 at 11:20 AM |
New York Times today-- "Plot Would Thicken, if the Writers Remembered It" Gala Premiere: FOUR FOR HEAVEN'S GATE "My God, it's full of numbers!" Roger Ebert: "This movie is.... the most scandalous cinematic waste I have ever seen, and remember, I've seen Paint Your Wagon." Posted 2/13/2008 at 10:00 PM |
Centerpiece "Kirk Browning... television director of 'Live* From Lincoln Center,' died on Sunday [Feb. 10, 2008] in Manhattan. He was 86. The cause was a heart attack, his son, David, said. ... In addition to his 'Live From Lincoln Center' programs, 10 of which won Emmy Awards, Mr. Browning... directed, among other productions... the first TV show with Frank Sinatra as host (1957); and 'Hallmark Hall of Fame' music and drama specials (1951 to 1958)." In Memoriam: * The timestamp of this entry is, however, not live. The entry was actually produced at about 5:55 AM on Feb. 13. The timestamp of the entry, 5:01 PM on Lincoln's Birthday, is a veiled reference to Cemetery Ridge, to the meadow in "Readings for Candlemas" (see also the previous two entries) and to a Gettysburg address. Posted 2/12/2008 at 5:01 PM |
"That's the beginning - just one of those clues. You've had your first lesson in learnin' the blues." Related material: All That Jazz (previous entry) Posted 2/12/2008 at 9:00 AM |
At the Still Point... "Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned in January of 1924 by Paul Whiteman for an experimental concert of popular music. It was... premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York City on February 12, 1924 with the composer at the piano." --Matthew Naughtin "Whiteman's concept of the 'true form of jazz,' even as late as 1924, was the original Dixieland Jazz Band's 1917 recording of... Livery Stable Blues, with which he opened the program." --The New York Times For another sort of livery stable blues, see Readings for Candlemas (Log24, Feb. 2, 2008). Posted 2/12/2008 at 4:09 AM |
Monolith "A shape of some kind for something that has no shape." -- Roy Scheider in "2010" For further details, click on the monolith. See also the Keystone State's lottery numbers for Sunday-- Grammy night and the date of Scheider's death: These numbers suggest the following links. For further details related to death and religion, see a version of the cheer "1234, who are we for?" For further details related to Grammy night, see 6/17, 2007: A selection from the Stephen King Hymnal "... it's going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things." -- Anne McCaffrey, Radcliffe '47, To Ride Pegasus Posted 2/11/2008 at 7:00 AM |
The timestamp of this entry, 7:59 AM, may be regarded as a reference to the Log24 entry of July 17, 2003 "A Constant Idea: 759." The word "idea" in that entry is a reference to Plato-- who, along with Shakespeare, appears in a Chesterton quote in "An Epiphany for Roy, Part I." (This entry, on the other hand, was written, along with parts I and III of "An Epiphany for Roy," on the morning of Monday, Feb. 11, 2008.) Posted 2/10/2008 at 7:59 AM |
The timestamp of this entry, 4:23 AM, may be regarded as a memorial to Fra' Andrew Bertie (see Andrew Cusack's journal). It was at about this time that I heard of Fra' Andrew's death. The timestamp is a reference to Shakespeare's birthday and to the following thought: Page 162 of Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton (1908), reprinted in 1995 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco-- The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. The entry itself was written later... on the morning of Monday, Feb. 11, 2008. For a similar reference of sorts, to Plato, see "Epiphany for Roy, Part II" (timestamped 7:59 AM Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008). Posted 2/9/2008 at 4:23 AM |
Prizes and Rewards "... like the victors in the games collecting their prizes, we receive our reward...." -- Conclusion of Plato's Republic From The Harvard Crimson front page on Mardi Gras, 2008: Harvard senior Matthew Di Pasquale plans a new campus magazine called "Diamond"-- Click to enlarge. Related material: The Crimson Passion: Posted 2/8/2008 at 8:06 AM |
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The Football Mandorla New York Lottery, 2008: 7/01 "He pointed at the football on his desk. 'There it is.'" -- Glory Road "The Rock" --
Goodspeed: "Your best. Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and ...." "The Wu Li Masters know that physicists are doing more than 'discovering the endless diversity of nature.' They are dancing with Kali, the Divine Mother of Hindu mythology." -- Gary Zukav, Harvard '64 Posted 2/7/2008 at 7:59 AM |
NASA Meets Jesus continued from Feb. 5, 2003 NASA Says, "Hello, Universe. Meet the Beatles." The release date of the DVD of Julie Taymor's Beatles tribute "Across the Universe" was the same as that of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-- February 5, 2008 "Any day now, any day now, I shall be released." -- Bob Dylan in "NASA Meets Jesus," February 5, 2003 Related material: Happy Birthday, John O'Hara Posted 2/6/2008 at 5:01 AM |
A literary complaint: Philip Larkin on his fear of death-- This is a special way A literary response
From a musical brocade:
Related material: The Crimson Passion: Posted 2/5/2008 at 6:05 AM |
New York Lottery, Super Bowl Sunday, 2008: Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation" "Of course, I don't mean interpretation in the
broadest sense, the sense in which Nietzsche (rightly) says, 'There are no facts,
only interpretations.' By interpretation, I mean here a conscious act of the mind
which illustrates a certain code, certain 'rules' of interpretation." A Certain Code Edward Gibbon on the Trinity:
Friedrich Nietzsche on the abyss: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." Frank Sinatra on narrative: "You gotta be true to your code." Posted 2/4/2008 at 7:59 AM |
Matthew had a couple of hours on his hands before dinner with the Kanes, so he drifted up to the only grassy spot in Twenty-Mile, the triangular, up-tilted little meadow crossed by a rivulet running off from the cold spring that provided the town's water. This meadow belonged to the livery stable, and half a dozen of its donkeys lazily nosed in the grass while, at the far end, a scrawny cow stood in the shade of the only tree in Twenty-Mile, a stunted skeleton whose leafless, wind-raked branches stretched imploringly to leeward, like bony fingers clawing the clouds. The meadow couldn't be seen from any part of the town except the Livery, so Matthew felt comfortably secluded as he sauntered along, intending to investigate the burial ground that abutted the donkey meadow, but B. J. Stone called to him from the Livery, so he turned back and began the chore they had found for him to do: oiling tools. LATER.... After they did the dishes, Matthew and Ruth Lillian walked down the Sunday-silent street, then turned up into the donkey meadow. He was careful to guide her away from the soggy patch beneath the tree, where the Bjorkvists had slaughtered that week's beef. Lost in their own thoughts, they strolled across the meadow, the uneven ground causing their shoulders to brush occasionally, until they reached the fenced-in burying ground. STILL LATER.... "Matthew?" she asked in an offhand tone. "Hm-m-m?" "What's 'the Other Place'?" He turned and stared at her. "How do you know about that?" "You told me." "I never!" "Yes, you did. You were telling about your fight with the Benson boys, and you said you couldn't feel their punches because you were in this 'Other Place.' I didn't ask you about it then, 'cause you were all worked up. But I've been curious about it ever since." "Oh, it's just..." In a gesture that had something of embarrassment in it and something of imitation, he threw his stick as hard as he could, and it whop-whop-whop'd through the air, landing against the sagging fence that separated the burying ground from the donkey meadow. "If you don't want to tell me, forget it. I just thought... Never mind." She walked on. "It's not that I don't want to tell you. But it's... it's hard to explain." She stopped and waited patiently. "It's just... well, when I was a little kid and I was scared-- scared because Pa was shouting at Ma, or because I was going to have to fight some kid during recess-- I'd fix my eyes on a crack in the floor or a ripple in a pane of glass-- on anything, it didn't matter what-- and pretty soon I'd slip into this-- this Other Place where everything was kind of hazy and echoey, and I was far away and safe. At first, I had to concentrate real hard to get to this safe place. But then, this one day a kid was picking on me, and just like that-- without even trying-- I was suddenly there, and I felt just as calm as calm, and not afraid of anything. I knew they were punching me, and I could hear the kids yelling names, but it didn't hurt and I didn't care, 'cause I was off in the Other Place. And after that, any time I was scared, or if I was facing something that was just too bad, I'd suddenly find myself there. Safe and peaceful." He searched here eyes. "Does that make any sense to you, Ruth Lillian?" "Hm-m... sort of. It sounds kind of eerie." And she added quickly, "But really interesting!" "I've never told anybody about it. Not even my ma. I was afraid to because... This'll sound funny, but I was afraid that if other people knew about the Other Place, it might heal up and go away, and I wouldn't be able to get there when I really needed to. Crazy, huh?" Posted 2/2/2008 at 2:19 AM |
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Kindergarten Theology On the late James Edwin Loder, a Presbyterian minister and a professor of Christian education at Princeton Theological Seminary, co-author of The Knight's Move (1992): "At his memorial service his daughter Tami told the story of 'little
Jimmy,' whose kindergarten teacher recognized a special quality of mind
that set him apart. 'Every day we read a story, and after the story is
over, Jimmy gets up and wants to tell us what the story means.'" -- Dana R. Wright
For a related story about knight moves and kindergarten, see Knight Moves: The Relativity Theory of Kindergarten Blocks, and Log24, Jan. 16, 17, and 18. See also Loder's book (poorly written, but of some interest in light of the above): Opening of The Knight's Move -- "In a game of chess, the knight's move is unique because it alone goes around corners. In this way, it combines the continuity of a set sequence with the discontinuity of an unpredictable turn in the middle. This meaningful combination of continuity and discontinuity in an otherwise linear set of possibilities has led some to refer to the creative act of discovery in any field of research as a 'knight's move' in intelligence. The significance of the title of this volume might stop there but for Kierkegaard's use of the 'knight' image. The force of Kierkegaards's usage might be described in relation to the chess metaphor by saying that not merely does Kierkegaard's 'knight of faith' undertake a unique move within the rules of the human game, but faith transposes the whole idea of a 'knight's move' into the mind of the Chess Master Himself. That is to say, chess is a game of multiple possibilities and interlocking strategies, so a chess master must combine the continuity represented by the whole complex of the game with the unpredictable decision he must make every time it is his turn. A master chess player, then, does not merely follow the rules; in him the game becomes a construct of consciousness. The better the player the more fully the game comes into its own as a creation of human intelligence. Similarly, for Kierkegaard, the knight of faith is a unique figure in human experience. The knight shows how, by existing in faith as a creative act of Christ's Spirit, human existence comes into its own as an expression of the mind of Christ. Thus, the ultimate form of a 'knight's move' is a creative act raised to the nth power by Spiritus Creator, but it still partakes fully in the concrete pieces and patterns that comprise the nature of the human game and the game of nature." -- James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt (Helmers & Howard Publishing, 1992) For a discussion, see Triplett's "Thinking Critically as a Christian." Many would deny that such a thing is possible; let them read the works of T. S. Eliot. Related material: The Knight's Move discusses (badly) Hofstadter's "strange loop" concept; see Not Mathematics but Theology (Log24, July 12, 2007). Posted 2/1/2008 at 5:01 AM |
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