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Big Rock "I'm going to hit this problem with a big rock." -- Mathematical saying, quoted here in July of 2006 June 28, 2007:
June 28, 2008: These numbers can, of course, be interpreted as symbols of the dates 6/29 and 5/30. The last Log24 entry of 6/29 (St. Peter's Day): "The rock cannot be broken. It is the truth." -- Wallace Stevens, "Credences of Summer" The last Log24 entry of 5/30 (St. Joan's Day): The Nature of Evil Posted 6/29/2008 at 8:00 AM |
The Motive for Metaphor You like it under the trees in autumn, Because everything is half dead. The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves And repeats words without meaning. In the same way, you were happy in spring With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon-- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of things that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be, Desiring the exhilarations of changes: The motive for metaphor, shrinking from The weight of primary noon, The A B C of being, The ruddy temper, the hammer Of red and blue, the hard sound-- Steel against intimation-- the sharp flash, The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X. -- Wallace Stevens, Transport to Summer (1947) Posted 6/28/2008 at 4:00 PM |
The following poem of Emily Dickinson is quoted here in memory of John Watson Foster Dulles, a scholar of Brazilian history who died at 95 on June 23. He was the eldest son of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a nephew of Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, brother of Roman Catholic Cardinal Avery Dulles, and a grandson of Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles, author of The True Church.
"He twirled a button...." The above figure of Plato (see 3/22) was suggested by Lacan's diamond (losange or poinçon) as a symbol -- according to Frida Saal -- of Derrida's différance -- which is, in turn, "that which enables and results from Being itself" -- according to Professor John Lye I prefer Plato and Dulles to Lacan and Lye. Posted 6/28/2008 at 12:00 PM |
The Cocktail G. H. Hardy on chess problems-- "... the key-move should be followed by a good many
variations, each requiring its own individual answer." (A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge at the University Press, first edition, 1940) Brian Harley on chess problems-- "It is quite true that variation play is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the soul of a problem, or (to put it more materially) the main course of the solver's banquet, but the Key is the cocktail that begins the proceedings, and if it fails in piquancy the following dinner is not so satisfactory as it should be." (Mate in Two Moves, London, Bell & Sons, first edition, 1931)Posted 6/28/2008 at 8:07 AM |
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For Drink Boy Log24, Oct. 8, 2006: "Cubistic" -- New York Times review of Scorsese's The Departed Click on image for further details. Posted 6/27/2008 at 12:00 PM |
Deadpan Obituary in today's New York Times of New Yorker cartoonist Ed Arno: "Mr. Arno... dealt in whimsy and deadpan surrealism." In his memory: a cartoon by Arno combined with material shown here, under the heading "From the Cartoon Graveyard," on May 27, the date of Arno's death -- Related material: Yesterday's entry. The key part of that entry is of course the phrase "the antics of a drunkard." Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend" (see June 25, 10:31 AM)-- "I'm van Gogh painting pure sunlight." It is not advisable, in all cases, to proceed thus far. Posted 6/27/2008 at 8:07 AM |
Review
Yesterday, June 25, was the 100th anniversay
of W.V. Quine's birth and also the day on the calendar
opposite Christmas-- In the parlance of Quine's son Douglas, Anti-Christmas.
Having survived that ominous date, I feel it is fitting to review what Wallace Stevens called "Credences of Summer"-- religious principles for those who feel that faith and doubt are best reconciled by art.
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Cycle of the Elements John Baez, Week 266: "The Renaissance thinkers liked to fire : air :: air : water :: water : earth
They also organized them Posted 6/25/2008 at 7:20 PM |
"The Renaissance
thinkers liked to fire : air :: air : water :: water : earth
They also organized them This figure of Baez For related thoughts by Jung, "The formula reproduces exactly the essential features of the symbolic process of transformation. It shows the rotation of the mandala, the antithetical play of complementary (or compensatory) processes, then the apocatastasis, i.e., the restoration of an original state of wholeness, which the alchemists expressed through the symbol of the uroboros, and finally the formula repeats the ancient alchemical tetrameria, which is implicit in the fourfold structure of unity." -- Carl Gustav Jung That the words Maximus of Tyre (second century A.D.) attributed to Heraclitus imply a cycle of the elements (analogous to the rotation in Jung's diagram) is not a new concept. For further details, see "The Rotation of the Elements," a 1995 webpage by one "John Opsopaus." Related material: Log24 entries of June 9, 2008, and "Quintessence: A Glass Bead Game," Posted 6/25/2008 at 7:20 PM |
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Prize Dance "I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety, his 'service of God.'" -- Nietzsche Charles Taylor, winner of this year's Kyoto Prize in arts and philosophy: "... the object sets up a kind of frame or space or field within which there can be epiphany." "My little baby sister can do it with ease. It's easier to learn than those ABC's." -- Kylie Minogue Posted 6/25/2008 at 8:06 AM |
x Posted 6/25/2008 at 8:05 AM |
Born 100 years ago today: Other approaches to the eight-ray star figure have been sketched in various Log24 entries. See, for instance, the June 21 entries on the Kyoto Prize for arts and philosophy. Quine won this prize in 1996. Quine's figure, cited in an argument against universals, is also a classic symbol for the morning or evening star. This year's winner of the Kyoto Prize has a more poetic approach to philosophy: "... the object sets up a kind of frame or space or field within which there can be epiphany." For one such frame or space, a Mexican cantina, see Shining Forth. See also Damnation Morning and The Devil and Wallace Stevens. Charles Taylor. See "Epiphanies of Modernism," Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self (Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477) Posted 6/25/2008 at 2:02 AM |
Random Walk with X's and O's Part I: Random Walk Part II: X's 3/22: "Shakespeare, Rilke, Joyce, Beckett and Levi-Strauss are instances of authors for whom chiasmus and chiastic thinking are of central importance, for whom chiasmus is a generator of meaning, tool of discovery and philosophical template." -- Chiasmus in the Drama of Life Part III: O's -- A Cartoon Graveyard in honor of the late Gene Persson † Today's Garfield -- See also Midsummer Eve's Dream: "The meeting is closed with the lord's‡ prayer and refreshments are served." † Producer of plays and musicals including Album and The Ruling Class ‡ Lower case in honor of Peter O'Toole, star of the film version of The Ruling Class. (This film, together with O'Toole's My Favorite Year, may be regarded as epitomizing Hollywood's Jesus for Jews.) Those who prefer less randomness in their religion may consult O'Toole's more famous film work involving Islam, as well as the following structure discussed here on the date of Persson's death: "The Moslems thought of the central 1 as being symbolic of the unity of Allah." Posted 6/24/2008 at 1:00 PM |
x Posted 6/24/2008 at 12:55 PM |
Plato's Cave, continued: ... we know that we use Only the eye as faculty, that the mind Is the eye, and that this landscape of the mind Is a landscape only of the eye; and that We are ignorant men incapable Of the least, minor, vital metaphor.... -- Wallace Stevens, "Crude Foyer" ... So, so, O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning Again and again, while history is unforgiven. -- Delmore Schwartz, "In the Naked Bed, in Plato's Cave" The Echo in Plato's Cave: Somewhere between a flagrant triviality and a resplendent Trinity we have what might be called "a resplendent triviality." For further details, see "A Four-Color Theorem." Posted 6/24/2008 at 5:01 AM |
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Damnation Morning Revisited: See Notes on Kosinski's Birthday and Sunday in the Park with Death. See also 4:13 and 4/13. Posted 6/24/2008 at 4:13 AM |
Crude Foyer Thought is false happiness: the idea That merely by thinking one can, Or may, penetrate, not may, But can, that one is sure to be able-- That there lies at the end of thought A foyer of the spirit in a landscape Of the mind, in which we sit And wear humanity's bleak crown; In which we read the critique of paradise And say it is the work Of a comedian, this critique; In which we sit and breathe An innocence of an absolute, False happiness, since we know that we use Only the eye as faculty, that the mind Is the eye, and that this landscape of the mind Is a landscape only of the eye; and that We are ignorant men incapable Of the least, minor, vital metaphor, content, At last, there, when it turns out to be here. -- Wallace Stevens Posted 6/24/2008 at 4:00 AM |
George Carlin Dies at 71 Comedian George Carlin died yesterday in Santa Monica at about 6 PM PDT (9 PM EDT). Earlier this month, told he would receive this year's Mark Twain award for comedy, Carlin said, "Thank you, Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people." 7 AM yesterday: 11 AM yesterday:
... and Of -- George Carlin Photo from New York Times video Arthur Harttman, Air Force veteran Posted 6/23/2008 at 6:00 AM |
Posted 6/22/2008 at 11:00 AM |
Salvation by Grace
Today's New York Times has an
obituary of Henry Chadwick, an Anglican priest and expert on church
history who believed strongly in ecumenism.Church history and ecumenism may interest few Americans, who have not recently suffered the sort of conflicts familiar to Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, here are some thoughts on the matter.
From a statement of "the five points of Calvinism"-- Irresistible Grace"'Irresistible grace' refers to the grace of regeneration by which God effectually calls His elect inwardly, converting them to Himself, and quickening them from spiritual death to spiritual life. Regeneration is the sovereign and immediate work of the Holy Spirit...." Calvinism is, of course, a deeply serious and
powerful approach to spiritual matters.
(See 6/3/08 and 2/20/05.) Still, I prefer the following visions of grace: How does one stand To behold the sublime, To confront the mockers, The mickey mockers And plated pairs? -- Wallace Stevens, 1936 On the left, a Catholic answer. On the right, a Protestant answer. For further details, see 10/16/05. The above two Philadelphia stories have met in a different vision of Grace: Click image for a (much) larger version.
This tableau, in the larger version showing details in the background buildings, seems to me an apt, if more Calvinist and less Catholic, version of what Paul Simon, in his Graceland album, has memorably called "angels in the architecture." Let us hope that the late Henry Chadwick now has a place among such angels. Related material: Yesterday's entries and what T. S. Eliot might call their "objective correlatives" in the Pennsylvania Lottery and in this journal: 5/29 5/01 Posted 6/22/2008 at 7:00 AM |
For Mary Gaitskill
(See Eight is a Gate and Faith, Doubt, Art, and The New Yorker.) A sructure from today's previous entry:
Everyone comes to Rick's. Posted 6/21/2008 at 8:00 PM |
For Mary
Gaitskill
(See Eight is a Gate and Faith, Doubt, Art, and The New Yorker.) A structure from today's previous entry:
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The Kyoto Prize for lifetime achievement in arts and philosophy this year goes to Charles Taylor, Montreal philosophy professor. "The Kyoto Prize has been given in three domains since 1984: advanced
technology, basic sciences, and the arts and philosophy. It is
administered by the Inamori Foundation, whose president, Kazuo Inamori,
is founder and chairman emeritus of Kyocera and KDDI Corporation, two
Japanese telecommunications giants."
Related material -- Fly from Fly Bottle: Charles Taylor, "Epiphanies of Modernism," Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self (Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477) -- "... the object sets up a kind of frame or space or field within which there can be epiphany." See also Talking of Michelangelo. Posted 6/21/2008 at 6:00 AM |
x Posted 6/20/2008 at 4:00 PM |
Drunkard's Walk In memory of Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst Brewster Yale Beach, who died on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 "A man walks down the street..." -- Paul Simon, Graceland album Related material: In the above screenshot of New York Times obituaries on the date of Brewster Beach's death, Tim Russert seems to be looking at the obituary of Air Force Academy chapel architect Walter Netsch. This suggests another chapel, more closely related to my own experience, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Some background... Walter Netsch in Oral History (pdf, 467 pp.): "I also had a book that inspired me-- this is 1947-- called Communitas by Percival and Paul Goodman. Percival Goodman was the architect, and Paul Goodman was the writer and leftist. And this came out of the University of Chicago-- part of the leftist bit of the University of Chicago.... Log24, Feb. 24, 2008: Chapel, Cuernavaca, Mexico "God As Trauma" by Brewster Yale Beach: "The problem of crucifixion is the beginning of individuation." "Si me de veras quieres, deja me en paz." -- Lucero Hernandez, Cuernavaca, 1962 A more impersonal approach to my own drunkard's walk (Cuernavaca, 1962, after reading the above words): Cognitive Blending and the Two Cultures An approach from the culture (more precisely, the alternate religion) of Scientism-- The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives-- is sketched in Today's Sermon: The Holy Trinity vs. The New York Times (Sunday, June 8, 2008). The Times illustrated its review of The Drunkard's Walk with facetious drawings by Jessica Hagy, who uses Venn diagrams to make cynical jokes. A less cynical use of a Venn diagram: "No se puede vivir sin amar." -- Malcolm Lowry, Posted 6/20/2008 at 9:00 AM |
Soul Theorem "The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany." -- James Joyce, Stephen Hero Above: Screenshot of today's New York Times obituary for mathematician Detlef Gromoll, known for the "soul theorem." Gromoll died on May 31 according to his son Hans Christian. From his obituary: "Detlef Gromoll was born in Berlin in 1938, and his childhood was disrupted by the falling bombs of World War II." Related material: The discussion here on June 1 of a lottery number from the date of Gromoll's death, childhood, mathematics, and prewar Berlin. Posted 6/19/2008 at 3:14 AM |
What
I Loved, a novel by Siri Hustvedt (New York, Macmillan, 2003), contains a paragraph on the marriage of a fictional artist named Wechsler--
Page 67 -- "... Bill and Violet were married. The wedding was held in the Bowery loft on June 16th, the same day Joyce's Jewish Ulysses had wandered around Dublin. A few minutes before the exchange of vows, I noted that Violet's last name, Blom, was only an o away from Bloom, and that meaningless link led me to reflect on Bill's name, Wechsler, which carries the German root for change, changing, and making change. Blooming and changing, I thought." For Hustvedt's discussion of Wechsler's art-- sculptured cubes, which she calls "tightly orchestrated semantic bombs" (p. 169)-- see Log24, May 25, 2008. Related material:
Wechsler cubes
(after David Wechsler, 1896-1981, chief psychologist at Bellevue) These cubes are used to make 3x3 patterns for psychological testing. Related 3x3 patterns appear
Such designs become of mathematical interest when their size is increased slightly, from square arrays of nine blocks to square arrays of sixteen. See Block Designs in Art and Mathematics. (This entry was suggested by examples of 4x4 Identicons in use at Secret Blogging Seminar.) Posted 6/18/2008 at 3:00 PM |
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Nightmare Alley "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." -- Ulysses
When in Rome...
In memory of special effects wizard Stan Winston, who died Sunday at 62: "The energetic Winston was always looking to the next project." -- Today's LA Times, story by Dennis McLellan Posted 6/17/2008 at 7:01 AM |
Bloomsday for Nash: The Revelation Game (American Mathematical Society Feb. 2008 review of Steven Brams’s Superior Beings: If They Exist, How Would We Know?) (pdf, 15 megabytes) "Brams does not attempt to prove or disprove God. He uses elementary ideas from game theory to create situations between a Person (P) and God (Supreme Being, SB) and discusses how each reacts to the other in these model scenarios.... In the 'Revelation Game,' for example, the Person (P) has two options: 1) P can believe in SB's existence 2) P can not believe in SB's existence The Supreme Being also has two options: 1) SB can reveal Himself 2) SB can not reveal Himself Each player also has a primary and secondary goal. For the Person, the primary goal is to have his belief (or non-belief) confirmed by evidence (or lack thereof). The secondary goal is to 'prefer to believe in SB’s existence.' For the Supreme Being, the primary goal is to have P believe in His existence, while the secondary goal is to not reveal Himself. These goals allow us to rank all the outcomes for each player from best (4) to worst (1). We end up with a matrix as follows (the first number in the parentheses represents the SB's ranking for that box; the second number represents P's ranking): The question we must answer is: what is the Nash equilibrium in this case?" Analogously:
The holy image denoting belief and revelation
Posted 6/16/2008 at 9:00 PM |
"I need a photo-opportunity, I want a shot at redemption. Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard." -- Paul Simon Posted 6/15/2008 at 7:01 AM |
A Cartoon Graveyard Click to enlarge. From Fathers' Day Meditation: For further details, click on the well. Posted 6/15/2008 at 7:00 AM |
Cross and Wheel An online tribute to Tim Russert this morning had a song by a Russert favorite, Bruce Springsteen: Related material: Hard Lessons and the five Log24 entries ending on July 20, 2006, which contain the following example of what might be caled "sacred order" (see yesterday's entries)-- See also "Grave Matters" here on November 8, 2006, and the same date four years earlier, as well as "O Grave, Where Is Thy Victory?" (pdf), a lecture by Jack Miles at Clark Art Institute (see Oct. 7-9, 2002) on November 9, 2002. The Miles lecture may be of more comfort to Russert's mourners than the cross/wheel symbolism, which has its dark side. The cross, the wheel, the Catholic faith, and Russert's field of expertise, politics, are of course notably combined in the crux gammata, discussed here in a 2002 entry on the Triumph of the Cross and the Death of Grace (Princess of Monaco). Posted 6/14/2008 at 11:09 AM |
A Real Book Edward Rothstein last Monday: "What is being said? What does it mean? Where does it come from and where else is it used?" A partial answer: today's previous entry, "For Philip Rieff," and an midrash on the word "Pahuk" (as in "Pahuk Pride," the name of this week's Boy Scout gathering in Iowa at which a tornado killed four) -- Click on image for further details. Rieff was the author of Sacred Order/Social Order, Volume 1-- My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority (University of Virginia Press, 2006) Rieff's concept of sacred order was Jewish rather than Pawnee, but his writings still seem relevant. Posted 6/13/2008 at 7:20 AM |
In Lieu of Stained Glass "Examples are the stained- glass windows of knowledge." -- Vladimir Nabokov, quoted here last Monday in "Interpret This" Illustration by Jessica Hagy from "Today's Sermon" last Sunday: Application Form for the Worst Camping Trip Ever: (Click here for original pdf.) PAHUK PRIDE - 2008 YOUTH LEADERSHIP TRAINING CONFERENCE MID-AMERICA COUNCIL - LITTLE SIOUX SCOUT RANCH PARTICIPANT REGISTRATION -------------------------------------- THANK YOU FOR PRINTING ALL INFORMATION LEGIBLY!! * Former husband of Susan Sontag Posted 6/13/2008 at 6:11 AM |
Scary Stories for the staff of The New York Times: Eyewitness accounts of Scout Camp tornado that killed four (continued from Today's Sermon, Sunday, June 8) Related material: Log24 entry of one year ago today -- On Framing Science -- Frame this. See also the four previous entries. Posted 6/12/2008 at 10:31 AM |
Feel lucky? "The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions." -- Claude Lévi-Strauss (The Raw and the Cooked, 1964, English translation 1969 -- paperback, U. of Chicago Press, 1983, "Overture," p. 7) Context of the question: A Venn diagram -- shown here last Sunday -- by the illustrator of last Sunday's New York Times review of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives Well, do you? Related material: 6/10 (San Francisco's new Contemporary Jewish Museum as a vision of Hell) 9/28 (A less theological, more personal, discussion of Venn diagrams) Posted 6/12/2008 at 1:06 AM |
x Posted 6/12/2008 at 1:01 AM |
Indiana Jones and the Worst Camping Trip Ever Part I: "Today's Sermon" from last Sunday -- The Holy Trinity vs. The New York Times --
Part II: Today's previous entries Part III: Susan Sontag, Notes on "Camp" Posted 6/11/2008 at 8:00 PM |
The Goddess vs. the Alphabet in today's New York Times: (continued from Einstein's birthday, 2003) Links from the above image: The Painter and Letters Posted 6/11/2008 at 6:01 PM |
Indiana Jones and the Amazon Delivery Click on images for details. Related material: From the Grave, Indiana Jones and the Diadem of Death, and MoMA Goes to Kindergarten Posted 6/11/2008 at 4:01 PM |
Return to Paradise Edward Rothstein's review in yesterday's New York Times-- seems to me more a description of Hell. My own concept of paradise is closer to the Gary Cooper film "Return to Paradise," which impressed me greatly when I saw it on TV when I was in 10th grade. A related vision: two frames from the Jodie Foster film "Contact"-- See Storyline and Time Fold. See also another Michener-based production, the current Lincoln Center "South Pacific." "Who can explain it, who can tell you why?" Posted 6/10/2008 at 5:31 AM |
Lying Rhymes Readers of the previous entry who wish to practice their pardes may contemplate the following: The evening 563 may, as in other recent entries, be interpreted as a page number in Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics, 1995). From that page: "He brings out the mandala he found. 'What's it mean?' [....] Slothrop gives him the mandala. He hopes it will work like the mantra that Enzian told him once, mba-kayere (I am passed over), mba-kayere... a spell [...]. A mezuzah. Safe passage through a bad night...." This 1495 image is found in The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought, by B. J. T. Dobbs, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 85 Related mandalas: and For further details, click on any of the three mandalas above. "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Thomas Pynchon, quoted here on 9/13, 2007 (As for today's New York Lottery midday number 007, see (for instance) Edward Rothstein in today's New York Times on paradise, and also Tom Stoppard on heaven as "just a lying rhyme" for seven.) Time of entry: 10:20:55 PM Posted 6/9/2008 at 10:20 PM |
Interpret This "With respect, you only interpret." "Countries have gone to war after misinterpreting one another." -- The Interpreter "Once upon a time (say, for Dante), it must have been a revolutionary and creative move to design works of art so that they might be experienced on several levels." -- Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation" Edward Rothstein in today's New York Times review of San Francisco's new Contemporary Jewish Museum: "An introductory wall panel tells us that in the Jewish mystical tradition the four letters [in Hebrew] of pardes each stand for a level of biblical interpretation: very roughly, the literal, the allusive, the allegorical and the hidden. Pardes, we are told, became the museum’s symbol because it reflected the museum’s intention to cultivate different levels of interpretation: 'to create an environment for exploring multiple perspectives, encouraging open-mindedness' and 'acknowledging diverse backgrounds.' Pardes is treated as a form of mystical multiculturalism. But even the most elaborate interpretations of a text or tradition require more rigor and must begin with the literal. What is being said? What does it mean? Where does it come from and where else is it used? Yet those are the types of questions-- fundamental ones-- that are not being asked or examined [...].
How can multiple perspectives and open-mindedness and diverse
backgrounds be celebrated without a grounding in knowledge, without
history, detail, object and belief?" "It's the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it." -- Gravity's Rainbow "Examples are the stained- glass windows of knowledge." -- Vladimir Nabokov Click on image to enlarge. Posted 6/9/2008 at 12:00 PM |
The System Pennsylvania Lottery Sunday, June 8, 2008: Mid-day 638 Evening 913 Midrash: 638 -- "It's the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it." -- Gravity's Rainbow, page 638 913 -- "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Thomas Pynchon, quoted here on 9/13, 2007 Posted 6/8/2008 at 7:35 PM |
The Holy Trinity vs. The New York Times From the illustrator of today's NY Times review of The Drunkard's Walk --
The book under review-- The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by the author of Euclid's Window-- is, appropriately, published by Random House: Click image for related material. Posted 6/8/2008 at 10:00 AM |
Part I: Part II: 16
Posted 6/8/2008 at 2:02 AM |
The Dance "At the still point, there the dance is." -- T. S. Eliot, quoted here in the entry of 2:45 AM Friday In memory of Eugenio Montejo, Venezuelan poet who died at around midnight on Thursday night: From an obituary: Montejo's work "reached a wider audience thanks to the
2003 film '21 Grams' by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
In one scene, Sean Penn's character quoted a line from a 1988 poem by Montejo. It reads: 'The earth turned to bring us closer. It turned on itself and in us, until it finally brought us together in this dream.'" Related material:A link in the entry of 2:45 AM Friday to "The Cha-Cha-Cha Theory of Scientific Discovery" and a news story from the Cannes Film Festival dated May 18, 2007, that features Inarritu: "Filmmakers form cha cha cha" Posted 6/7/2008 at 2:45 AM |
Order and Disorder Midrash: The Dance of Chance Associated Press "Today in History" Thought for Today: "Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder." -- Paul Valery, French poet (1871-1945). [La Crise de l'Esprit] Also from Valéry: «Notre esprit est fait d'un désordre, plus un besoin de mettre en ordre.» (Mauvaises Pensées et Autres) «L’ordre pèse toujours à l’individu. Le désordre lui fait désirer la police ou la mort. Ce sont deux circonstances extrêmes où la nature humaine n’est pas à l’aise. L’individu recherche une époque tout agréable, où il soit le plus libre et le plus aidé. Il la trouve vers le commencement de la fin d’un système social. Alors, entre l’ordre et le désordre, règne un moment délicieux. Tout le bien possible que procure l’arrangement des pouvoirs et des devoirs étant acquis, c’est maintenant que l’on peut jouir des premiers relâchements de ce système. Les institutions tiennent encore. Elles sont grandes et imposantes. Mais sans que rien de visible soit altéré en elles, elles n’ont guère plus que cette belle présence; leurs vertus se sont toutes produites; leur avenir est secrètement épuisé; leur caractère n’est plus sacré, ou bien il n’est plus que sacré; la critique et le mépris les exténuent et les vident de toute valeur prochaine. Le corps social perd doucement son lendemain. C’est l’heure de la jouissance et de la consommation générale.» -- Paul Valéry, Préface aux Lettres Persanes (1926), recueillie dans Variété, II, 1930 Posted 6/6/2008 at 1:00 PM |
The Dance of Chance
"Harvard seniors have every right to demand a Harvard-calibre speaker." -- Adam Goldenberg in The Harvard Crimson "Look down now, Cotton Mather" -- Wallace Stevens, Harvard College Class of 1901 For Thursday, June 5, 2008, commencement day for Harvard's Class of 2008, here are the Pennsylvania Lottery numbers: Mid-day 025 Evening 761 Thanks to the late Harvard professor Willard Van Orman Quine, the mid-day number 025 suggests the name "Isaac Newton." (For the logic of this suggestion, see On Linguistic Creation and Raiders of the Lost Matrix.) Thanks to Google search, the name of Newton, combined with Thursday's evening number 761, suggests the following essay:
What can a non-scientist add? Perhaps the Log24 entries for the date of Koshland's death: The Philosopher's Stone and The Rock. Or perhaps the following observations: On the figure of 25 parts discussed in "On Linguistic Creation"-- "The Moslems thought of the central 1 as being symbolic of the unity of Allah. " -- Clifford Pickover "At the still point, there the dance is." -- T. S. Eliot, Harvard College Class of 1910 Posted 6/6/2008 at 2:45 AM |
Faith, Doubt, Art and The New Yorker On Faith: "God is the original conspiracy theory.... Among the varieties of Christian monotheism, none is more totalitarian, none lodges more radical claims for God's omnipotence, than Calvinism-- and within America, the chief analogue of Calvinist theology, Puritanism. According to Calvin every particle of dust, every act, every thought, every creature is governed by the will of God, and yields clues to the divine plan." -- Scott Sanders, "Pynchon's Paranoid History" On Doubt: "a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders beyond the visible, also known as paranoia" -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics, 1995), p. 188 On Art: The current annual fiction issue of The New Yorker has a section of apparently non-fictional memoirs titled "Faith and Doubt." I suggest that faith and doubt are best reconciled by art-- as in A Contrapuntal Theme and in the magazine's current online podcast of Mary Gaitskill reading a 1948 New Yorker story by Vladimir Nabokov. For the text of the story, see "Signs and Symbols." For an excellent discussion of Nabokov's art, see "The Signs and Symbols in Nabokov's 'Signs and Symbols,'" by Alexander Dolinin. Posted 6/3/2008 at 4:23 AM |
The conclusion of yesterday's commentary on the May 30-31 Pennsylvania Lottery numbers: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow: "The fear balloons again inside his brain. It will not be kept down with a simple Fuck You.... A smell, a forbidden room, at the bottom edge of his memory. He can't see it, can't make it out. Doesn't want to. It is allied with the Worst Thing.What are we to make of this enigmatic 286? (No fair peeking at page 287.) One possible meaning, given The Archivist's claim that "existence is infinitely cross-referenced"-- Page 286 of Ernest G. Schachtel, Metamorphosis: On the Conflict of Human Development and the Psychology of Creativity (first published in 1959), Hillsdale NJ and London, The Analytic Press, 2001 (chapter-- "On Memory and Childhood Amnesia"): "Both Freud and Proust speak of the autobiographical [my italics] memory, and it is only with regard to this memory that the striking phenomenon of childhood amnesia and the less obvious difficulty of recovering any past experience may be observed."The concluding "summer afternoon of lilacs and bees" suggests that 286 may also be a chance allusion to the golden afternoon of Disney's Alice in Wonderland. (Cf. St. Sarah's Day, 2008) Some may find the Disney afternoon charming; others may see it as yet another of Paul Simon's dreaded cartoon graveyards. More tastefully, there is poem 286 in the 1919 Oxford Book of English Verse-- "Love." For a midrash on this poem, see Simone Weil, who became acquainted with the poem by chance: "I always prefer saying chance rather than Providence." -- Simone Weil, letter of about May 15, 1942 Weil's brother André might prefer Providence (source of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society.) Related material: Log24, December 20, 2003-- White, Geometric, and Eternal-- A description in Gravity's Rainbow of prewar Berlin as "white and geometric" suggested, in combination with a reference elsewhere to "the eternal," a citation of the following illustration of the concept "white, geometric, and eternal"-- For more on the mathematical significance of this figure, see (for instance) Happy Birthday, Hassler Whitney, and Combinatorics of Coxeter Groups, by Anders Björner and Francesco Brenti, Graduate Texts in Mathematics, vol. 231, Springer, New York, 2005. This book is reviewed in the current issue (July 2008) of the above-mentioned Providence Bulletin. The review in the Bulletin discusses reflection groups in continuous spaces. For a more elementary approach, see Reflection Groups in Finite Geometry and Knight Moves: The Relativity Theory of Kindergarten Blocks. Posted 6/1/2008 at 2:14 PM |