x Posted 3/31/2009 at 10:00 PM |
Posted 3/31/2009 at 3:33 AM |
The Rest of the Picture Lenin at Smolny, c. 1925, by Isaak Israilevich Brodsky -- A copy of this picture, with orientation reversed, appears on the front and back covers of the MIT Press book The Parallax View. (See previous entry.) Posted 3/30/2009 at 6:06 PM |
The Rest of the Picture Lenin at Smolny, c. 1925, by Isaak Israilevich Brodsky -- A copy of this picture, with left and right reversed, appears on the front and back covers of the Feb. 2006 MIT Press book The Parallax View, by Slavoj Zizek. (See previous entry.) Posted 3/30/2009 at 6:06 PM |
Happy Birthday, Warren Beatty Viewpoint A: Blue -- Viewpoint B: Red --
"If you liked Badiou, you'll love 'Zizek!'." -- February 2009 entries Posted 3/30/2009 at 12:12 PM |
Getting All the Meaning In Webpage heading for the 2009 meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association: The mysterious symbols on the above map suggest the following reflections: From A Cure of the Mind: The Poetics of Wallace Stevens, by Theodore Sampson, published by Black Rose Books Ltd., 2000-- Page x: "... if what he calls 'the spirit's alchemicana' (CP [Collected Poems] 471) addresses itself to the irrational element in poetry, to what extent is such an element dominant in his theory and practice of poetry, and therefore in what way is Stevens' intricate verbal music dependent on his irrational use of language-- a 'pure rhetoric of a language without words?' (CP 374)?" Related material:
"... when novelists become Cubists; that is, when they see the possibilities of making a hieroglyph, a coherent symbol, an ideogram of the total work. A symbol comes into being when an artist sees that it is the only way to get all the meaning in." -- Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination Posted 3/29/2009 at 7:48 PM |
Auerbach, Purdy; Purdy, Auerbach The 4-day annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association concludes today. This year the the meeting is held at Harvard University. (Program-- pdf, 256 pp.) "But the spirit of rhetoric-- a spirit which classified subjects in genera and invested every subject with a specific form of style as one garment becoming it in virtue of its nature [i.e. lower classes with the farcical low-style, upper classes with the tragic, the historic and the sublime elevated-style]-- could not extend its dominion to them [the Bible writers] for the simple reason that their subject would not fit into any of the known genres." -- Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton edition of 1953, p. 45, as quoted at Wikipedia)
Steven H. Cullinane on Purdy, "Radical Emptiness," Friday, March 13th, 2009 -- "See you in the funny papers, Purdy." Posted 3/29/2009 at 11:00 AM |
The Rest of the Story Today's previous entry discussed the hermeneutics of the midday NY and PA lottery numbers. The rest of the story:
Interpretations of the evening numbers-- The PA evening number, 006, may be viewed as a followup to the PA midday 726 (or 7/26, the birthday of Kate Beckinsale and Carl Jung). Here 006 is the prestigious "00" number assigned to Beckinsale. Will: Do you like apples? Clark: Yeah. Will: Well, I got her number. How do you like them apples? -- "Good Will Hunting" The NY evening number, 091, may be viewed as a followup to the NY midday 378 (the number of pages in The Innermost Kernel by Suzanne Gieser, published by Springer, 2005)-- Page 91: The entire page is devoted to the title of the book's Part 3-- "The Copenhagen School and Psychology"-- The next page begins: "With the crisis of physics, interest in epistemological and psychological questions grew among many theoretical physicists. This interest was particularly marked in the circle around Niels Bohr." A particularly marked circle from March 15: The circle above is Posted 3/28/2009 at 11:07 PM |
The Dance of Chance Today's midday lotteries: NY 378 PA 726 Interpretation: The 378 pages of a book on Pauli and Jung, "The Innermost Kernel" The date, 7/26, of birth for Jung and for Kate Beckinsale, star of "Serendipity" See also today's previous entry and "Bright Star and Dark Lady" from 7/26, 2003. Posted 3/28/2009 at 3:28 PM |
In memory of film producer Steven Bach: "Time: the moving image of eternity." -- Plato Happy birthday, Reba McEntire Posted 3/28/2009 at 1:00 PM |
xxx
Posted 3/28/2009 at 12:41 PM |
The Child Trap See E! Online, March 18 -- Lindsay Lohan Remembers Parent Trap Mum See also For those who like such things, an excellent Marxist analysis of Watchmen from another fan: Whitson, Roger. "Panelling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of Alan Moore and William Blake." ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies Vol. 3 No. 2 (2007). Dept. of English, University of Florida. Whitson's subject, Alan Moore, is the author of the Watchmen graphic novel. Moore's style seems less suited to the Forth family pictured above than to Lindsay Lohan fans-- who may also enjoy another graphic novel by Moore, Lost Girls. More Lohan material related to her role in "Georgia Rule"-- Damnation Morning Continued (March 16). Further background: "The film realizes that if people actually fought crime, they’d most likely be crazy. Take The Comedian for an example. He fights crime, sure. He’s also a raging alcoholic." --"'Watchmen' a flawed masterpiece," by Ryan Michaels See also the following expanded version of a link from Sunday morning, March 22: Posted 3/24/2009 at 9:00 AM |
Logo Design Thanks to PicoCool for the link to... The "art history conversation" there is fatuous, but the site logo (above) is an excellent example of graphic design. Posted 3/23/2009 at 1:00 PM |
Funeral Services Held for Natasha Richardson E! Online today, 1 PM PDT: "Family and friends of Natasha Richardson said their final farewells to the late actress Sunday afternoon during a small, private funeral held near her Millbrook home in upstate New York.... Richardson died on Wednesday [March 18, 2009] at the age of 45 from a head injury she suffered [on Monday, March 16, 2009] while skiing in Canada. The funeral began after the family arrived in a police-escorted motorcade at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Lithgow, where Neeson and her sons are members...." For what it's worth... Background image Related images -- Midsummer Night in the Garden of Good and Evil. See also: "God as Trauma," Posted 3/22/2009 at 7:00 PM |
Posted 3/22/2009 at 10:31 AM |
The Storyteller "... we tell ourselves that the old-fashioned question 'Who is the protagonist?' is a meaningless one." -- -- Wayne C. Booth, p. 346 in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), as quoted by Paul Wake in "The Storyteller in Chance" "I argue that Sophocles did not intend to present either Antigone or Creon as the hero/heroine for his tragic play, as Hegel, Kierkegaard, and others stipulate. Rather, Sophocles presents the Chorus and the Watchman as the true heroic figures." --"A Burkean Reading of the Antigone: Comical and Choral Transcendence," by Rebecca McCarthy, Kaplan University Posted 3/22/2009 at 9:00 AM |
The Craft "Pope tells clergy in Angola to work against belief in witchcraft" -- Headline in tonight's online New York Times "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them." -- C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory Fantasy and Fugue and the same words as rendered by Bach and Schweitzer See also Yesterday's entries and Midsummer Night in the Garden of Good and Evil. Posted 3/22/2009 at 12:30 AM |
Mary Karr, "Facing Altars: Poetry and Prayer"-- "There is a body on the cross in my church." Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman in "The Interpreter." Click to enlarge. "My card."
-- Wayne C. Booth, p. 346 in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), as quoted by Paul Wake in "The Storyteller in Chance" Posted 3/21/2009 at 11:30 PM |
Counters in Rows "Music, mathematics, and chess are in vital respects dynamic acts of location. Symbolic counters are arranged in significant rows. Solutions, be they of a discord, of an algebraic equation, or of a positional impasse, are achieved by a regrouping, by a sequential reordering of individual units and unit-clusters (notes, integers, rooks or pawns)." -- George Steiner (See March 10, "Language Game.") Posted 3/21/2009 at 12:25 AM |
Happy Birthday, Holly Hunter Epigraph to The Glass Bead Game: Non entia enim licet quodammodo levibusque hominibus facilius atque incuriosius verbis reddere quam entia, veruntamen pio diligentique rerum scriptori plane aliter res se habet: nihil tantum repugnat ne verbis illustretur, at nihil adeo necesse est ante hominum oculos proponere ut certas quasdam res, quas esse neque demonstrari neque probari potest, quae contra eo ipso, quod pii diligentesque viri illas quasi ut entia tractant, enti nascendique facultati paululum appropinquant. -- ALBERTUS SECUNDUS tract. de cristall. spirit. ed. Clangor et Collof. lib. I, cap. 28. In Joseph Knecht's holograph translation:. For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born. Posted 3/20/2009 at 11:07 AM |
Two-Face [Note: Janus is Roman, not Greek, and the photo is from one "Fubar Obfusco"] Click on image for details. From January 8:
Context: Notes on Mathematics and Narrative (entries in chronological order, March 13 through 19) Posted 3/19/2009 at 11:07 AM |
An image from Quintessence: A Glass Bead Game by Charles Cameron -- Christ and the Four Elements 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 U. Press, 2002, p. 85 From Kernel of Eternity: From From "The Fifth Element" Happy birthday, Bruce Willis. Posted 3/19/2009 at 4:00 AM |
From a place where entertainment is God: Click to enlarge. From another place: Click logo for a story. "... a kind of cross." -- Gravity's Rainbow Posted 3/18/2009 at 8:28 PM |
Gallic Clarity Yesterday's entry Deep Structures discussed the "semiotic square," a device that exemplifies the saying "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, then baffle 'em with bullshit." A search today for what the Marxist critic Fredric Jameson might have meant by saying that the square "is capable of generating at least ten conceivable positions out of a rudimentary binary opposition" leads to two documents of interest. 1. "Theory Pictures as Trails: Diagrams and the Navigation of Theoretical Narratives" (pdf), by J.R. Osborn, Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego (Cognitive Science Online, Vol.3.2, pp.15-44, 2005) 2. "The Semiotic Square" (html), by Louis Hébert (2006), professor, Université du Québec à Rimouski, in Signo (http://www.signosemio.com). Shown below is Osborn's picture of the semiotic square: Osborn's discussion of the square, though more clear than, say, that of Rosalind Krauss (who reverses the bottom two parts of the square-- see Deep Structures), fails. His Appendix A is miserably obscure. On the brighter side, we have, as a sign that Gallic clarity still exists, the work of Hébert. Here is how he approaches Jameson's oft-quoted, but seemingly confused, remark about "ten conceivable positions"--
LEGEND: 2.1 CONSTITUENT ELEMENTSThe semiotic square entails primarily the following elements (we are steering clear of the constituent relationships of the square: contrariety, contradiction, and complementarity or implication): 1. terms 2.1.1 TERMSThe semiotic square is composed of four terms: Position 1 (term A) The first two terms form the opposition (the contrary relationship) that is the basis of the square, and the other two are obtained by negating each term of the opposition. 2.1.2 METATERMSThe semiotic square includes six metaterms. The metaterms are terms created from the four simple terms. Some of the metaterms have been named. (The complex term and the neutral term, despite their names, are indeed metaterms). Position 5 (term 1 + term 2): complex term These ten "positions" are apparently meant to explain Jameson's remark. Hébert's treatment has considerably greater entertainment value than Osborn's. Besides "the living dead" and angels, Hébert's examples and exercises include vampires, transvestites, the Passion of Christ, and the following very relevant quotation: "Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one." (Matthew 5:37) Posted 3/18/2009 at 9:00 AM |
Deep Structures The Square of Oppositon at Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy The Square of Opposition in its original form "The diagram above is from a ninth century manuscript of Apuleius' commentary on Aristotle's Perihermaneias, probably one of the oldest surviving pictures of the square." -- Edward Buckner at The Logic Museum From the webpage "Semiotics for Beginners: Paradigmatic Analysis," by Daniel Chandler: The Semiotic Square "The structuralist semiotician Algirdas Greimas introduced the semiotic square (which he adapted from the 'logical square' of scholastic philosophy) as a means of analysing paired concepts more fully (Greimas 1987,* xiv, 49). The semiotic square is intended to map the logical conjunctions and disjunctions relating key semantic features in a text. Fredric Jameson notes that 'the entire mechanism... is capable of generating at least ten conceivable positions out of a rudimentary binary opposition' (in Greimas 1987,* xiv). Whilst this suggests that the possibilities for signification in a semiotic system are richer than the either/or of binary logic, but that [sic] they are nevertheless subject to 'semiotic constraints' - 'deep structures' providing basic axes of signification." * Greimas, Algirdas (1987): On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory (trans. Paul J Perron & Frank H Collins). London: Frances Pinter Another version of the semiotic square: Krauss says that her figure "is, of course, a Klein Group." Here is a more explicit figure representing the Klein group: There is also the logical diamond of opposition -- A semiotic (as opposed to logical) diamond has been used to illustrate remarks by Fredric Jameson, a Marxist literary theorist:
"The Game in the Ship cannot be approached as a job, a vocation, a career, or a recreation. To the contrary, it is Life and Death itself at work there. In the Inner Game, we call the Game Dhum Welur, the Mind of God." -- The Gameplayers of Zan, by M.A. Foster "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow Crosses used by semioticians to baffle their opponents are illustrated above. Some other kinds of crosses, and another kind of opponent:
Posted 3/17/2009 at 11:07 AM |
Damnation Morning continued
"Through a Glass Darkly" "Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman's decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island. It is the first part of the trilogy that comprises Winter Light and The Silence, films which are generally seen as addressing Bergman's increasing disillusionment with the emotional coldness of his inherited Lutheran religion. In particular here, Bergman focuses on the absence of familial love which might perhaps have pulled Karin (Andersson) back from the brink; while Karin's mental disintegration manifests itself in the belief that God is a spider. As she slips inexorably into madness, she is observed with terrifying objectivity by her emotionally paralyzed father (Björnstrand) and seemingly helpless husband (von Sydow)." — Nigel Floyd, Time Out, quoted at Bergmanorama Related material: 1. The "spider" symbol of Fritz Leiber's short story "Damnation Morning"-- 3. The following diagram by one "John Opsopaus"-- Posted 3/16/2009 at 8:00 PM |
Damnation Morning continued
"Through a Glass Darkly" "Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman's decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island. It is the first part of the trilogy that comprises Winter Light and The Silence, films which are generally seen as addressing Bergman's increasing disillusionment with the emotional coldness of his inherited Lutheran religion. In particular here, Bergman focuses on the absence of familial love which might perhaps have pulled Karin (Andersson) back from the brink; while Karin's mental disintegration manifests itself in the belief that God is a spider. As she slips inexorably into madness, she is observed with terrifying objectivity by her emotionally paralyzed father (Björnstrand) and seemingly helpless husband (von Sydow)." -- Nigel Floyd, Time Out, quoted at Bergmanorama Related material: 1. The "spider" symbol of Fritz Leiber's short story "Damnation Morning"-- 3. The following diagram by one "John Opsopaus"-- Posted 3/16/2009 at 8:00 PM |
Plato's Ghost "Plato's Ghost evokes Yeats's lament that any claim to worldly perfection inevitably is proven wrong by the philosopher's ghost...." "First of all, I'd like-- Princeton University Press on Plato's Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics (by Jeremy Gray, September 2008) "She's a brick house..." -- Plato's Ghost according to Log24, April 2007 to thank the Academy." -- Remark attributed to Plato "Through a glass, darkly" (Cf. the "I tell you a mystery" link of March 11 in "Politics, Religion, Scarlett.") Posted 3/16/2009 at 12:00 PM |
(Cf. Sinatra's birthday, 2004) One for his baby: Ron Silver as Alan Dershowitz in "Reversal of Fortune" suggests the epigraph of The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus -- two stanzas from attorney Wallace Stevens quoted here yesterday afternoon. One more for the road: A link that appeared in a different form in Saturday's "Flowers for Barry"-- Speed the Plow. This leads to A Hanukkah Tale containing the following: This is, in turn, related to Harvard's Barry Mazur's recent essay on time in mathematics and literature (pdf). L'Chaim. Posted 3/16/2009 at 2:45 AM |
The Origin of Change A note on the figure from this morning's sermon: "Two things of opposite natures seem to depend Posted 3/15/2009 at 5:24 PM |
Angels, Demons, "Symbology" "On Monday morning, 9 March, after visiting the Mayor of Rome and the Municipal Council on the Capitoline Hill, the Holy Father spoke to the Romans who gathered in the square outside the Senatorial Palace.... '... a verse by Ovid, the great Latin poet, springs to mind. In one of his elegies he encouraged the Romans of his time with these words: "Perfer et obdura: multo graviora tulisti." "Hold out and persist: you have got through far more difficult situations." (Tristia, Liber V, Elegia XI, verse 7).'" Note the color-interchange symmetry of each symbol under 180-degree rotation. Related material: The Illuminati Diamond: Dan Brown's novel Angels & Demons introduced in the year 2000 the fictional academic discipline of "symbology" and a fictional Harvard professor of that discipline, Robert Langdon (named after ambigram* artist John Langdon). Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon A possible source for Brown's term "symbology" is a 1995 web page, "The Rotation of the Elements," by one "John Opsopaus." (Cf. Art History Club.) "The four qualities are the key to understanding the rotation of the elements and many other applications of the symbology of the four elements." --John Opsopaus* "...ambigrams were common in symbology...." --Angels & Demons Posted 3/15/2009 at 11:00 AM |
Flowers for Barry
Another version of Mazur's metaphor Time ↔ Distance: -- Steven H. Cullinane, October 8, 2003 For some context in comparative literature, see Time Fold (Oct. 10, 2003) and A Hanukkah Tale (Dec. 22, 2008). Related material: Rat Psychology yesterday. * American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) annual meeting, March 26-29, 2009, at Harvard. Mazur's talk is scheduled for March 28. Posted 3/14/2009 at 2:02 PM |
A Dante for Our Times "This could be Heaven or this could be Hell." -- "Hotel California" Heaven -- or -- Hell -- Apparently from the back cover of The Ninth Wave: "Fear + hate = power was Mike Freesmith's formula for success. He first tested it in high school when he seduced his English teacher and drove a harmless drunk to suicide. He used it on the woman who paid his way through college. He used it to put his candidate in the governor's chair, and to make himself the most ruthless, powerful kingmaker in American politics." Don't forget greed. See yesterday's Friday the 13th entries. Posted 3/14/2009 at 11:07 AM |
Rat Psychology Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard, home of the rat psychology of Skinner and Quine, today offered a lesson in behavioral economics. From a transcript of Summers's remarks (for a video, see the previous entry)-- "An abundance of greed and an absence of fear on Wall Street led some to make purchases - not based on the real value of assets, but on the faith that there would be another who would pay more for those assets. At the same time, the government turned a blind eye to these practices and their potential consequences for the economy as a whole. This is how a bubble is born. And in these moments, greed begets greed. The bubble grows.
Eventually, however, this process stops - and reverses. Prices fall. People sell. Instead of an expectation of new buyers, there is an expectation of new sellers. Greed gives way to fear. And this fear begets fear.
This is the paradox at the heart of the financial crisis. In the past few years, we've seen too much greed and too little fear; too much spending and not enough saving; too much borrowing and not enough worrying. Today, however, our problem is exactly the opposite.
It is this transition from an excess of greed to an excess of fear that President Roosevelt had in mind when he famously observed that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. It is this transition that has happened in the United States today." Related material Spatial Practice, "Voids, a Retrospective," Posted 3/13/2009 at 11:30 PM |
Twisterooni continued from March 26, 2006 "When did Wharton School take over?" -- Chris Matthews tonight on "Hardball" Good question. Related material from the Harvard school: Posted 3/13/2009 at 7:20 PM |
Radical Emptiness Tom Conoboy on James Purdy's novel Malcolm: "Life, Purdy is telling us, is meaningless. Existence is absurd. It consists of events and happenings, all unavoidable, all simultaneously significant and meaningless. They touch you, wound even, ultimately kill, yet somehow existence appears to obtain in a bubble outside of the self. As Thomas M. Lorch describes it, 'the novel portays humanity revolving about an abyss.'[1] What is real is not real, and what is not real becomes real. Malcolm describes himself as a 'cypher' and, in the end, his death affects no-one, least of all him. Yet, through this, Purdy presents us with the final, and greatest, paradox. In presenting us with nothingness, and in deliberately describing the action in such bland and emotionless language, Purdy actually creates a sense of loss: there is nothing to lose, he is telling us, and yet we feel the loss greatly. What he does is to create a world of genuine nihilism, where nobody communicates, nobody connects, so that we can, in negative, imagine what a world in harmony might be like." [1] Thomas M. Lorch, "Purdy's Malcolm: A Unique Vision of Radical Emptiness." Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer, 1965), p. 212. See you in the funny papers, Purdy. Posted 3/13/2009 at 12:15 PM |
Midnight in the Garden From 12:00 AM on last month's Friday the 13th: From the soundtrack CD of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"-- "Accentuate the positive." -- Clint Eastwood MODE online:
Posted 3/13/2009 at 12:00 AM |
Aesthetics of Matter, continued International Klein Blue Related material: Aspects of Symmetry, from the day that Scarlett Johansson turned 23, and...
Posted 3/12/2009 at 8:30 PM |
Found (sort of) in translation The Associated Press, "Today in History" March 11-- On this date... "In 1959, the Lorraine Hansberry drama 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater."
Posted 3/11/2009 at 7:00 PM |
Sein Feld in Translation (continued from May 15, 1998) The New York Times March 10-- "Paris | A Show About Nothing"-- The Times describes one of the empty rooms on exhibit as... "... Yves Klein’s 'La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée, Le Vide' ('The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State Into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, the Void')" This is a mistranslation. See "An Aesthetics of Matter" (pdf), by Kiyohiko Kitamura and Tomoyuki Kitamura, pp. 85-101 in International Yearbook of Aesthetics, Volume 6, 2002-- "The exhibition «La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière-première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée», better known as «Le Vide» (The Void) was held at the Gallery Iris Clert in Paris from April 28th till May 5th, 1955." --p. 94 "... «Sensibility in the state of prime matter»... filled the emptiness." --p. 95 Kitamura and Kitamura translate matière première correctly as "prime matter" (the prima materia of the scholastic philosophers) rather than "raw material." (The phrase in French can mean either.) Related material: The Diamond Archetype and The Illuminati Diamond. The link above to prima materia is to an 1876 review by Cardinal Manning of a work on philosophy by T. P. Kirkman, whose "schoolgirls problem" is closely related to the finite space of the diamond theorem. Posted 3/11/2009 at 9:00 AM |
Immortal Diamond continued: "That flower unseen, that gem of purest ray, Bright thoughts uncut by men: Strange that you need but speak them, Thomas Gray, And the mind skips and dives beyond its ken, Finding at once the wild supposed bloom, Or in the imagined cave Some pulse of crystal staving off the gloom As covertly as phosphorus in a grave." -- From "In a Churchyard," by Richard Wilbur "A metaphysical assertion of this kind is the idea of the 'diamond body,' the indestructible breath-body which develops in the Golden Flower, or in the square inch space." -- The Secret of the Golden Flower, by Richard Wilhelm, Carl Gustav Jung, and Hua-Yang Liu, second rev. ed., publ. by Routledge, 1999, pp. 130-131 For more about these concepts, see the work cited. Posted 3/10/2009 at 7:11 PM |
Language Game "Music, mathematics, and chess are in vital respects dynamic acts of location. Symbolic counters are arranged in significant rows. Solutions, be they of a discord, of an algebraic equation, or of a positional impasse, are achieved by a regrouping, by a sequential reordering of individual units and unit-clusters (notes, integers, rooks or pawns). The child-master, like his adult counterpart, is able to visualize in an instantaneous yet preternaturally confident way how the thing should look several moves hence. He sees the logical, the necessary harmonic and melodic argument as it arises out of an initial key relation or the preliminary fragments of a theme. He knows the order, the appropriate dimension, of the sum or geometric figure before he has performed the intervening steps. He announces mate in six because the victorious end position, the maximally efficient configuration of his pieces on the board, lies somehow 'out there' in graphic, inexplicably clear sight of his mind....""... in some autistic enchantment, pure as one of Bach's inverted canons or Euler's formula for polyhedra." -- George Steiner, "A Death of Kings," in The New Yorker, issue dated Sept. 7, 1968 Related material: "Classrooms are filled with discussions not of the Bible and Jesus but of 10 'core values'-- perseverance and curiosity, for instance-- that are woven into the curriculum." -- "Secular Education, Catholic Values," by Javier C. Hernandez, The New York Times, Sunday, March 8, 2009 "... There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn't solve it, like a lot of my problems. I reached down and moved a knight.... I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights." -- Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep The Chandler quotation appears in "Language Game," an entry in this journal on April 7, 2008. Some say the "Language Game" date, April 7, is the true date (fixed, permanent) of the Crucifixion-- by analogy, Eliot's "still point" and Jung's "centre." (See yesterday, noon.) Posted 3/10/2009 at 9:26 AM |
First and Last Things Next Sunday's New York Times Book Review arrived in today's mail. On the inside of the first page is a full-page ad for a course of 24 lectures on DVD's called "Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond." On the inside of the last page is "Our Steiner Problem-- and Mine," a full-page essay by Lee Siegel on polymath George Steiner. Related material:
"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings" -- Richard II, Act III, Scene ii Russell Crowe as game theorist John Nash in "A Beautiful Mind" Posted 3/9/2009 at 5:24 PM |
Humorism "Always with a little humor." -- Dr. Yen Lo From Temperament: A Brief Survey For other interpretations of the above shape, see The Illuminati Diamond. More psychological background, from Jung's Aion: "From the circle and quaternity motif is derived the symbol of the geometrically formed crystal and the wonder-working stone. From here analogy formation leads on to the city, castle, church, house, room, and vessel. Another variant is the wheel. The former motif emphasizes the ego’s containment in the greater dimension of the self; the latter emphasizes the rotation which also appears as a ritual circumambulation. Psychologically, it denotes concentration on and preoccupation with a centre...." --Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 9, Part II, paragraph 352 As for rotation, see the ambigrams in Dan Brown's Angels & Demons (to appear as a film May 15) and the following figures: Click on image for a related puzzle. For a solution, see The Diamond Theorem. A related note on "Angels & Demons" director Ron Howard: Click image for details. Posted 3/9/2009 at 12:00 PM |
Transit Authority In memory of Stanley Kubrick (overlooked in yesterday's memorial)
"'Wherever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense,' says the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town.'" -- Today's sermon from Frank Rich For more layers, see James A. Michener's The Source. Posted 3/8/2009 at 4:07 PM |
One or Two Ideas Today's birthday: Piet Mondrian
Besides being Mondrian's birthday, today is also the dies natalis (in the birth-into-heaven sense) of St. Thomas Aquinas and, for those who believe worthy pre-Christians also enter heaven, possibly of Aristotle. Pope Benedict XVI explained the dies natalis concept on Dec. 26, 2006: "For believers the day of death, and even more the day of martyrdom, is not the end of all; rather, it is the 'transit' towards immortal life. It is the day of definitive birth, in Latin, dies natalis."The Pope's remarks on that date were St. Peter's Square. From this journal on that date, a different square-- Pictorial version The square may be regarded as symbolizing art itself. (See Nov.30 - Dec.1, 2008.) In honor of Mondrian, here is a new web page illustrating the diamond shape made famous by Mondrian-- -- and symbolizing possibility within modal logic as well as the potentia of the alchemical prima materia. Posted 3/7/2009 at 12:00 PM |
One or Two Ideas
Besides being Mondrian's birthday, today is also the dies natalis (in the birth-into-heaven sense) of St. Thomas Aquinas and, for those who believe worthy pre-Christians also enter heaven, possibly of Aristotle. Pope Benedict XVI explained the dies natalis concept on Dec. 26, 2006: "For believers the day of death, and even more the day of martyrdom, is not the end of all; rather, it is the 'transit' towards immortal life. It is the day of definitive birth, in Latin, dies natalis." The Pope's remarks on that date were in St. Peter's Square. Pictorial version The square may be regarded as symbolizing art itself. (See Nov.30 - Dec.1, 2008.) In honor of Aristotle and Aquinas, here is a new web site, illuminati-diamond.com, with versions of the diamond shape made famous by Mondrian -- -- a shape symbolizing possibility within modal logic as well as the potentiality of Aristotle's prima materia. Posted 3/7/2009 at 12:00 PM |
The Illuminati Stone TV listing for this evening -- Family Channel, 7:30 PM: "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" In other entertainment news -- Scheduled to open May 15: "Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: 'Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind's eternal recreation'" (Faust, Part Two) -- Carl Gustav Jung Related material:
For more about this "prime matter" (prima materia) see The Diamond Archetype and Holy the Firm. Holmyard -- -- and Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption. Posted 3/6/2009 at 7:30 PM |
Here's hoping this president knows how to read the newspaper. Posted 3/5/2009 at 9:20 PM |
Posted 3/5/2009 at 7:20 PM |
Cover Art As religious fictions go, I prefer...
For more about the artist, see an entry at the weblog "Through the Wardrobe" on Aug. 18, 2008. Related material: previous entry. Posted 3/4/2009 at 10:07 PM |
The Straight Story Stanley Fish in Sunday's New York Times on "Redemption," by George Herbert: "... the final line provides an answer with a compact swiftness that is literally breathtaking: 'Who straight, "Your suit is granted," said, and died.' ('Straight' here means 'immediately and without detour' and describes the movement and pace of the line it introduces.)" "Selah." -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson "I'm a rolling stone from Texas" -- Theme song in "Secondhand Lions" (starring Robert Duvall, 2003) Foote was not associated with "Secondhand Lions" (which I saw for the first time last night) but has worked many times with Duvall. Posted 3/4/2009 at 5:24 PM |
Markoff Process "Treatment of Autistic Schizophrenic Children with LSD-25 and UML-491"--"So fearsome was Dr. Schwartz's early reputation as a mathematician that when John Forbes Nash Jr., the Nobel Prize winning mathematician and economist, learned that he was attempting to solve an extremely challenging mathematical problem.... he became agitated, apparently fearing Dr. Schwartz might beat him to a solution, said Sylvia Nasar, author of 'A Beautiful Mind,' a biography of Nash." New York Lottery-- New York Times obituary of Jacob T. Schwartz dated Tuesday, March 3, 2009 March 3, 2009: "His background in mathematical algorithms led Dr. Schwartz to develop an early programming language.... The language would later influence the designer of the Python programming language, widely used by programmers today." --NY Times "Autistic schizophrenic children present challenging and baffling problems in treatment.... Many of the children have been followed subsequently into later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.... Meanwhile, a new group of young autistic children are always available for new treatment endeavors as the new modes become available."* 1/16: "It’s all there, hiding behind the realistic side." --Andrew Wyeth Related material: The previous five entries. * by Lauretta Bender, M.D., Lothar Goldschmidt, M.D., and D.V. Siva Sankar, Ph.D., in Recent Advances in Biological Psychiatry, 1962, 4, 170-177. Posted 3/4/2009 at 9:00 AM |
Straight "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow This entry is continued from yesterday evening, from midnight last night, and from an entry of February 20 (the date four years ago of Hunter Thompson's death)-- "Emblematizing the Modern"--
"I played 'Deathmaster' straight.... The best villains are the ones who are both protagonist and antagonist." -- The late Robert Quarry "Selah." -- The late Hunter Thompson Yesterday afternoon's online New York Times: Today's online New York Times: Footnote Posted 3/3/2009 at 11:32 AM |
Midnight in the Garden continues Click poster for details. Click image for details. Related material: The three entries here on the date of Quarry's death: Emblematizing the Modern, A Kind of Cross, and The Cross of Constantine. Posted 3/3/2009 at 12:00 AM |
Straight From this journal's Sunday sermon: "Flowers's thoughts stray to Brown, with affectionate pity, as he drinks port and eats walnuts for the first time in Senior Combination Room." -- G. H. Hardy recounting the plot of A Fellow of Trinity
For Senior Combination Room as a den of thieves and murderers, see That Hideous Strength. Related material: "The Painted Word" G. H. Hardy died at 70 on December 1, 1947. That date is now observed as "Day Without Art." Click on image for further details. Posted 3/2/2009 at 7:00 PM |
Posted 3/2/2009 at 11:30 AM |
Solomon's Cube continued "There is a book... called A Fellow of Trinity, one of series dealing with what is supposed to be Cambridge college life.... There are two heroes, a primary hero called Flowers, who is almost wholly good, and a secondary hero, a much weaker vessel, called Brown. Flowers and Brown find many dangers in university life, but the worst is a gambling saloon in Chesterton run by the Misses Bellenden, two fascinating but extremely wicked young ladies. Flowers survives all these troubles, is Second Wrangler and Senior Classic, and succeeds automatically to a Fellowship (as I suppose he would have done then). Brown succumbs, ruins his parents, takes to drink, is saved from delirium tremens during a thunderstorm only by the prayers of the Junior Dean, has much difficulty in obtaining even an Ordinary Degree, and ultimately becomes a missionary. The friendship is not shattered by these unhappy events, and Flowers's thoughts stray to Brown, with affectionate pity, as he drinks port and eats walnuts for the first time in Senior Combination Room." -- G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology "The Solomon Key is the working title of an unreleased novel in progress by American author Dan Brown. The Solomon Key will be the third book involving the character of the Harvard professor Robert Langdon, of which the first two were Angels & Demons (2000) and The Da Vinci Code (2003)." --Wikipedia "One has O+(6) ≅ S8, the symmetric group of order 8! ...." -- "Siegel Modular Forms and Finite Symplectic Groups," by Francesco Dalla Piazza and Bert van Geemen, May 5, 2008, preprint. "The complete projective group of collineations and dualities of the [projective] 3-space is shown to be of order [in modern notation] 8! .... To every transformation of the 3-space there corresponds a transformation of the [projective] 5-space. In the 5-space, there are determined 8 sets of 7 points each, 'heptads' ...." -- George M. Conwell, "The 3-space PG(3, 2) and Its Group," The Annals of Mathematics, Second Series, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jan., 1910), pp. 60-76 "It must be remarked that these 8 heptads are the key to an elegant proof...." -- Philippe Cara, "RWPRI Geometries for the Alternating Group A8," in Finite Geometries: Proceedings of the Fourth Isle of Thorns Conference (July 16-21, 2000), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, ed. Aart Blokhuis, James W. P. Hirschfeld, Dieter Jungnickel, and Joseph A. Thas, pp. 61-97 Posted 3/1/2009 at 11:00 AM |