Log24

"And so the sentence ceases to be a sentence—
a verbal construct of a certain length, velocity and
rhythm with, at bottom, an unambiguous literal
meaning. It becomes a sign instead that telepathic
communication is about to commence."

— Verlyn Klinkenborg, "The Trouble With Intentions,"
     in The New York Times  last night at 9:30 PM ET

Other signs of the Times  (click to enlarge)—

Signs suggested by Klinkenborg's remarks—

Click the above image for further details.

"Middlebrow culture was killed in the late 50's and 60's,
and the mortal blows came from opposite directions.
The intellectuals launched assaults on what they took to be
middlebrow institutions, attacks that are so vicious
they take your breath away….

At the same time, pop culture changed."

— David Brooks in The New York Times , June 16, 2005

"… but the fighter still remains" —Paul Simon

"James Joyce frequently presents climactic moments
of realization of life at the end of his stories; these
psychological revelations, called epiphanies, constitute
moments of heightened awareness which foment reflection
on the part of both the character and the readers, as well
as introduce an element of surprise."

— The Telling and the Tale , by Gilda Pacheco Acuña
and Kari Meyers Skredsvig, Editorial Universidad
de Costa Rica , 2006, page 11

For Scott and Ernest, from Julio —

"The novel wins by points and the short story by knockout."

— Id.  (See also Feb. 8,  Beach Boy .)

Where Entertainment is God continues…

And the joke of yesterday?

Related material:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qiyama

(Mathematics and Narrative, continued)

Fact—

Sabol died yesterday.

Truth—

An art gallery in Oslo is exhibiting a tesseract.

Story—

The Jewel of Odin's Treasure Room

(Click to enlarge.)

* I.e., Wednesday. For some apt Nordic spirit,
   see Odin's Day 2012 Trailer.

"I'm 18."

— Spoken by a very beautiful girl
      in the summer of 1991

"Work on what has been spoiled [ Decay ]."

— Hexagram 18

Click image for some background.

Today's date suggests a review of
Incommensurables, a post of July 18, 2012.

Click for further details.

Some context—

• Backstory,
• Holy Cross Day, 2012, and
• Feast of the Transfiguration, 2004.

(Continued… A Meditation for Holy Cross Day )

Black Diamond in this journal
versus
Black Diamond at Harvard—

Quotations for a Memorial

"There is a body  on the cross in my church."

"Please Mister please, don't play B-17."

Yesterday's online Los Angeles Times  
on a film that inspired recent protests in Cairo—

The film… was shown on June 23
to an audience of less than 10
at a theater on Hollywood Boulevard,
a source familiar with the screening said….
The screening was at The Vine Theater,
which rents itself out for private screenings,
said one person involved in the theater.

An image from this journal on that same day, June 23—

    Source: Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs

For some background on the symbol, see Damnation Morning.

See also Don Henley's Hollywood hymn "Garden of Allah."

Update of 8 PM Sept. 13, 2012—

Other sources give the film's screening date not as June 23,
2012, but rather as June 30, 2012. (BBC News, LAWEEKLY blogs)

The following post from this journal on that  date may or
may not have some religious relevance.

Once in love with Amy…

Later…

A review of Max Bialystock's new smash hit,
"The Empty Chair"—

"Record-breaking!"

    "Who knows where madness lies?" —Man of La Mancha

    "Hum a few bars and I'll fake it." —Stravinsky

Stanley Cavell on the film North by Northwest—

"The 'nothing,' or naught, in the ROT monogram equally appropriately stands for origin, so its simultaneous meaning is that the actor is the origin of the character and also the origin of what becomes of himself or herself on film. The further thought that the human self as such is both an origin and a nothing is a bit of Cartesianism that is conceivably not called for in the context of this film."

— Cavell on Film , SUNY Press, 2005, pp. 44-45

For another central O, see Four Gods in this journal.

The film's mistaken-identity plot involves a fictional character named Kaplan. For a real Kaplan, see a 2001 New Yorker  piece.

For a related catchphrase, see Kaplan Boo.

Frogs:

"Some mathematicians are birds, others are frogs. Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas of mathematics out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time."

— Freeman Dyson (See July 22, 2011)

A Rhetorical Question:

Robert Osserman in 2004—

"The past decade has been an exciting one in the world of mathematics and a fabulous one (in the literal sense) for mathematicians, who saw themselves transformed from the frogs of fairy tales— regarded with a who-would-want-to-kiss-that aversion, when they were noticed at all— into fascinating royalty, portrayed on stage and screen….

Who bestowed the magic kiss on the mathematical frog?"

A Rhetorical Answer:

Above: Amy Adams in "Sunshine Cleaning"

Related material:

• "Decomposition" in this journal 
• "What is Truth (continued)," May 1, 2012
• The Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT)
• Remarks on SAT by Stanislav Busygin
• A related remark on complexity by Busygin
• Hashtag #sexyface and the Empty Chair

— Quis custodiet?

— Res ipsa loquitur.

This post is continued from May 12, 2011.

See also another journal's post on that date
as well as some related posts here.

First we take Manhattan….

IDEAS OF REFERENCE Department

New York Times  online front page, 11 PM EDT today—

NOTE: 

The above Times  teaser on
"my obsessive-compulsive brain"
does not  refer to the initials "O.C.D."
in this morning's Log24 post "Hashtag E."
The source of those initials was not
"Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder," but
rather the phrase "Our Class, Dear" 
in a Sept. 3, 2012, New Yorker  poem —

See also an August 30 post for Amy Adams.

Some background: 

The "big lie" strategy was originally described
by the National Socialists not as their own,
but  as the strategy of their enemies .

For Kristen

     Image from the New York Times Book Review  of August 26.
     See also a related song for Marxists who like Brecht.
     For some lighter entertainment, see a 1942 movie trailer.

* A sequel to today's noon post Logical Song (itself suggested
   by a Chautauqua, NY, end-of season event)

" Und ein Schiff mit acht Segeln…"

— Seeräuber Jenny

For the Feast of Saint Louis—

" Oed' und leer das Meer "

— Eliot, The Waste Land , from
     Wagner, Tristan und Isolde

See…

1. Tonight's New York Times  obituaries —
   with an ad for a Terracotta Warriors  exhibit
2. "Turn the page" in this  journal
3. "A Page is a Door," by Remy Charlip
4. Wendy Derleth in "Wishmaster."

For a racecar driver who reportedly died in
Orange, California, on August 12— 

"Never one to take it slow, Grant was also an avid boater,
motorcyclist and aerobatic pilot. He last rode his motorcycle,
a BMW R1200R, on July 12."

"I love those Bavarians… so meticulous."

"The 'Valley of Death' is the oldest
concentration camp memorial in Bavaria."

* German for "Of Death."
   For a different Todes, see an obituary of a poet.
   See also Rosetta Jacobs in this journal.

"For every kind of vampire…"

Six PM EDT is midnight CEST in Geneva.

For the late Marvin W. Meyer, professor at Chapman
University in Orange, California, and a graduate
of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan…

A ticket out of town .

(Some background: Marilynne Robinson.)

See tonight's leading obituaries 
from The New York Times .

A quotation from William P. Thurston,
who died yesterday—

"It may sound almost circular to say that
what mathematicians are accomplishing
is to advance human understanding of mathematics.
I will not try to resolve this
by discussing what mathematics is,
because it would take us far afield.
Mathematicians generally feel that they know
what mathematics is, but find it difficult
to give a good direct definition.
It is interesting to try. For me,
'the theory of formal patterns'
has come  the closest, but to discuss this
would be a whole essay in itself."

Related material from a literate source—

"So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern"

— and from a different source, cached shortly after midnight 
on the (GMT) date of Thurston's death —

(Click for Google Cache information and to enlarge.)

Detail from the above Math Overflow discussion— 

(Continued from the day of Hunter S. Thompson's suicide)

See "The First Church of Marilynne Robinson."

(The New Yorker , May 30, 2012)

(Continued from March 28, 2001)

"Hillbillies, Okies, Arkies—  they're all the same people."

— Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels

Related cinematic art:

Hunger Games (2012)—

Winter’s Bone (2010)—

A followup—

* Of "Country Roads"

Coltrane, not coal train.

See also a children's version.

(Continued :  See Identity,  decomposition, and Sunshine Cleaning . )

"What, one might ask, does the suave, debonaire
Roger Thornhill have to do with the notion of
decomposition (emphasized by the unusual
coffin-shaped 'O') implied in the acronym
formed by his initials?" 

— Paul Gordon, Dial "M" for Mother ,
     Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008, page 97

"To stay with the context of Cavell's brilliant reading 
of the film's relation to Hamlet, 'there is something rot -ten
in North by Northwest ' that also needs to be explained."

— Paul Gordon, op. cit., page 98

Related remarks— Sunday morning, May 20, 2007.

"History instructs. History also has
a very dark sense of humor.
Irish history, especially."

— John Kelly in The Daily Beast  this morning

See also Joyce's Nightmare and
Nightmare Alley in this journal.

On the author of a novel published August 14th,
 "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"—

"Semple moved to the Pacific Northwest several years ago
seeking refuge from Los Angeles, but that doesn't mean
that the Emerald City gets a free pass from Semple's
sharp, satirical eye." 

— Stewart Oksenhorn yesterday in The Aspen Times

Related art—

See also a detail from Thursday's 1.3 MB image
"Search for the Lost Tesseract"—

Update of 9 PM EDT (6 PM LA time) the same day, Saturday, Aug. 18—

Actually, that one is hers.

"Art indeed, so far from being
a playful diversion of the human race,
is the place of its most fundamental insight,
and the centre to which the more uncertain
steps of metaphysics must constantly return"

— Iris Murdoch, "On 'God' and 'Good,'" in
Existentialists and Mystics , Penguin Books,
1999, page 360

Related material —

Wendy Derleth

" 'In the West,' she observed, 'anything that must be hidden
is suspect; availability and honesty are interlinked. This clashes
irreconcilably with Islam… where the things that are
most precious, most perfect and most holy are always hidden….' "

— Pauls Toutonghi, review of a recent novel, Alif the Unseen

(page BR19, New York Times Sunday Book Review , August 12, 2012) 

(Continued)

"Here, Bochner plays with these elements with the philosophical levity that made Conceptual art (which art historians see Bochner as one of the kingpins) so refreshing, graceful, and funny, especially after a generation of painters made artmaking seem so serious, heavy, emotional." —ArtSlant.com

See also The Wikipedia Meno  and Bochner in this journal.

(An episode of Art Wars )

"Visual forms, he thought, were solutions to
specific problems that come from specific needs."

— Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times
    obituary of E. H. Gombrich (November 7th, 2001)

"… deep cultural fears within the art world— 
fears that art is elitist,
or some kind of confidence game,
or not a serious endeavor (a fear that has
dogged art since at least the time of Plato)."

— Philip Kennicott, quoted here on July 22, 2012

See also today's date in 2003.

"I am a skeptic to whom the idea that a benign God 
created us and watches over us is something between
a fairy story and a bad joke." 

— The late art critic Robert Hughes in Things I Didn't Know*

A followup to this afternoon's previous Amy Adams post—

"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!" 

             — Under the Volcano

     * Vintage paperback, December 2007, page 7

In Dr. West's memory…

• Truly Tasteless Jokes Under the Volcano ,
• Just Once , and, from the day Dr. West died (July 24), 
• The Devil in the Details .

"The first human to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong,
is 'doing great' after undergoing cardiac bypass surgery,
his wife reported…..

… Armstrong… went to the hospital on Monday
for a stress test. He flunked, and on Tuesday,
surgeons bypassed four blockages in his
coronary arteries. His wife reports that his spirits
are high, and the doctors expect no problems
with his recovery…." — Alan Boyle, NBCNews.com

Over the life of Man
We watch and wait,
The Four who manage
His fallen estate:

We who are four were
Once but one,
Before his act of
Rebellion;

We were himself when
His will was free,
His error became our
Chance to be.

Powers of air and fire,
Water and earth,
Into our hands is given
Man from his birth….

— Auden, not Goethe

See also Tuesday morning's post.

Tuesday was Charlize Theron's birthday.
See June 9, 2012.

For related material, see this morning's post Defining Form.

Continued from July 29 in memory of filmmaker Chris Marker,
who reportedly* died on that date at 91 at his home in Paris.

See Slides and Chanting†and Where Madness Lies.

See also Sherrill Grace on Malcolm Lowry.

* Washington Post. Other sources say Marker died on July 30.

† These notably occur in Marker's masterpiece
     La Jetée (review with spoilers).

Related material:

Frank J. Prial on the late singer Tony Martin—

— and, on Jan. 1, 2005, on beverage marketing:

Every picture tells a story.

Happy birthday to Hilary Swank.

"There is no question about what arithmetic is for
or why it is supported. Society cannot proceed
without it. Addition, subtraction, multiplication,
division, percentages: though not all citizens can
deal fluently with all of them, we make the
assumption that they can when necessary.
Those who cannot are sometimes at a disadvantage.

Algebra, though, is another matter."

— Underwood Dudley in the Notices of the
American Mathematical Society, May 2010:
"What Is Mathematics For?" 

A less nuanced remark from the American
Mathematical Society (AMS) today—

"The answer to the recent Op-Ed piece
in The New York Times  entitled
'Is Algebra Necessary?'
is resoundingly YES!"

— Eric Friedlander, AMS president

* A review of philosophical terminology—

"The distinction between necessary truth
and contingent truth is a version of Leibniz 's 
distinction between truths of reason and truths
of fact. A necessary truth must be true and
could not be false, whatever way the world is. 
It is true in itself. A contingent truth, on the other 
hand, depends upon the empirical world and might 
have been false had the world been different." 

— The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy