Again with the...
at The New York Times. For previous notes on allure at the Times, see St. Luke's Day, 2008, and its links. Teaser at the top of this afternoon's Times's online front page: "Vampires Never Die: In our fast-paced society, eternity has a special allure." (With fanged illustration)-- Yesterday's afternoon entry was related to both the July 13th death of avant-garde artist Dash Snow and the beauty of Suzanne Vega. A reference to Vega's album "Beauty & Crime" apppeared here on the date of Snow's death. (See "Terrible End for an Enfant Terrible," NY Times, story dated July 24.) The Vega entry yesterday was, in part, a reference to that context. In view of today's Times teaser, the large picture of Vega shown here yesterday (a detail of the above cover) seems less an image of pure beauty than of, well, a lure... specifically, a vampire lure: What healthy vampire could resist that neck? To me, the key words in the Times teaser are "allure" (discussed above) and "eternity." For both allure and eternity in the same picture (with interpretive symbols added above) see this journal on January 31, 2008: This image from "Black Narcissus" casts Jean Simmons as Allure and Deborah Kerr, in a pretty contrast, as Eternity. For different approaches to these concepts, see Simmons and Kerr in other films, notably those co-starring Burt Lancaster. Lancaster seems to have had a pretty good grasp of Allure in his films with Simmons and Kerr. For Eternity, see "Rocket Gibraltar" and "Field of Dreams." For less heterosexual approaches to these concepts, see the continuing culture coverage of the Times-- for instance, the vampire essay above and the Times's remarks Monday on choreographer Merce Cunningham-- who always reminded me of Carmen Ghia in "The Producers"-- Related material: "Dance of the Vampires" in "At the Still Point" (this journal, 1/16/03). Posted 7/31/2009 at 4:09 PM |
The Discreet Charm of Suzanne Vega
"In the room the women come and go" -- Stephen King, The Shining: "The Wasps' Nest" Posted 7/30/2009 at 4:23 PM |
Academy Awards for Cambridge "First of all, I'd like to thank the Academy." -- Remark attributed to Plato "A poem cannot exhaust reality, but it can arrest it." -- At War with the Word: Literary Theory and Liberal Education, by R. V. Young, Chapter One For one such poem, see "Life and Death United: An Intimate Portrait of a Man Named Miles Davis," from a seminar's weblog at DePauw University on Sunday, November 21, 2004. See also the four Log24 entries on that date as well as yesterday's entry on Davis and the entries preceding it. Posted 7/30/2009 at 9:00 AM |
Lydian Mode In memory of composer George Russell, who died at 86 on Monday -- Russell's thoughts on the Lydian mode strongly influenced Miles Davis, notably in Davis's "Kind of Blue." "The power of the Lydian mode, Russell realized, is freedom from time's restraints. The major scale is in a state of becoming. The Lydian scale already is." -- The Gravity Man, by Alice Dragoon, quoted at LydianChromaticConcept.com Related material: "Field Dance," from the date of Russell's death. "The Tables of Time," from Nov. 13, 2003, and the four entries that preceded it. Today's previous entry and The Reversible Diamond Puzzle (from St. Nicholas, November 1874)-- Posted 7/29/2009 at 9:29 PM |
Kaleideion Related material: "A great deal has been made of the fact that Forbidden Planet is essentially William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) in an science-fiction setting. It is this that transforms Forbidden Planet into far more than a mere pulp science-fiction story" -- Richard Scheib Dialogue from Forbidden Planet -- "... Which makes it a gilt-edged priority that one of us gets into that Krell lab and takes that brain boost." Dialogue from another story -- "They thought they were doing a linear magnification, sort of putting me through a magnifying glass." "Sizewise?" "Brainwise, but what they did was multiply me by myself into a quadratic." -- Psychoshop, by Bester and Zelazny, 1998 paperback, p. 7 "... which would produce a special being-- by means of that 'cloned quadratic crap.' [P. 75] The proper term sounds something like 'Kaleideion'...." "So Adam is a Kaleideion?" She shook her head. "Not a Kaleideion. The Kaleideion...." -- Psychoshop, 1998 paperback, p. 85 See also
"When life itself seems lunatic, Joyce's Nightmare Continues. Posted 7/29/2009 at 12:21 PM |
US-China ties will shape 21st century: ObamaA headline from 2003, with an epiphany from twenty years ago: The Tables of Time In related news: Posted 7/28/2009 at 1:06 PM |
Monumental Anniversary The Associated Press this morning -- "Today's Highlight in History: On July 28, 1609, the English ship Sea Venture, commanded by Admiral Sir George Somers, ran ashore on Bermuda after nearly foundering at sea during a storm." "... the Sea Venture story is two tales in one. There's the hurricane at sea, and then there is the Bermuda wreck becoming an inspiration for 'The Tempest.' The first is one of the most dramatic adventures of the era, and the second is a fascinating detective story." Robert Sean Brazil, scholar -- "It has been a commonplace in English literary criticism that Shakespeare’s play, 'The Tempest,' was modeled on these accounts.... However, this common wisdom is almost certainly a falsity. A monumental error." Related material: Plot summary by "Anonymous" at imdb.com of a feminist film version of "The Tempest" (now in post-production): "In Julie Taymor's version of 'The Tempest,' the gender of Prospero has been switched to Prospera. Going back to the 16th or 17th century, women practicing the magical arts of alchemy were often convicted of witchcraft." Taymor's "Tempest" stars, as Prospera, the famed portrayer of monarchs Helen Mirren. Another work dealing with alchemy suitable for Mirren (who is also known as Detective Inspector Jane Tennison): The Eight, by Katherine Neville, is perhaps the greatest bad novel of the twentieth century. If it were made into a movie, who should be cast as the Black Queen? ("...the dignified silver-haired woman danced sinuously..." -- p. 241) Posted 7/28/2009 at 6:00 AM |
Field Dance The New York Times on June 17, 2007: Design Meets Dance, and Rules Are Broken Yesterday's evening entry was on the fictional sins of a fictional mathematician and also (via a link to St. Augustine's Day, 2006), on the geometry of the I Ching* -- The eternal combined with the temporal: The fictional mathematician's name, noted here (with the Augustine- I Ching link as a gloss) in yesterday's evening entry, was Summerfield. From the above Times article-- "Summerspace," a work by choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Robert Rauschenberg that offers a competing vision of summer: Cunningham died last night. From left, composer John Cage, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and artist Robert Rauschenberg in the 1960's "When shall we three meet again?" * Update of ca. 5:30 PM 7/27-- today's online New York Times (with added links)-- "The I Ching is the 'Book of Changes,' and Mr. Cunningham's choreography became an expression of the nature of change itself. He presented successive images without narrative sequence or psychological causation, and the audience was allowed to watch dance as one might watch successive events in a landscape or on a street corner." Posted 7/27/2009 at 2:29 PM |
Happy Birthday, Inspector Tennison (See entries of November 13, 2006) Related material for Prospera:
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"Much Bing, High Bing" -- Wallace Stevens, quoted here on the date of Dash Snow's death Above collage: Awake and Shing "What a swell party this is." -- Cole Porter Posted 7/26/2009 at 4:23 AM |
Icon "Unsheathe your dagger definitions." -- James Joyce, Ulysses The entry of 12:06 PM Thursday, July 23, contained a link to the journal Red Kite Prayer. The "red kite" is the red flag posted near the end of the Tour de France. Thanks for a definition are due to the journal Flahute. A quotation from that journal: "There's only one shot that's in harmony with the field. The home of your authentic swing. That flag... and all that you are." -- The Legend of Bagger Vance See also yesterday's Log24 post. Posted 7/25/2009 at 11:07 AM |
Word Problem "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 Quoted here Monday: Tom Wolfe on the moon landing forty years ago: "What NASA needs now "It don't mean a thing Background: Happy birthday, Posted 7/24/2009 at 6:23 PM |
On Chris Hipp, who died of an apparent heart attack at 47 on July 14 (Bastille Day), 2009: Epitaph by a friend: "He was known as a determined, fearsome and fair competitor."Hipp's motto was "pounding idiots."* From a website celebrating the life and family (cf. previous two entries) of Leonard Shlain, author of Art & Physics and pioneering surgeon: "Shlain n: unique last name of Russian origins. Possible meanings: 1: Sound sword makes as it’s pulled from sheath" --Shlain.com A more authentic sound: "The blade actually does sing. When it is withdrawn from the sheath it makes a 'Tshuiiing' sound as one hears in the movies. It rings like a bell." Steel Addiction, Custom Knives A less authentic sound: * The residents of Id (as in the above cartoon) are known, affectionately, as Idiots. Posted 7/23/2009 at 12:06 PM |
A Tangled Tale Proposed task for a quantum computer: "Using Twistor Theory to determine the plotline of Bob Dylan's 'Tangled up in Blue'" One approach to a solution: "In this scheme the structure of spacetime is intrinsically quantum mechanical.... We shall demonstrate that the breaking of symmetry in a QST [quantum space-time] is intimately linked to the notion of quantum entanglement." -- "Theory of Quantum Space-Time," by Dorje C. Brody and Lane P. Hughston, Royal Society of London Proceedings Series A, Vol. 461, Issue 2061, August 2005, pp. 2679-2699 (See also The Klein Correspondence, Penrose Space-Time, and a Finite Model.) For some less technical examples of broken symmetries, see yesterday's entry, "Alphabet vs. Goddess." That entry displays a painting in 16 parts by Kimberly Brooks (daughter of Leonard Shlain-- author of The Alphabet Versus the Goddess-- and wife of comedian Albert Brooks (real name: Albert Einstein)). Kimberly Brooks is shown below with another of her paintings, titled "Blue." Click image to enlarge. "She was workin' in a topless placeFurther entanglement with blue: The website of the Los Angeles Police Department, designed by Kimberly Brooks's firm, Lightray Productions. Further entanglement with shoelaces: "Entanglement can be transmitted through chains of cause and effect-- and if you speak, and another hears, that too is cause and effect. When you say 'My shoelaces are untied' over a cellphone, you're sharing your entanglement with your shoelaces with a friend." -- "What is Evidence?," by Eliezer Yudkowsky Posted 7/23/2009 at 5:01 AM |
Alphabet vs. Goddess Continued... ... from June 11, 2008. "Just as both tragedy and comedy can be written by using the same letters of the alphabet, the vast variety of events in this world can be realized by the same atoms through their different arrangements and movements. Geometry and kinematics, which were made possible by the void, proved to be still more important in some way than pure being." Werner, Kimberly; Kimberly, Werner. Happy Feast of St. Mary Magdalene. Posted 7/22/2009 at 9:48 AM |
Today's Readings:
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The First Post in this weblog: The Diamond Theorem Related material: From Sunday's New York Times, Tom Wolfe on the moon landing forty years ago: Commentary
The Word according to St. John: Posted 7/20/2009 at 7:00 PM |
Blaise Pascal: "L’unité jointe à l’infini ne l’augmente de rien, non plus qu’un pied à une mesure infinie. Le fini s’anéantit en présence de l’infini, et devient un pur néant.... Nous connaissons qu’il y a un infini, et ignorons sa nature. Comme nous savons qu’il est faux que les nombres soient finis, donc il est vrai qu’il y a un infini en nombre. Mais nous ne savons ce qu’il est: il est faux qu’il soit pair, il est faux qu’il soit impair; car, en ajoutant 1 unité, il ne change point de nature; cependant c’est un nombre, et tout nombre est pair ou impair (il est vrai que cela s’entend de tout nombre fini). Ainsi...." "Unity joined to infinity adds nothing to it, no more than one foot to an infinite measure. The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing.... -- Pensées (trans. W. F. Trotter), Courier Dover Publications, 2003 "Le fini s’anéantit en présence de l’infini, et devient un pur néant...." Un Pur Néant: "So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil's Bible. Turning to Genesis I read: 'In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.'" -- Jim Holt, Big-Bang Theology, Slate's "High Concept" department Illustration: Ainsi.... "In the Garden of Adding live Even and Odd...." -- E. L. Doctorow Illustration: Posted 7/19/2009 at 7:11 AM |
$1 Million Humanities Prize Goes to a Polish Philosopher -- NY Times, Nov. 5, 2003 (Cf. Log24 on that date. an entry titled "Legacy Codes.") "God Owes Us Nothing" -- Title of a 1995 book by the Polish philosopher, who died yesterday. The book's title may or may not be true-- or even meaningful-- but some may feel that we owe the dead philosopher a worthy opponent. The dead philosopher and his opponent: The Dead Philosopher: His Opponent: And that's the way it is. Posted 7/18/2009 at 7:00 AM |
Mother of Beauty continued from April 7, 2004 In memory of Julius Shulman, architectural photographer, who died last night: "And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light..." -- Four Quartets, quoted here November 22, 2004 Posted 7/16/2009 at 7:00 PM |
The White Itself David Ellerman has written that "The notion of a concrete universal occurred in Plato's Theory of Forms [Malcolm 1991]."A check shows that Malcolm indeed discussed this notion ("the Form as an Ideal Individual"), but not under the name "concrete universal." See Plato on the Self-Predication of Forms, by John Malcolm, Oxford U. Press, 1991. From the publisher's summary: "Malcolm.... shows that the middle dialogues do indeed take Forms to be both universals and paradigms.... He shows that Plato's concern to explain how the truths of mathematics can indeed be true played an important role in his postulation of the Form as an Ideal Individual."Ellerman also cites another discussion of Plato published by Oxford: For a literary context, see W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., "The Structure of the Concrete Universal," Ch. 6 in Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. Other uses of the phrase "concrete universal"-- Hegelian and/or theological-- seem rather distant from the concerns of Plato and Wimsatt, and are best left to debates between Marxists and Catholics. (My own sympathies are with the Catholics.) Two views of "the white itself" -- "So did God cause the big bang? Posted 7/16/2009 at 4:00 PM |
The Plot Thickens Thanks to David Lavery-- see previous entry-- the word for today is... "As the story develops, an element of magical realism enters the picture." -- Amazon review Related material: For background on magical realism, see the update to today's previous entry. See also A Year of Magical Thinking (June 6, 2009) and the entries of May 19-22, featuring Judy Davis in... (Cf. St. Brigid's Day, 2003) Posted 7/15/2009 at 11:09 AM |
DETAIL of obituaries page, New York Times, Monday morning:
Hurt yet? _________________ Update of 5:01 AM: Lavery Hits Literary Jackpot From the top right of this morning's online New York Times front page: Click on voodoo doll for further details. See also... 1. Monday's link to a Wallace Stevens poem, "Snow and Stars" 2. The conclusion of this morning's Times obituary for artist Dash Snow, which gives his daughter's name... "Secret." 3. David Lavery's excellent analysis of the classic Conrad Aiken story "Silent Snow, Secret Snow." Posted 7/15/2009 at 4:01 AM |
Herschel's Onion The Herschel Chronicle, by Constance A. Lubbock, Cambridge University Press, 1933, page 139: "Sir John Herschel has recorded that his father [astronomer William Herschel, 1738-1822], when observing at Datchet, 'when the waters were out round his garden, used to rub himself all over, face and hands &c., with a raw onion, to keep off the infection of the ague, which was then prevalent; however he caught it at last.'"Herschel and his onion appear in a large illustration on the cover of next Sunday's New York Times Book Review. A review, titled "Science and the Sublime," states that Herschel and his sister "spent endless hours at the enormous telescopes that Herschel constructed, rubbing raw onions to warm their hands....'"Clearly the anti-ague motive makes more sense. A quotation from the book under review, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science (published today, Bastille Day, 2009): "The emphasis of on [sic] secular, humanist (even atheist) body of knowledge... was particularly strong in revolutionary France."This, apparently, is the terror part. A related quotation from Publishers Weekly: "It's an engrossing portrait of scientists as passionate adventurers, boldly laying claim to the intellectual leadership of society. Illus. (July 14)" On its front page next Sunday, The New York Times Book Review boldly lays claim to intellectual leadership with the following opening sentence: "In this big two-hearted river of a book, the twin energies of scientific curiosity and poetic invention pulsate on every page." The sentence begins with an insult to Hemingway and ends with a cascade of vulgarized-science bullshit. Its author, Christopher Benfey, has done better, and should be ashamed. Posted 7/14/2009 at 6:29 PM |
For Galois on Bastille Day Elements of Finite Geometry Some fans of the alchemy in Katherine Neville's novel The Eight and in Dan Brown's novel Angels & Demons may enjoy the following analogy-- Note that the alchemical structure at left, suited more to narrative than to mathematics, nevertheless is mirrored within the pure mathematics at right. Related material on Galois and geometry:
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"Much bing, high bing" -- Wallace Stevens The above was, like the previous entry, suggested by this morning's monumentally tasteless NY Times obit page. The author of the "pleasantly discursive" remark has been called both "King of Geometry" and "King of Infinite Space." He lived in Toronto. Detail of this morning's Times (click for larger version) -- (Corcoran.com is the website of a New York City real estate firm. Today's Bing.com search image is a view of the city from Central Park.) "We keep coming back and coming back/To the real...." -- Wallace Stevens Posted 7/13/2009 at 9:00 AM |
and this morning's New York Times: (Click to enlarge.) Note the story on the July 11 death of boxer Arturo Gatti in Brazil, Connoisseurs of tasteless prose will appreciate the following: "Vega writes from a perspective of memory and maturity... applying a musical Brazilian wax to 'Pornographer's Dream'...." -- Review of Suzanne Vega's album "Beauty & Crime" by Don McLeese Posted 7/13/2009 at 7:00 AM |
In honor of William York Tindall (yesterday's entry): A Literary Symbol for Boyne Day Mary Karr was "an unfashionably bookish kid whose brain wattage was sapped by a consuming inner life others didn't seem to bear the burden of. I just seemed to have more frames per second than other kids." Click for animation. Karr is Catholic. Geneva is not. Related material: Calvinist Epiphany for St. Peter's Day Posted 7/12/2009 at 3:17 AM |
"Mercilessly Tasteful"
Related material: The Literary Symbol by William York Tindall (Columbia University Press, Epiphany 1955) Posted 7/11/2009 at 7:28 AM |
Related material: James Joyce on the Ineluctable Modality of the Visible and Paul Mariani, "The Limits of the Ineluctable." Posted 7/10/2009 at 10:15 AM |
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Light History Before the Screwing "Very impressive, Herr Tesla, but let's not forget the little man in the boat." Courtesy of Wired.com: 1895: Charles Proteus Steinmetz receives a patent for a "system of distribution by alternating currents." His engineering work makes it practical to build a widespread power grid for use in lighting and machinery alike. Posted 7/10/2009 at 7:59 AM |
In Memory of Leonard Shlain From Shlain's website, some news I had not heard before: Shlain died on May 11, 2009. Also from that site: "A celebration of Leonard’s life will be held on Friday, May 15th, at 1:00 PM at Sherith Israel Synagogue... San Francisco...." In his memory, here is a link from this journal on the date, May 15, of his memorial: Log24, Jan. 1-15, 2006. See also the tribute film "A Good Life," by Tiffany Shlain. Posted 7/10/2009 at 12:00 AM |
Mathematics and Poetry Click on the image for some background related to yesterday's The Aleph and its link to a 2003 entry, At Mt. Sinai.
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An Aleph for Pynchon Part I: A California Sixties version of Heaven's Gate: Aleph Sanctuary, by Mati Klarwein Part II: Log24 entries of April 29, 2009 (esp. the link to Anastasia Ashley) Part III: Inherent Vice, a novel by Thomas Pynchon to be published in August 2009 Posted 7/9/2009 at 12:00 AM |
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Review On June 25 in this journal--
Today's word (thanks to Michael Jackson)-- Tikkun
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Art and Faith Virginia Woolf, The Waves, Harvest Books paperback, 1950, pp. 248-249: "On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points; who whispers as he whispered to me that summer morning in the house where the corn comes up to the window, 'The willow grows on the turf by the river. The gardeners sweep with great brooms and the lady sits writing.' Thus he directed me to that which is beyond and outside our own predicament; to that which is symbolic, and thus perhaps permanent, if there is any permanence in our sleeping, eating, breathing, so animal, so spiritual and tumultuous lives." Up to the first semicolon, this is the Associated Press thought for today. Related aesthetic philosophy from The Washington Post: "Varnedoe's lectures were ultimately about faith, about his faith in the power of abstraction, and abstraction as a kind of anti-religious faith in itself, a church of American pragmatism that deals with the material stuff of experience in the history of art. To understand these lectures, which began promising an argument about how abstraction works and ended with an almost medieval allegory of how man confronts the void, one has to understand that Varnedoe views the history of abstraction as a pastor surveys the flock." Some Observant Fellow:
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Sermon 7/01 "He pointed at the football on his desk. 'There it is.'" -- Glory Road See also Hieron Grammaton and Epiphany 2007. Posted 7/5/2009 at 9:00 AM |
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Damnation Morning continued "The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." -- Blake "... the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt, as it were, at stopping time...." -- Kierkegaard
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte. -- Rubén Darío Related material: The deaths of Ernest Hemingway on the morning of Sunday, July 2, 1961, and of Alexis Arguello on the morning of Wednesday, July 1, 2009. See also philosophy professor Clancy Martin in the London Review of Books (issue dated July 9, 2009) on AA members as losers-- "the 'last men,' the nihilists, the hopeless ones." Posted 7/3/2009 at 6:00 AM |
Meditation on a joke by George Carlin, a passage by Kierkegaard, and the death on this date 12 years ago of actor James Stewart The Catholic Carlin: Catholic tableau"Thank you, Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people." --George Carlin on learning he had won the Mark Twain award. Twain's people were Protestant, Carlin's Catholic.The Protestant Kierkegaard: "... the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt, as it were, at stopping time.... (with Vivien Leigh representing the Church) of Salvation by Works -- Protestant tableau (with James Stewart as Protestant Pilgrim) of Salvation by Grace -- Click on either tableau for a (much) larger image. * Thanks to University Diaries for an entry on Clancy Martin, a philosophy professor in the "show me" state, and his experiences with AA. For a sample of Martin's style, see a piece he wrote on Fabergé Easter eggs. For other Easter egg material, see this journal and (via a link) The Harvard Crimson, Easter 2008. A valuable philosophical remark by Martin in a recent interview: "An unscrupulous jeweler will swap diamonds for cheaper ones when jewelry is dropped off to be sized or repaired, he said. Posted 7/2/2009 at 9:29 PM |
The Old Man and the Light In memory of Ernest Hemingway, who died on this date in 1961, a story in three parts: Fermata Leonard Baskin, detail of cover for Jung's Psyche and Symbol Detail from the story "Raven Steals the Light" Midrash: "To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that capacity for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be...." --Kierkegaard * For Hieron Grammaton, Parts I and II, see the five Log24 entries from 6:29 PM Tuesday, June 23, to 1:00 AM Sunday, June 28. Posted 7/2/2009 at 12:00 PM |
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Let Noon Be Fair The New York Times this noon: (Click for some context.) Doctorow's Epiphany Happy birthday, Leslie Caron. Posted 7/1/2009 at 12:00 PM |