Click the above to search this journal for "Dead End."
Friday, September 23, 2022
Annals of Historical Fiction
In memory of historical novelist Hilary Mantel, who reportedly
died yesterday, two images dealing with this year's Sept. 11 —
The image from Rome was suggested by yesterday's Dürer post and
by the year 1514 in the life of Thomas Cromwell, Mantel's main topic.
Raiders of the Lost Archive … The Jung Genizah
Jung’s four-diamond figure from
Aion — a symbol of the self –
For those who prefer the Ed Wood approach —
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Affine Dürer
The previous post's image illustrating the
ancient Lo Shu square as an affine transformation
suggests a similar view of Dürer's square.
That view illustrates the structural principle
underlying the diamond theorem —
De Colores
See as well . . .
Three-color patterns from 1964,
rendered as shades of grey —
A rather different approach —
The Tag in the Bag
The above image is from a tweet dated Jan. 11, 2018.
Related material from this journal — That date, in posts
now tagged In the Bag. Those posts are followups to
a remark by Nabokov:
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
Heist Flick
"A good public narrative can, at the best of times,
transform an art theft into a lucky break for the gallery."
From a search in this journal for Goya —
Verse without Words (Title via Kandinsky)
Tuesday, September 20, 2022
Raiders of the Lost Space… Continues.
From "Raiders of the Lost Space," Sept. 11, 2022 —
A related technique appears in a 1989 paper by Cheng and Sloane
that I saw for the first time today:
Motif-Space Updates
A linear code of length 24, dimension 8, and minimum weight 8
(a "[24, 8, 8] code") that was discussed in recent posts tagged
Bitspace might, viewed as a vector space, be called "motif space."
Yesterday evening's post "From a Literature Search for Binary [24, 8, 8] Codes"
has been updated. A reference from that update —
Computer Science > Information Theory
|
Comments: | To appear in IEEE Trans. on Information Theory Vol. 24 No. 8 |
Subjects: | Information Theory (cs.IT) |
Cite as: | arXiv:cs/0607074 [cs.IT] |
From Peng and Farrell, 2006 —
Monday, September 19, 2022
From a Literature Search for Binary [24, 8, 8] Codes
For one example of a binary [24, 8, 8] code, see other bitspace posts.
It is not clear whether that example is a subcode of the Golay code.
See also
http://www.codetables.de/BKLC/
Tables.php?q=2&n0=1&n1=256&k0=1&k1=256
and
http://www.codetables.de/BKLC/BKLC.php?q=2&n=12&k=8 .
Update of 3:22 AM ET on 20 September 2022 —
Update of 3:44 AM ET 20 September 2022 —
Another relevant document:
The Hymn
Mosaic Kaleidoscope
"The kaleidoscope of peoples, parties and religions…."
— Description of Vienna in the early 20th century from
"Black Gold and Yellow Star" by Jerome Segal (PDF, 16 pp.)
See as well Mosaic and Kaleidoscope in this journal.
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Requiem for a Tin Man
— "Heisenberg group modulo 2" from Wikipedia. Click to enlarge.
For a related tune, click the Heisenberg link.
Friday, September 16, 2022
Symmetric Generation
The above is about a subspace of the
24-dimensional vector space over GF(2)
. . . "An entire world of just 24 squares,"
to adapt a phrase from other Log24
posts tagged "Promises."
Update of 1:45 AM ET Sept. 18, 2022 —
It seems* from a Magma calculation that
the resemblance of the above extended
cube-motif code to the Golay code is only
superficial.
Without the highly symmetric generating codewords that were added
to extend its dimension from 8 to 12, the cube-motifs code apparently
does , like the Golay code, have nonzero weights of only 8, 12, 16, and 24 —
Perhaps someone can prove there is no way that adding more generating
codewords can turn the cube-motif code into the Golay code.
* The "seems" is because I have not yet encountered any of these
relatively rare (42 out of 4096) purported weight-4 codewords. Their
apparent existence may be due to an error in my typing of 0's and 1's.
Thursday, September 15, 2022
A Grid for Agent Smith*
Literary Symbolism: Math for Roundheads
"The Virginia Cavalier is a concept that attaches the qualities
of chivalry and honor to the aristocratic class in Virginia history
and literature. Its origin lies in the seventeenth century, when
leading Virginians began to associate themselves with the
Royalists, or Cavaliers, who fought for and remained loyal to
King Charles I during the English Civil Wars (1642–1648)."
— https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-cavalier-the/
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Starr 80: A Barbie for Ken
Related comedy lines:
01:13:08.25,01:13:12.35
(STRING QUARTET PLAYING
SLOW, LUSH MELODY)
01:13:22.59,01:13:26.23
"They’re fucking sixteenths,
Steve, stop milking them."
01:13:26.36,01:13:29.78
"Folks, disagree,
but do it nicely, and please…
01:13:30.47,01:13:33.38
…try not to get caught up in mistakes."
A Linear Code with 4×6 Symmetry
The exercise of 9/11 continues . . .
As noted in an update at the end of the 9/11 post,
these 24 motifs, along with 3 bricks and 4 half-arrays,
generate a linear code of 12 dimensions. I have not
yet checked the code's minimum weight.
For Odd Jean-Luc: Alpha Alpha Double Feature
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
A Helpful Survey of the Literature
Some background for the exercise of 9/11 —
Vera Pless, "More on the uniqueness of the Golay codes,"
Discrete Mathematics 106/107 (1992) 391-398 —
"Several people [1-2,6] have shown that
any set of 212 binary vectors of length 24,
distance ≥ 8, containing 0, must be the
unique (up to equivalence) [24,12,8] Golay code."
[1] P. Delsarte and J.M. Goethals, "Unrestricted codes
with the Golay parameters are unique,"
Discrete Math. 12 (1975) 211-224.
[2] A. Neumeier, private communication, 1990.
[6] S.L. Snover, "The uniqueness of the
Nordstrom-Robinson and the Golay binary codes,"
Ph.D. Thesis, Dept. of Mathematics,
Michigan State Univ., 1973.
Related images —
"Before time began, there was the Cube."
"Remember, remember the fifth of November"
Cinema News
From a search in this journal for Godard —
"I perceived . . . cinema is that which is between things,
not things [themselves] but between one and another."
— Jean-Luc Godard, "Introduction à une véritable histoire
du cinéma," Albatros , Paris, 1980, p. 145
“We Got This Covered”
The previous post's quotation of the word "leitmotif" suggests a review:
See as well Sunday's post "Raiders of the Lost Space."
The Return of Krankheit and Dubious
In memory of Ramsey Lewis, famed for his recording
of "The In Crowd" —
An old vaudeville routine, slightly adapted :
— Are you a doctor?
— I'm a doctor.
— I'm dubious.
— I'm glad to know you, Miss Dubious.
"The In Crowd" was a leitmotif in the 2015 film "Irrational Man."
Joaquin Phoenix as Dr. Krankheit,
Emma Stone as Miss Dubious —
Monday, September 12, 2022
“Hard Boiled” (Action Movie Title, Hong Kong, 1992)
The "all-time great actioner" of the above news story is "Hard Boiled,"
a 1992 Hong Kong action film by John Woo. Related art —
Revised version of the
New Yorker cover of 5/21/07
Sunday, September 11, 2022
Raiders of the Lost Space
From 1981 —
From today —
Update —
A Magma check of the motif-generated space shows that
its dimension is only 8, not 12 as with the MOG space.
Four more basis vectors can be added to the 24 motifs to
bring the generated space up to 12 dimensions: the left
brick, the middle brick, the top half (2×6), the left half (4×3).
I have not yet checked the minimum weight in the resulting
12-dimensional 4×6 bit-space.
— SHC 4 PM ET, Sept. 12, 2022.
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Solomon’s Mental Health Month
May 2003 was "Solomon's Mental Health Month" in this journal.
An essay linked to on the 9th of May in that month —
"Taking the Veil," by Jessica Kardon
https://web.archive.org/web/20021102182519/ James Hillman, writing in The Soul's Code, argues for his "acorn theory" of human individual identity, and suggests that "each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived." He insists we are born with a given character, a daimon, the carrier of destiny. This theory is closely linked to the beautiful myth described by Plato in his Republic, when the soul stands before Lachesis and receives his specific soul guardian. Hillman maintains that the daimon will always emerge somehow, even if thwarted or unrecognized. I never had ambitions that reached fruition in the adult world. I have had only two career interests in my life – both formed precognitively. I wanted to be a mermaid or a nun. By the time I learned – shockingly late – that I could not be a mermaid, I had realized I would not be a nun. I concur with Hillman's emphasis on the persistence of early disposition, and I like to imagine that my dreamy, watery, Victorian and self-righteous psyche has held aspects of both of these early interests, throughout my life. I was adopted one month after my birth. I was tended by nuns during the first four weeks of my life. Thereafter, I spent my whole educational life in convent schools. It was the sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul that gave me my favorite musical and my early distortions about romantic love and the gender plans of Our Lord. My misconceptions about love and marriage were culled from the Lerner Loewe musical Gigi, a wonderful film based loosely on a Colette novel. I was summoned along with my whole class to the gymnasium to view the movie under the edgy eye of Sister Bernadette. Sister Bernadette was a large, mesomorphic nun famed for the beatings she gave to boys and girls alike, and feared for the mean zest with which she bestowed her favors upon many of us. I was not beaten – but once, believing I was wearing lipstick, she held my head in a sink and scrubbed my lips until they bled, then slapped me. I recall this with a mild, rueful whimsy. We were all manhandled. In memory, Bernadette seems more like an angry and troubled older sibling than a true figure of authority. Anyway, I loved Gigi. It fed directly into my Francophilia. I was convinced that at some future date, I, like Gigi, would be trained as a courtesan. I, too, would cause some hard case, experienced roué to abandon his chill and irony. I saw myself strolling down the Champs Elysee with Louis Jordan in rapt attendance, pushing a baby carriage, wearing a hat the size of a manhole cover, hoisting a parasol above that to assure the longevity of my adorable pallor. The gender plans of Our Lord had recently been revealed to me too. Sister B. had drawn a ladder on the blackboard, a ladder with three rungs. At the top, she explained, were the priests, the nuns, and the monks. These souls had surrendered their lives to God. All would be taken directly to heaven upon their passing from this vale of tears, as we all referred to the world in those lean emotional times. On the middle rung stood the married. If you married and kept the law – which meant leaving every act of marital congress open to the reception of a child, you would be eligible for heaven. If you were foul in marriage, seeking your pleasure, you were going to be damned. On the bottom rung were those selfish souls who had remained single and had imagined their lives their own. This group had never given themselves to Our Lord. They were headed to hell in a sort of preternatural laundry chute. So we little ladies had two viable options: marry and breed without ceasing – or take the veil. Despite my hat and perambulator fantasies, once given the sorry news of the ladder, the veil became the clear romantic favorite. Therefore I began my research. I obtained a catalogue of nunnery. It offered photographs of each order, describing the duties of the specific order, and displaying the garb of that order. I was looking for two things – a great looking veil and gown, and a contemplative order. I had no desire to sully my glorious vision of myself with a life in the outer world. It was apparent to me that the teaching of children was going to involve a whole range of miseries – making them cry, telling them the bad news about the ladder, and so forth. This was not for me. I saw myself kneeling on the floor of my pristine little cell, serene and untouched by human hands. Teaching would be certain to interfere with the proper lighting. Yoked to a bunch of messy children, I could not possibly have the opalescent illumination of heaven falling reliably on my upturned visage. What divided me from my dream of rebirth as a mermaid was the force of what was real: I could not morph. What divided me from my dream of life as a nun was the force of the erotic: I would not abstain. Now, long years later, I am still underwater, and I am still bending the knee. I live in the blue shadows of hidden grottoes, and I am swimming, too, in the gold of my drifting prayers. September 7th, this dream. I am standing in a dimly lit room, gazing at a group of heavy, antique silk burqas that look weirdly like Fortuny gowns. A holy woman approaches me, and tells me that my soul will leave my body, and enter these garments. She turns and points at a young girl standing nearby, a child with close-cropped hair and a solemn look. My heart knows her, but my eyes don't. For a moment I am thinking, exactly as I did in the seventies when holding a joint: "This isn't working." Suddenly, these things: I feel the shape of flame, then I am the shape. I am released into the air, and as pure essence I enter other forms, dissolving in them, gathering my energy back into myself, and flying out again. This was a sensation so exquisite that my dreaming brain woke up and announced to me: "This is a dream about death." I saw that child again as I flew. This time my eyes knew her. I flew to her, but the flame of my soul would not cohere with hers, this child who was, of course, my own self. In the shadows alone, I heard myself whisper: "I'm in the wind. I'm in the water." This lovely dream, which gave me the sublime gift of a little visceral preview of the soul in the death process, also showed me my guardian spirit; divided, but viable. I pass through my life swimming in one self, kneeling in the other. I thought of Rilke's 29th Sonnet to Orpheus and realized this was what I had been dreaming about all my life, moving between them.
by jessica kardon |
See as well yesterday's post "At a Still Point."
Orthogonal Latin Triangles
From a 1964 recreational-mathematics essay —
Note that the first two triangle-dissections above are analogous to
mutually orthogonal Latin squares . This implies a connection to
affine transformations within Galois geometry. See triangle graphics
in this journal.
Update of 4:40 AM ET —
Other mystical figures —
"Before time began, there was the Cube."
— Optimus Prime in "Transformers" (Paramount, 2007)
Friday, September 9, 2022
Pillars of Wisdom . . . Count ’Em!
At a Still Point
"The music was as formal as
Job's argument with God.
Her dance was God's reply."
Relentless Exploitation Flick
A New York Times obituary today reports a death
from the Feast of St. Louis, 2022 —
"Dr. Gottfried said at the time that the world was
undergoing a transformative revolution driven by
'the relentless exploitation of scientific knowledge.'”
Also on that date . . .
Thursday, September 8, 2022
Analogy in Mathematics: Chevron Variations
André Weil in 1940 on analogy in mathematics —
. "Once it is possible to translate any particular proof from one theory to another, then the analogy has ceased to be productive for this purpose; it would cease to be at all productive if at one point we had a meaningful and natural way of deriving both theories from a single one. In this sense, around 1820, mathematicians (Gauss, Abel, Galois, Jacobi) permitted themselves, with anguish and delight, to be guided by the analogy between the division of the circle (Gauss’s problem) and the division of elliptic functions. Today, we can easily show that both problems have a place in the theory of abelian equations; we have the theory (I am speaking of a purely algebraic theory, so it is not a matter of number theory in this case) of abelian extensions. Gone is the analogy: gone are the two theories, their conflicts and their delicious reciprocal reflections, their furtive caresses, their inexplicable quarrels; alas, all is just one theory, whose majestic beauty can no longer excite us. Nothing is more fecund than these slightly adulterous relationships; nothing gives greater pleasure to the connoisseur, whether he participates in it, or even if he is an historian contemplating it retrospectively, accompanied, nevertheless, by a touch of melancholy. The pleasure comes from the illusion and the far from clear meaning; once the illusion is dissipated, and knowledge obtained, one becomes indifferent at the same time; at least in the Gitâ there is a slew of prayers (slokas) on the subject, each one more final than the previous ones." |
"The pleasure comes from the illusion" . . .
Exercise:
Compare and contrast the following structure with the three
"bricks" of the R. T. Curtis Miracle Octad Generator (MOG).
Note that the 4-row-2-column "brick" at left is quite
different from the other two bricks, which together
show chevron variations within a Galois tesseract —
Tuesday, September 6, 2022
Literary Master
Update at 11:19 PM ET —
"We all float down here." — Pennywise the Clown
A comparison of Peter Straub's novel Floating Dragon (1982)
with Stephen King's novel It (1986) —
"Many people have cited some distinct similarities between Stephen King’s It and Floating Dragon . An ancient evil that awakes every thirty years, several main male characters and a single female character who come together to confront that evil, a number of asides around the small town as bystanders are picked off, even a number of scenes and themes in common."
— https://www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/ From the same webpage — "As the book rockets towards its ending, Straub really does pull out all the stops. A late chapter is entitled 'through the looking glass' and that really is how the book begins to feel, more like a surreal and disturbing fantasy world than a book set in late twentieth century America. Usually in horror novels the point when reality seriously starts to crumble, whether its visions of grandmothers turning into fish or angel shaped biscuits turning evil, there is always the sense that this must be just a dream and the main characters will wake up. Well not here, the weirder things seem, the deadlier they are, indeed one comment late on in the book by Graham that just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it can’t kill you seemed almost like Straub’s mission statement." |
Tata Note
"This volume is the first of three in a series surveying
the theory of theta functions. Based on lectures given by
the author at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
in Bombay, these volumes constitute a systematic exposition
of theta functions, beginning with their historical roots as
analytic functions in one variable (Volume I), touching on
some of the beautiful ways they can be used to describe
moduli spaces (Volume II), and culminating in a methodical
comparison of theta functions in analysis, algebraic geometry,
and representation theory (Volume III)."
Gell-Mann Meets Bosch* at Hiroshima
Gell-Mann Meets Bosch . . .
At Hiroshima . . .
* The Bosch cuboctahedron is from an exhibition at Napoli in 2021.
See also, from that exhibition's starting date,
the Log24 post Desperately Seeking Symmetry.
Monday, September 5, 2022
Annals of Science: Cognitive Testing
2001: A Time Odyssey
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Dice and the Eightfold Cube
At Hiroshima on March 9, 2018, Aitchison discussed another
"hexagonal array" with two added points… not at the center, as
in the Gell-Mann picture above, but rather at the ends of one of
a cube's four diagonal axes of symmetry.
See some related illustrations below.
Fans of the fictional "Transfiguration College" in the play
"Heroes of the Fourth Turning" may recall that August 6,
another Hiroshima date, was the Feast of the Transfiguration.
The exceptional role of 0 and ∞ in Aitchison's diagram is echoed
by the occurence of these symbols in the "knight" labeling of a
Miracle Octad Generator octad —
Transposition of 0 and ∞ in the knight coordinatization
induces the symplectic polarity of PG(3,2) discussed by
(for instance) Anne Duncan in 1968.
Saturday, September 3, 2022
1984 Revisited
Note the three quadruplets of parallel edges in the 1984 figure above.
The above Gates article appeared earlier, in the June 2010 issue of
Physics World , with bigger illustrations. For instance —
Exercise: Describe, without seeing the rest of the article,
the rule used for connecting the balls above.
Wikipedia offers a much clearer picture of a (non-adinkra) tesseract —
And then, more simply, there is the Galois tesseract —
For parts of my own world in June 2010, see this journal for that month.
The above Galois tesseract appears there as follows:
See also the Klein correspondence in a paper from 1968
in yesterday's 2:54 PM ET post.
Friday, September 2, 2022
History of Mathematics
Anne Duncan in 1968 on a 1960 paper by Robert Steinberg —
_______________________________________________________________________________
Related remarks in this journal — Steinberg + Chevalley.
Related illustrations in this journal — 4×4.
Related biographical remarks — Steinberg Deathdate.
Independence
On the wife of the fictional billionaire Byron Gogol —
Continuing the theme of independence, a less fictional Byron . . .
Thursday, September 1, 2022
September Morn Concludes
"This is the worst trip I've ever been on"
That song was played at the end of the TV series
"The Resort," which concluded today.
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Release Dates: The Iceman Goeth
Part I —
Also in May 1986 —
86-05-08… A linear complex related to M24 . Anatomy of the polarity pictured in the 86-04-26 note. 86-05-26… The 2-subsets of a 6-set are the points of a PG(3,2).
Beutelspacher's model of the 15 points of PG(3,2) |
Part II — (36 years later)
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Space Notes
Monday, August 29, 2022
Euphoria High Meets Dragonrider School
Sunday, August 28, 2022
Saturday, August 27, 2022
Lullaby 86
In memory of a founder of MCC Theater:
A musical rendition of the ending of the classic
1947 E. B. White short story
"The Second Tree from the Corner."
Endings
"In my beginning is my end." — T. S. Eliot
Two readings from December 7, 2008 —
-
A column on Eliot's remark that reportedly "originally appeared in
the December 7, 2008, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper" - "Space and the Soul," a Log24 post, also from December 7, 2008.
A related quotation, suggested by the now-deceased professor David Lavery
of Middle Tennessee State University —
Lavery, a professor of English, was born in 1949 in Oil CIty, Pa.
Friday, August 26, 2022
“A Room Somewhere” — Song Lyric
The Peacock series "The Resort" yesterday presented its concept
of "a room outside of time" (the Pasaje ) as a hole in the ground.
Thursday, August 25, 2022
Meditation on a Song Lyric
"I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain"
See other posts now tagged Structure Character.
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
The Wondertale Tag
See as well the Tolkien release date in Wondertale posts.
Tuesday, August 23, 2022
Pasaje: Raiders of the Lost Chord
Season 1 of "The Resort" will end as "The Lord of the Rings:
The Rings of Power" begins.
For seekers of the Pasaje — "The Room Outside of Time" —
"The Vision is of what the transliteration of their collaborative
Great Music into a material reality would be like. They are
shown that the Music has a point, has a result and effect
beyond its composition and singing: it amounts to no less
than a highly detailed template commensurate with the entire
history – beginning to end – of a material, 'physical' Universe
that could exist inside 'time'."
Monday, August 22, 2022
Tokens/Totems
See Ballet Blanc and Black Art in this journal.
From the former:
"A blank underlies the trials of device."
— Wallace Stevens
From the latter:
Sunday, August 21, 2022
Saturday, August 20, 2022
Recent Configuration Geometry
From "A special configuration of 12 conics and generalized Kummer surfaces,"
by David Kohel, Xavier Roulleau, and Alessandra Sarti.
(arXiv:2004.11421 (math), submitted on 23 Apr 2020 (v1),
last revised 17 May 2021 (this version, v2)) —
"… we study the set C12 of conics that contain at least 6 points in P9. One has
Theorem 1. The set C12 has cardinality 12. Each conic in C12 contains exactly
6 points in P9 and through each point in P9 there are 8 conics. The sets (P9, C12)
form therefore a (98, 126)-configuration.
The configuration (P9, C12) has interesting symmetries, e.g. there are 8 conics
among the 12 passing through a fixed point q in P9 and the 8 points in P9 \ {q},
which form a 85 point-conic configuration. The freeness of the arrangement of
curves C12 is studied in [19], where we learned that this configuration has been
also independently discovered in [11]."
[11] Dolgachev I., Laface A., Persson U., Urzúa G.,
"Chilean configuration of conics, lines and points," preprint.
(arXiv:2008.09627 (math), submitted on 21 Aug 2020)
[19] Pokora P., Szemberg T.,
"Conic-line arrangements in the complex projective plane," preprint
(arXiv:2002.01760 (math), submitted on 5 Feb 2020 (v1),
last revised 10 Feb 2022 (this version, v3))
Friday, August 19, 2022
Mathematical Evolution
From the Stillwell remembrance, a Shenitzer quote —
"An English major may or may not be a novelist or a poet,
but would undoubtedly be expected to be able to evaluate
a novel or a poem. The term 'English major' implies some
historical, philosophical, and evaluative training and
competence. It is sad but true that the term 'mathematician'
does not imply corresponding training and competence."
Related material — The previous post, and posts tagged Super-8.
Cut Geometry
"… the new geometries … provide the best example of
the power of the human mind, for the mind had to defy
and overcome habit, intuition, and sense perceptions
to produce these geometries."
— Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture ,
Oxford University Press, 1953, page 430.
Points as Cuts —
Thursday, August 18, 2022
The Razr’s Edge
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Carnival Knowledge
"This discussion, intended to define the nature and the largest common denominator of all games, has at the same time the advantage of placing their diversity in relief and enlarging very meaningfully the universe ordinarily explored when games are studied. In particular, these remarks tend to add two new domains to this universe: that of wagers and games of chance, and that of mimicry and interpretation. Yet there remain a number of games and entertainments that still have imperfectly defined characteristics— for example, kite-flying and top-spinning, puzzles such as crossword puzzles, the game of patience, horsemanship, seesaws, and certain carnival attractions."
— Caillois, Roger. 1913-1978, in
Translated by Meyer Barash from Les jeux et les hommes . |
See also Caillois in the previous post.
The Holiday Hotel
See as well the discussion of
"the flag of the nude above the holiday hotel,"
on pages 108-109 in
Leon Surette, “Wallace Stevens, Roger Caillois and
‘The Pure Good of Theory',” Paideuma , Vol. 32,
Nos. 1-2-3 (Spring, Fall and Winter 2003), pp. 95-122
Cold Comfort Dam
"And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts,
there are only good and bad things and black and white
things and good and evil things and no in-between anywhere."
— John Steinbeck, author's epigraph to The Pearl
From the Season 4 finale of Westworld :
uploading Dolores's pearl at Hoover Dam —
For those who prefer greater theological simplicity . . .
Optimus Prime on a different Hoover Dam figure, that of
the AllSpark: "Before time began, there was the Cube."
Simplifying even more . . .
“A set having three members is a single thing
wholly constituted by its members but distinct from them.
After this, the theological doctrine of the Trinity as
‘three in one’ should be child’s play.”
– Max Black, Caveats and Critiques: Philosophical Essays
in Language, Logic, and Art , Cornell U. Press, 1975
As above, Black's theology forms a cube.
Cold Comfort
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
The Central Forum
A Web search shows that the above 2014 photo is, specifically,
from June 26, 2014, when the guest speaker was Jules Feiffer.
See as well this journal on June 26, 2014.
The Pristine Edge of Darkness
Westworld Season 4 Episode 8 (Finale)
Christina: Where am I?
Read more at: |
From a college botany laboratory in the 1915
D. H. Lawrence novel The Rainbow —
"Suddenly she had passed away into
an intensely-gleaming light of knowledge."
A later passage in the same novel, under
a metaphorical Tree of Life —
"She passed away as on a dark wind, far, far away,
into the pristine darkness of paradise, into the original
immortality. She entered the dark fields of immortality."
Some will prefer . . .
For further context, see posts tagged Screw Theory.
Monday, August 15, 2022
Holding the Center: A Study in Composition
The Dark Fields… Continues.
See also Dark Fields in this journal.
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Saturday, August 13, 2022
At the End
For the Late Zoltan Dienes (and Charles Kinbote)*
Friday, August 12, 2022
The Representation Stage
See also "Abstract Signature" in this journal.
Line of Action
The art-school phrase "line of action" has a mathematical counterpart.
Some background . . .
In memoriam —
For those who prefer bullshit . . .
Mathematical Games: The Common Core
“There comes a time when the learner has identified
the abstract content of a number of different games
and is practically crying out for some sort of picture
by means of which to represent that which has been
gleaned as the common core of the various activities.”
— Article at Zoltan Dienes’s website
This quote is from a Log24 post of Feb. 6, 2014,
The Representation of Minus One.
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Space X
"Leave a space." — Tom Stoppard, "Jumpers"
See also Lily Collins's recent ice-cream-cone post.
The number 105 displayed in that post may suggest,
to sufferers from apophenia, the date 1/05.
See that date in this journal. For the color of Collins's
ice cream — lavender — see posts now tagged Space X.
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Hollywood Reality Check
A Space
"Snowman author Raymond Briggs dies aged 88"
See as well a Log24 search: Stoppard + "Leave a space" .
Related literary notes:
-
"Curiously, Fosse and actress Mariel Hemingway –
who plays Stratten – choose to depict the ill-fated Playmate
and aspiring starlet as more or less a cypher: a passive
participant in her own life. Fosse’s characterization of
Stratten, at times, borders on elliptical."
— Nick Laskin two days ago at Collider.com .
-
In this journal, "Nothing + Snowman."
- At Amazon.com: An elliptical cypher —
Tuesday, August 9, 2022
Book Lovers Day
Nihilism for Science Groupies
The Yosemite Six
"Jurassic World: Maisie Lockwood Adventures 2: The Yosemite Six
will be released on September 27, 2022."
Thanks for the warning.
Of greater interest to some: The Number Six.
Mirror, Mirror
A phrase from the above scene: "the metaphysics of identity."
I prefer a May 1986 looking-glass from pure mathermatics.
Story Line
Monday, August 8, 2022
Summer Camp: De Bas* en Haut**
See more? Yes, Yes!
* See this morning's Rimshot Muse.
** See Lillian Roth in Madam Satan (1930, pre-Code).
Centro Linden
The centrolinden.com address in the previous post
suggests a search for Navarre in this journal that yields…
“D’exterieur en l’interieur entre
Qui va par moi, et au milieu du centre
Me trouvera, qui suis le point unique,
La fin, le but de la mathematique;
Le cercle suis dont toute chose vient,
Le point ou tout retourne et se maintient.”
— Marguerite de Navarre
The Rimshot Muse
Related philosophical reflections . . .
Waxing poetic . . .
"In the Garden of Adding live Even and Odd" — E. L. Doctorow
To wit:
1/2 + 1/3 = 5/6, since the LCM of 2 and 3 is 6.
See as well . . .
Sunday, August 7, 2022
For the Church of the Wicked Stepmother:
Progressive Matrices
A sample Raven's Progressive Matrices test item —
Update of 10 AM ET Sunday, August 7, 2022 —
See as well Siobhan Roberts on geometry in The New York Times
on March 22, 2022, and a Log24 post on geometry on that date.
Saturday, August 6, 2022
Myth Space Date Note
The above obituary reports a death that happened on July 23.
Also on that date . . . Myth Space and Date Note.
The Story of Q: Quantity/Quality
"“Quantity has a quality all its own.”
— James Stavridis, quoted on Aug. 5, 2022.