Midnight in the Garden, Autumn 2009
The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009: From this journal on the following day, Sept. 21: Happy birthday, Stephen King. Today's previous entry is based on a song, "Unthought Known," from the above album; the cover of the album uses the 3x3 grid shown in Sept. 20's midnight review. For related material on the unconscious, see June 13-15, 2005. I know more than Apollo, Posted 9/30/2009 at 9:48 AM |
Not So Second-Rate From the above link in this journal on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009: "... the unthought-known dispatches a steady stream of 'notes' from underground. If it cannot gain a full return to consciousness, it at least would like some recognition-- even if disguised." -- Randall Hoedeman, Sunnyhill Church, Pittsburgh Another discovery reportedly also made last Thursday, Sept. 24: "The Cullinan mine has again given the world a spectacularly beautiful and important diamond." -- Petra Diamonds Ltd. CEO Johan Dippenaar Picture from Fox News: Posted 9/30/2009 at 2:02 AM |
From Harper's Magazine for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels: Note on a poem by Rilke Posted 9/29/2009 at 3:00 AM |
Symmetry for Germany See Annals of Aesthetics, January 13, 2009, which features the following example of modernism: ... and for readers of the Sunday New York Times ... The funereal heart illustrates a review of a book titled Her Fearful Symmetry. The book is set, partly, in London's Highgate Cemetery. The book's author, Audrey Niffenegger, has stated that her title refers to "the doubling and twinning and opposites" that are "essential to the theme and structure of the book." For examples of doubling, twinning, and opposites that I prefer to Niffenegger's, see this journal's Saturday and Sunday entries. Fans of the New York Times's cultural coverage may prefer Niffenegger's own art work. They may also enjoy images from the weekend's London Art Book Fair that suggested the rather different sort of book in Saturday's entry. Posted 9/28/2009 at 3:00 AM |
A Pleasantly Discursive Treatment Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith-- "In sixteenth-century Transylvania, Unitarian congregations were established for the first time in history."Gravity's Rainbow-- "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross."Unitarian minister Richard Trudeau-- "... I called the belief thatH. S. M. Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Trudeau's book-- As noted here on Oct. 8, 2008 (A Yom Kippur Meditation), Coxeter was aware in 1987 of a more technical use of the phrase "diamond theory" that is closely related to... A kind of cross: of the Fourfold. * As recent Log24 entries have pointed out, diamond theory (in the original 1976 sense) is a type of non-Euclidean geometry, since finite geometry is not Euclidean geometry-- and is, therefore, non-Euclidean, in the strictest sense (though not according to popular usage). Posted 9/27/2009 at 3:00 AM |
Posted 9/26/2009 at 8:28 AM |
Posted 9/25/2009 at 3:09 AM |
Who Knows What Evil Lurks... The brain-in-a-jar on the cover of the new Pearl Jam album "Backspacer" (previous two entries) is apparently there because of a song on the album, "Unthought Known"-- "All the thoughts you never seeThe song title is from a book, The Shadow of the Object (Columbia U. Press, 1987), by psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas. The "unthought known" phrase has been quoted widely by second-rate psychologizers and by some not so second-rate. Their lucubrations suggest that sinking brain-worshippers should seek a... Posted 9/24/2009 at 2:01 AM |
Backspacing Some background for the images in the previous entry's album cover: See PearlJamEvolution.com, Aug. 3, 2009, and Aug. 6, 2009. The brain image is apparently based on a photo at Flickr. Posted 9/23/2009 at 9:26 AM |
Keys A Google search for "Das Scheinen," a very rough translation into Heidegger's German of "The Shining," leads to a song. A search for the English version of the song leads to a site with a sidebar advertising Pearl Jam's new (Sept. 20) album "Backspacer." Packaging: Happy birthday, Stephen King. Background: Yesterday's entries and the plot of L'Engle's classic A Wrinkle in Time. (See this journal's entries for March 2008.) The Pearl Jam album cover art is of particular interest in light of King's story "Apt Pupil" and of Katherine Neville's remark "Nine is a very powerful Nordic number." Those who prefer more sophisticated aesthetic theory may click on the following keys: Posted 9/21/2009 at 2:56 AM |
The Appearances scheinen German verb:Quine, Pursuit of Truth, second edition, Harvard U. Press, 1990, epigraph: Google search: Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: George S. Lensing, Wallace Stevens and the Seasons: "Poetry is often a revelation of the elements of appearance." Posted 9/20/2009 at 9:00 AM |
Posted 9/20/2009 at 12:00 AM |
Old Year, Raus! Also in today's New York Times obituaries index: John T. Elson, Editor Who Asked Wikipedia article on George Polya:
Posted 9/19/2009 at 4:23 PM |
Slouching
My Prayer: Private Gomorrah lessons Background: "Heaven Can Wait" Happy Rosh Hashanah Update, 5:01 AM Sept. 19 Before becoming a writer, Related Metaphors This morning's New York Times: MicheleBachmann.com this morning: See also: James Hillman's "acorn theory" Posted 9/19/2009 at 2:22 AM |
Posted 9/18/2009 at 2:22 PM |
Jennifer's Body The following remark this evening by Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post serves as an instant review of today's previous cinematic Log24 offering starring the late Patrick Swayze: "Watch it, forget it, move on."A perhaps more enduring tribute: Related material: Solomon's Cube, Solomon and Sheba, and Raiders of the Lost Stone. "Ready when you are, C.B." Posted 9/17/2009 at 8:00 PM |
Posted 9/17/2009 at 11:07 AM |
Posted 9/17/2009 at 2:45 AM |
The Found Symbol Posted 9/16/2009 at 11:07 AM |
In memory of Harvard literature professor Barbara Ellen Johnson (Oct. 4, 1947 - Aug. 27, 2009) "...one has to be willing "Bohr's words?" "The party line...." -- Quotation from -- Barbara Johnson in The Wake of Deconstruction Related material: Harvard Crimson obituary and a Funeral Service obituary with comments. For more on ambiguity, see this journal's entries of March 7, 8, and 9, 2007. For more on craziness, see this journal's entries of March 10, 2007. Posted 9/15/2009 at 2:02 PM |
RAIDERS OF THE LOST DINGBAT My personal favorite: Dingbat 275A, "heavy vertical bar"-- Cf. March 7, 2003. Posted 9/15/2009 at 12:00 AM |
The Sept. 8 entry on non-Euclidean* blocks ended with the phrase "Go figure." This suggested a MAGMA calculation that demonstrates how Klein's simple group of order 168 (cf. Jeremy Gray in The Eightfold Way) can be visualized as generated by reflections in a finite geometry. * i.e., other than Euclidean. The phrase "non-Euclidean" is usually applied to only some of the geometries that are not Euclidean. The geometry illustrated by the blocks in question is not Euclidean, but is also, in the jargon used by most mathematicians, not "non-Euclidean." Posted 9/14/2009 at 3:09 PM |
For 9/11 Cover of Underworld, by Don DeLillo, First Edition, Advance Reader's Copy, 1997 "Time and chance happeneth to them all." -- Ecclesiastes 9:11 Related material: 1. The previous entry, on Copenhagen physicist Aage Bohr, and 2. Notes from this journal from Bohr's birthday, June 19th, through Midsummer Night, 2007... including notes on Faust in Copenhagen 3. Walpurgisnacht 2008 and Walpurgisnacht 2009 Posted 9/11/2009 at 1:00 PM |
Theology in memory of physicist Aage Bohr, who died at 87 on Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009 Swarthmore physics honors thesis, 136 pp., 2007-- Abstract: "Quantum mechanics, which has no completely accepted interpretation but many seemingly strange physical results, has been interpreted in a number of bizarre and fascinating ways over the years. The two interpretations examined in this paper, [Aage] Bohr and [Ole] Ulfbeck's 'Genuine Fortuitousness' and Stuckey, Silberstein, and Cifone's 'Relational Blockworld,' seem to be two such strange interpretations; Genuine Fortuitousness posits that causality is not fundamental to the universe, and Relational Blockworld suggests that time does not act as we perceive it to act. In this paper, I analyze these two interpretations...." Footnote 55, page 114: "Thus far, I have been speaking in fairly abstract terms, which can sometimes be unhelpful on the issue of explaining anything about the structure of space-time. I want to pause for a moment to suggest a new potential view of the blockworld within a 'genuinely fortuitous' universe in more visual terms. Instead of the 'static spacetime jewel' of blockworld that is often invoked by eternalists to help their readers conceptualize of what a blockworld would 'look like' from the outside, now imagine that a picture on a slide is being projected onto the surface of this space-time jewel. From the perspective of one inside the jewel, one might ask 'Why is this section blue while this section is black?,' and from within the jewel, one could not formulate an answer since one could not see the entire picture projected on the jewel; however, from outside the jewel, an observer (some analogue of Newton's God, perhaps, looking down on his 'sensorium' from the 5th dimension) could easily see the pattern and understand that all of the 'genuinely fortuitous' events inside the space-time jewel are, in fact, completely determined by the pattern in the projector." -- "Genuine Fortuitousness, Relational Blockworld, Realism, and Time" (pdf), by Daniel J. Peterson, Honors Thesis, Swarthmore College, December 13, 2007 Posted 9/11/2009 at 2:56 AM |
Froebel's Magic Box Continued from Dec. 7, 2008, and from yesterday.
Padgett (pseudonym of a husband-and-wife writing team) says that alphabet blocks are the intuitive "basis of Euclid." Au contraire; they are the basis of Gutenberg. For the intuitive basis of one type of non-Euclidean* geometry-- finite geometry over the two-element Galois field-- see the work of... Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), who invented kindergarten. His "third gift" -- © 2005 The Institute for Figuring Photo by Norman Brosterman fom the Inventing Kindergarten exhibit at The Institute for Figuring Go figure. * i.e., other than Euclidean Posted 9/8/2009 at 12:25 PM |
Magic Boxes "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas-- only I don't exactly know what they are!.... Let's have a look at the garden first!" -- A passage from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. The "garden" part-- but not the "ideas" part-- was quoted by Jacques Derrida in Dissemination in the epigraph to Chapter 7, "The Time before First." Commentary on the passage: Part I: "The Magic Box," shown on Turner Classic Movies earlier tonight Part II: "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," a classic science fiction story: "... he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm-- much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people, for example-- They moved. Like clockwork automatons, though much more smoothly. It was rather like watching a play."Part III: A Crystal Block -- Posted 9/7/2009 at 12:00 AM |
Magic Boxes Part I: "The Magic Box," shown on Turner Classic Movies tonight Part II: "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," a classic science fiction story: "... he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm-- much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people, for example-- Posted 9/6/2009 at 11:18 PM |
Posted 9/6/2009 at 11:07 AM |
Oscar Speech (continued from February 25th, 2007) "From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire Where you must move in measure, like a dancer." -- Four Quartets Posted 9/6/2009 at 11:00 AM |
For the Burning Man (Cover slightly changed.) Background -- SAT Part I: Sophists (August 20th) Part II:
Part III: From August 25th -- "Boo, boo, boo, square root of two." Posted 9/5/2009 at 10:31 PM |
Closing the Circle Continued from Monday "This is a chapel of mischance; ill luck betide it, 'tis the cursedest kirk that ever I came in!" Philip Kennicott on Kirk Varnedoe in 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...." Kennicott's remarks were on Sunday, May 18, 2003. They were subtitled "Closing the Circle on Abstract Art." Also on Sunday, May 18, 2003: "Will the circle be unbroken? As if some southern congregation is praying we will come to understand." Princeton University Press: See also Parmiggiani's Giordano Bruno -- Dürer's Melencolia I -- and Log24 entries of May 19-22, 2009, ending with "Steiner System" -- George Steiner on chess (see yesterday morning): "There are siren moments when quite normal creatures otherwise engaged, men such as Lenin and myself, feel like giving up everything-- marriage, mortgages, careers, the Russian Revolution-- in order to spend their days and nights moving little carved objects up and down a quadrate board." Steiner continues... "Allegoric associations of death with chess are perennial...." Yes, they are. April is Math Awareness Month. Cf. both of yesterday's entries. Posted 9/4/2009 at 2:02 PM |
White Space "White space should not be considered merely 'blank' space-- it is an important element of design which enables the objects in it to exist at all." --Wikipedia Related material (or non-material)-- White space resulting from a recent lack of ad sales in the New York Times obituaries section leads to the following composition-- Posted 9/3/2009 at 2:02 PM |
Autistic Enchantment "Music and mathematics are among the pre-eminent wonders of the race. Levi-Strauss sees in the invention of melody 'a key to the supreme mystery' of man-- a clue, could we but follow it, to the singular structure and genius of the species. The power of mathematics to devise actions for reasons as subtle, witty, manifold as any offered by sensory experience and to move forward in an endless unfolding of self-creating life is one of the strange, deep marks man leaves on the world. Chess, on the other hand, is a game in which thirty-two bits of ivory, horn, wood, metal, or (in stalags) sawdust stuck together with shoe polish, are pushed around on sixty-four alternately coloured squares. To the addict, such a description is blasphemy. The origins of chess are shrouded in mists of controversy, but unquestionably this very ancient, trivial pastime has seemed to many exceptionally intelligent human beings of many races and centuries to constitute a reality, a focus for the emotions, as substantial as, often more substantial than, reality itself. Cards can come to mean the same absolute. But their magnetism is impure. A mania for whist or poker hooks into the obvious, universal magic of money. The financial element in chess, where it exists at all, has always been small or accidental. Click above images for some context. See also: Log24 entries of May 30, 2006, as well as "For John Cramer's daughter Kathryn"-- August 27, 2009-- and related material at Wikipedia (where Kathryn is known as "Pleasantville"). Posted 9/3/2009 at 11:07 AM |
Posted 9/2/2009 at 9:48 PM |
Posted 9/2/2009 at 9:48 PM |
Zoo Story Boston Herald this afternoon: Photo by Lisa Hornak (file) Christopher the lion was 'secured' at Franklin Park Zoo when a teen toppled into the lion's den. You can't make this stuff up. Posted 9/2/2009 at 6:00 PM |
Back to School Canto I: Canto II:
Canto III:
Canto IV: Click for details. Canto V: Posted 9/2/2009 at 11:09 AM |
Back to the Garden The previous entry dealt with an artist who died last Wednesday (August 26). Dominick Dunne, producer of the film version of "The Boys in the Band," also died last Wednesday. In his memory, four readings: 1. "Pilot Fish," by Hemingway 2. Self-profile by Stephen Vider, author of "American Mystic" (see previous entry) 3. "Party Animal," Vider's essay on "The Boys in the Band" published on Sinatra's birthday, 2008 4. Back to the Garden of Forking Paths (also on Sinatra's birthday, 2008) Related material from last Sunday morning: "'Soul' of a Party Is Memorialized" --New York Times online front page and "In the Details." The following illustration from August 16th may also be relevant: Click cover to enlarge. Posted 9/1/2009 at 11:30 PM |