Mathematics:
Narrative:
* See some related images from this journal.
” . . . the 3 by 3, the six-sided, three-layer configuration of
the original Rubik’s Cube, which bestows an illusion of brilliance
on those who can solve it.”
— John Branch in the online New York Times today,
“Children of the Cube”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/sports/
cubing-usa-nationals-max-park.html
Cube-solving, like other sports, allows for displays of
impressive and admirable skill, if not “brilliance.”
The mathematics — group theory — that is sometimes associated
with Rubik’s Cube is, however, not a sport. See Rubik + Group
in this journal.
"It is said that the students of medieval Paris came to blows in the streets over the question of universals. The stakes are high, for at issue is our whole conception of our ability to describe the world truly or falsely, and the objectivity of any opinions we frame to ourselves. It is arguable that this is always the deepest, most profound problem of philosophy. It structures Plato's (realist) reaction to the sophists (nominalists). What is often called 'postmodernism' is really just nominalism, colourfully presented as the doctrine that there is nothing except texts. It is the variety of nominalism represented in many modern humanities, paralysing appeals to reason and truth."
— Simon Blackburn, Think, |
". . . a perfect triptych of horsitude"
— James Parker on the 2007 film "Michael Clayton"
Related material —
Horsitude in the 4×2 grid, and
Related literature —
Related video —
(Recall, in light of the previous post, that
Apollo is the lord of the dance.)
The Girl in the Yellow Dress
(from the Broadway musical "Contact")
From a search in this journal for "True Grid,"
a fanciful description of the 3×3 grid —
"This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason…."
– John Outram, architect
A fanciful instance of the 4×2 grid in
a scene from the film "The Master" —
A fanciful novel referring to the number 8,
and a not -so-fanciful reference:
Illustrated above are Katherine Neville's novel The Eight and the
"knight" coordinatization of the 4×2 grid from a page on the exceptional
isomorphism between PSL(3,2) (alias GL(3,2)) and PSL(2,7) — groups
of, respectively, degree 7 and degree 8.
Literature related to the above remarks on grids:
Ross Douthat's New York Times column yesterday purported, following
a 1946 poem by Auden, to contrast students of the humanities with
technocrats by saying that the former follow Hermes, the latter Apollo.
I doubt that Apollo would agree.
Marvel's Jessica Jones, S1 E13
These are questions to which we might hope
the New York Times 's film critics know the answers.
The Return of Purple Man
Or: This Just In
Detail from a post of yesterday morning taken from
the laptop of private investigator Jessica Jones —
The above image, together with yesterday's date, suggested, rather
fancifully, yesterday morning's later post on just intonation, "Seventh."
The nemesis of Jessica Jones, the Purple Man —
A New York Times piece today* is related to both just intonation and
the color purple —
* Published at 1:50 PM ET —
itemprop="datePublished" content="2018-08-08T17:50:30.000Z"
Dates from math forums mentioned in the previous post —
Dec. 7, 2016 and Aug. 2, 2010.
Connoisseurs of synchonology may like to click on those dates.
From mathoverflow.net on Dec. 7, 2016 —
The exceptional isomorphism between
PGL(3,2) and PSL(2,7): geometric origin?
Essentially the same question was asked earlier at
math.stackexchange.com on Aug. 2, 2010.
See also this journal in November 2017 —
"Read something that means something."
— New Yorker ad
Background — Relativity Problem in Log24.
Tom Stoppard, Jumpers —
“Heaven, how can I believe in Heaven?” “Just a lying rhyme for seven!” |
Perhaps.
Smartphone Meets Laptop —
Some related narrative from the previous post —
“All right, Jessshica. It’s time to open the boxsssschhh.”
“All right, Jessshica. It’s time to open the boxsssschhh.” “Gahh,” she said. She began to walk toward the box, but her heart failed her and she retreated back to the chair. “Fuck. Fuck.” Something mechanical purred. The seam she had found cracked open and the top of the box began to rise. She squeezed shut her eyes and groped her way into a corner, curling up against the concrete and plugging her ears with her fingers. That song she’d heard the busker playing on the train platform with Eliot, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; she used to sing that. Back in San Francisco, before she learned card tricks. It was how she’d met Benny: He played guitar. Lucy was the best earner, Benny said, so that was mainly what she sang. She must have sung it five times an hour, day after day. At first she liked it but then it was like an infection, and there was nothing she could do and nowhere she could go without it running across her brain or humming on her lips, and God knew she tried; she was smashing herself with sex and drugs but the song began to find its way even there. One day, Benny played the opening chord and she just couldn’t do it. She could not sing that fucking song. Not again. She broke down, because she was only fifteen, and Benny took her behind the mall and told her it would be okay. But she had to sing. It was the biggest earner. She kind of lost it and then so did Benny and that was the first time he hit her. She ran away for a while. But she came back to him, because she had nothing else, and it seemed okay. It seemed like they had a truce: She would not complain about her bruised face and he would not ask her to sing “Lucy.” She had been all right with this. She had thought that was a pretty good deal. Now there was something coming out of a box, and she reached for the most virulent meme she knew. “Lucy in the sky!” she sang. “With diamonds!” • • •
Barry, Max. Lexicon: A Novel (pp. 247-248). |
Related material from Log24 on All Hallows' Eve 2013 —
"Just another shake of the kaleidoscope" —
Related material:
Kaleidoscope Puzzle,
Design Cube 2x2x2, and
Through the Looking Glass: A Sort of Eternity.
See also this journal on June 21st, 2013.
See also
This post was suggested by Log24 remarks on May 4, 2014,
the date of Garrett Lisi's Twitter post announcing the opening
of his Pacific Science Institute (see previous post).
Suggested by the previous post, "The Secret Life of Harry Albers" —
The fictional "Pacific Science Institute" in novels by Albers
seems to have appeared first in his Murder at Lake Tomahawk
(Dec. 14, 2000). Its name may or may not have influenced the
founder of the later non -fictional Pacific Science Institute —
A novel by Harry Albers featuring his fictional Pacific Science Institute:
See the real Pacific Science Institute (PSI) in the previous post.
Synchronology check —
Related literary remarks —
— Cloud Atlas , by David Mitchell (2004).
An alleged manifestation in physics, from Scientific American —
Manifestations in pure mathematics, from Plato and R. T. Curtis —
For some entertaining literary manifestations, see Wrinkle.
From The New York Times online on July 29 — " Ms. Appelbaum’s favorite authors, she said in an interview with The Internet Writing Journal in 1998, were too many to count, but they included George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Anne Tyler and Julian Barnes. 'I love to see writers expand our range of understanding, experience, knowledge, even happiness,' she said in that interview. 'Publishing has always struck me as a way to change the world.' " A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Judith Appelbaum, Guru On Publishing, Dies at 78. |
See a review of the new Anne Tyler novel Clock Dance
in today's online New York Times .
For a more abstract dance, see Ballet Blanc .
"A blank underlies the trials of device." — Wallace Stevens
“… I realized that to me, Gödel and Escher and Bach
were only shadows cast in different directions
by some central solid essence.
I tried to reconstruct the central object . . . ."
— Douglas Hofstadter (1979)
See also posts of July 23, 2007, and April 7, 2018.
* Term from a visual-culture lexicon —
"Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images.
Many academic fields study this subject, including
cultural studies, art history, critical theory, philosophy, media studies,
and anthropology." — Wikipedia
From the Wikipedia article on the 1994 film "North" —
"North is forced to ship himself home in a FedEx box.
He reaches his house … but as he runs toward his parents,
an assassin takes aim. As he squeezes the trigger,
North awakens in the mall, now empty. The Easter Bunny
takes him home . . . ."
The film's author —
Zweibel's FedEx box suggests a review of
the post Geometry for Goyim (June 6, 2018).
See the title phrase in this journal on Feb. 15, 2009, and
the blazon of the coat of arms of the University of York*
on the following day, Feb. 16, 2009 —
* See previous post.
Mary McCarthy's philosophical remark in the previous post
suggests further investigation of the number 281 . . .
Another way to secure 281 –
McCarthy's "materialization of plot and character" does not,
for me, constitute a proof that "there is being, after all,
beyond the arbitrary flux of existence."
Neither does the above materialization of 281 as the page
number of her philosophical remark.
See also the materialization of 281 as a page number in
the book Witchcraft by Charles Williams —
The materialization of 168 as a page number in a
Stephen King novel is somewhat more convincing,
but less convincing than the materialization of Klein's
simple group of of 168 elements in the eightfold cube.
From this afternoon's New York Times obituaries,
a paragraph on an author who reportedly died
Wednesday —
A 2016 Scribner edition of Stephen King's IT —
"We want every student to have a fulfilling experience
of higher education that enriches their lives and careers."
Sure you do.
Floyd: "You're trying to figure out this length.
That's the hypotenuse. So you have to
know this angle."
The title is suggested by a vintage 80's Wendy's commercial
featuring a Soviet fashion show.
For the svimwear itself, see recent items on the New York Times Wire .
Interview by Alice Lloyd George [AMLG] at techcrunch.com
In an interview for Flux, I sat down with Natalya Bailey [NB], the co-founder and CEO of Accion Systems. AMLG: When you talk about aliens I think of one of my favorite books by Carl Sagan — Contact. I don’t know if you ever watched the movie or read the book, but I picture you like Ellie in that film. She’s this brilliant scientist and stumbles across something big. NB: I’ve definitely seen it. I’m currently making my way through Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos again. AMLG: I love the original Cosmos. I’m a huge Carl Sagan fan, I love his voice, he’s so inspiring to listen to. Talking about books, I know you’re an avid reader. Did any books in particular influence you or your path to building Accion? NB: Well I’m a gigantic Harry Potter fan and a lot of things around Accion are named after various aspects of Harry Potter, including the name Accion itself. AMLG: Is that the Accio spell? The beckoning spell? NB: Yes exactly. My co-founder and I were g-chatting late one night on a weekend and looking through a glossary of Harry Potter spells trying to name the company. Accio, the summoning spell, if you add an “N” to the end of it, it becomes a concatenation between “accelerate” and “ion,” which is what we do. That’s the official story of how we named the company, but really it was from the glossary of spells. |
Related material — The Orbit Stabilizer Theorem.
See also the above date — April 17, 2017 —
in posts tagged Art Space.
Update of 10:30 PM ET the same day —
For some philosophical background, including an I Ching diagram, see . . .
See as well my own 8×8 diagram (1989) related to the I Ching .
Click to enlarge:
Above are the 7 frames of an animated gif from a Wikipedia article.
* For the Furey of the title, see a July 20 Quanta Magazine piece —
See also the eightfold cube in this journal.
"Before time began . . . ." — Optimus Prime
From the April 1st publication date of "Interality Shows Through,"
by Geling Shang —
See too yesterday's post Space.
"For many of us, the geometry course sounded the death knell — "Shape and Space in Geometry"
© 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved. |
The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (Columbia Series in Science and Religion)
|
A look at this publication was suggested by the previous post,
Raiders of the Hidden Dimensions.
From the Columbia University Press description of Hidden Dimensions —
— https://cup.columbia.edu/book/hidden-dimensions/9780231141505
For variations on these themes, see Batman Begins (2005)
and the trailer for Knight of Cups (2015) —
See as well this journal on the above YouTube date: May 17, 2010.
See "Route 6" in this journal.
From that search —
"Looking for what was, where it used to be"
— Wallace Stevens
"‘It’s like going backwards in time to the late 1950s."
— Norma Jean Thompson
Related material (click to enlarge) —
* Term from a recent Steven Spielberg film.
Click image to enlarge —
A portrait from the home page of David Eppstein,
a professor at the University of California, Irvine
“… how can an image with 8 points and 8 lines
possibly represent a space with 7 points and 7 lines???“
— David Eppstein, 21 December 2015
See ” Projective spaces as ‘collapsed vector spaces,’ ”
page 203 in Geometry and Symmetry by Paul B. Yale,
published by Holden-Day in 1968.
A search for the phrase "nonlinear Boolean algebra" yields few results.
"Nonlinear Boolean functions " seems to be the phrase intended.
On the mathematics of nonlinear Boolean functions —
A memorable death —
For those who prefer narrative to mathematics —
A related image —
From "Blackboard Jungle" (1955) —
Teacher:
– You see, music is based on mathematics,
and it's just that the next class …
:57:06
…is a little more advanced.
Students:
– We're advanced, teach.
:57:09
– Two times two is four.
– Are four.
Note the date of the above YouTube video.
From that same date, Friday, Jan. 13th, 2017 —
“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
From a cartoon graveyard on yesterday's date in 1957 —
For the photo opportunity of the Paul Simon song, see
my former sixth-grade teacher on that same 1957 page.
This journal on July 12, 2018 —
"Look, my favorite expression is,
'When you go up to the bell, ring it,
or don’t go up to the bell.' …
We’ve gone too far. We have to ring the bell."
— Mel Brooks on "The Producers"
in The New York Times today.
Epiphany 2012: An Exercise
in Bulk Apperception
This post was suggested by . . .
a New Orleans song as played by Bix Beiderbecke,
by a trailer for a new Zemeckis film that appeared at YouTube
on the way to the New Orleans song, and by
the longing for Bix by Mira Sorvino in "Intruders."
The YouTube Bix date, Jan. 6, 2012, suggested a trip back
to that date via a Zemeckis Cube (see "Ready Player One.")
From Log24 on Epiphany 2012 —
A version of the Zemeckis Cube —
From the Zemeckis trailer —
* See a Log24 search for Mira + Intruders.
From "The Educated Imagination: A Website Dedicated
to Northrop Frye" —
"In one of the notebooks for his first Bible book Frye writes,
'For at least 25 years I’ve been preoccupied by
the notion of a key to all mythologies.' . . . .
Frye made a valiant effort to provide a key to all mythology,
trying to fit everything into what he called the Great Doodle. . . ."
From a different page at the same website —
Here Frye provides a diagram of four sextets.
I prefer the Miracle Octad Generator of R. T. Curtis —
.
There is more than one kind of harassment.
For example —
A document linked to on June 20 by The New York Times :
This journal on the above arXiv date —
Today is World Emoji Day.
Another approach to hermeneutics —
From The New York Times on June 20, 2018 —
" In a widely read article published early this year on arXiv.org,
a site for scientific papers, Gary Marcus, a professor at
New York University, posed the question:
'Is deep learning approaching a wall?'
He wrote, 'As is so often the case, the patterns extracted
by deep learning are more superficial than they initially appear.' "
See as well an image from posts tagged Quantum Suffering . . .
The time above, 10:06:48 PM July 16, is when I saw …
"What you mean 'we,' Milbank?"
"The novel has a parallel narrative that eventually
converges with the main story."
— Wikipedia on a book by Foer's novelist brother
Public Squares
An image from the online New York Times
on the date, July 6,
of the above Atlantic article —
An image from "Blackboard Jungle," 1955 —
"Through the unknown, remembered gate . . . ."
"… Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, the Juilliard String Quartet,
and the Strand Book Store remained oases
for cultural and intellectual stimulation."
— John S. Friedman in The Forward , Jan. 21, 2018
Read more:
https://forward.com/culture/392483/
how-fred-bass-dan-talbot-robert-mann
-shaped-new-york-culture/
From the Oasis in Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One" (2018) —
I prefer, from a Log24 search for Flux Capacitor …
From "Raiders of the Lost Images" —
"The cube shape of the lost Mother Box,
also known as the Change Engine,
is shared by the Stone in a novel by
Charles Williams, Many Dimensions .
See the Solomon's Cube webpage."
A Warren, Pennsylvania, newspaper article from May 12, 2018,
“A terrorist among them,” quotes Ann Creal of Warren on
schooldays of the late 1950’s and on a German exchange student,
Gudrun Ensslin, who later became famous for her violent political
activities:
“She said Ensslin dated while here (the man
she identified as Ensslin’s date told the Times Observer
he had no recollection of her).”
I am the man that was identified as Ensslin’s date, and I still
have no recollection of her.
Ann Creal is the former Ann Fuellhart, who was a college freshman
in the fall of 1959, when I was a high school senior —
Ann Creal apparently confused me with Scott Mohr, who
graduated from Warren High School in 1958. See the Log24
posts Crux and Doppelgänger.
"Sweet Little Sixteen
She’s got the grown-up blues"
Related material — Hollywood Easter
The title is that of a fictional high school dance on November 12, 1955,
in the 1985 film “Back to the Future.”
A real high school dance from that era —
“The Class History was reviewed by Scott Mohr.”
See also Scott Mohr in Log24 posts tagged Back to the Future.
“… the Prom carried out a Moonlight and Roses theme….”
— Warren Times Mirror, Warren, PA, 2 June 1958, page 7 (above)
Related musical themes from a few years earlier —
See as well the 1955 film “Blackboard Jungle” in this journal.
*For some variations on the title theme, see Red October.
Linked to in a Log24 post of Jan. 21, 2008 —
"The Shining" dance scene from the 2018 film "Ready Player One" —
From a Log24 post earlier today —
From a Log24 post of Thursday, July 12, 2018 —
The walkerart.org passage above is from Feb. 17, 2011.
See also this journal on Feb. 17, 2011 —
"… Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness…."
— T. S. Eliot,
Four Quartets
For further details, see Time Fold.
From a Log24 post of March 13, 2003 —
"For many of us, the geometry course sounded the death knell — "Shape and Space in Geometry"
© 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved. |
"When I was a kid living in the Long Island suburbs,
I sometimes got called a math genius. I didn’t think
the label was apt, but I didn’t mind it; being put in
the genius box came with some pretty good perks."
— "The Genius Box," March 16, 2018
From posts in this journal tagged "Black Diamond" —
"All our words from loose using
have lost their edge."
— Ernest Hemingway
"Cut! That was mint!"
— Line from "Super 8" (2011)
Related material — posts tagged Blacklist Thread.
Three hidden keys open three secret gates
Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits
And those with the skill to survive these straits
Will reach The End where the prize awaits
— Ready Player One , by Ernest Cline
“Look, my favorite expression is,
‘When you go up to the bell, ring it,
or don’t go up to the bell.’ …
We’ve gone too far. We have to ring the bell.”
— Mel Brooks on “The Producers”
in The New York Times today.
A 2016 Scribner edition of Stephen King’s IT —
Related material —
Mystery box merchandise from the 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8
(and Stephen King)
"Imagine a world in which … you start watching a mini-series
so long that you will not know how it comes out until
your grandchildren start arriving in Paradise."
— Russell Baker, op-ed, The New York Times , Nov. 16, 1988
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