Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Trends
"The philosopher Jerry Fodor was important for the same reason
you’ve probably never heard of him: he was unimpressed,
to put it politely, by the intellectual trends of the day."
— Stephen Metcalf in The New Yorker , Dec. 12, 2017
See also "The French Invasion," a Dec. 11 Quarterly Conversation
essay about Derrida in Baltimore in 1966, and the Dec. 10 posts
in this journal tagged Interlacing Derrida. (The deplorable Derrida
trend is apparently still alive in Buffalo.)
According to Metcalf, Fodor's "occasional review-essays in the L.R.B.
were masterpieces of a plainspoken and withering sarcasm. To Steven
Pinker’s suggestion that we read fiction because ' it supplies us with a
mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday,' for
instance, Fodor replied, ' What if it turns out that, having just used the ring
that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my
new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to
continue to be immortal and rule the world? ' "
In the Fodor-Pinker dispute, my sympathies are with Pinker.
Related material — Google Sutra (the previous Log24 post) and earlier posts
found in a Log24 search for Ring + Bear + Jung —
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Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Google Sutra
Suggested by a Diamond Sutra webpage, by a recent Log24 post . . .
Logos for Philosophers
(Suggested by Modal Logic) —
. . . and by the Google Play Store logo —
For further details, see . . .
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Pivot
A Web search for "diamond pivot bright" yields . . .
An "irrational image" from Log24 (Nov. 26, 2002) —
"The beautiful in mathematics resides in contradiction.
Incommensurability, logoi alogoi , was the first splendor
in mathematics."
— Simone Weil, Oeuvres Choisies ,
éd. Quarto, Gallimard, 1999, p. 100
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Monday, December 11, 2017
A Diamond Metaphor
For some remarks related to the title, see Black + Algebra + Metaphor.
There is apparently no relationship between Scholze's metaphor
and my own use of the word "diamond" in finite geometry.
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The Diamond Theorem at SASTRA
The following IEEE paper is behind a paywall,
but the first page is now available for free
at deepdyve.com —
For further details on the diamond theorem, see
finitegeometry.org/sc/ or the archived version at . . .
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Sunday, December 10, 2017
Geometry
See also Symplectic in this journal.
From Gotay and Isenberg, “The Symplectization of Science,”
Gazette des Mathématiciens 54, 59-79 (1992):
“… what is the origin of the unusual name ‘symplectic’? ….
Its mathematical usage is due to Hermann Weyl who,
in an effort to avoid a certain semantic confusion, renamed
the then obscure ‘line complex group’ the ‘symplectic group.’
… the adjective ‘symplectic’ means ‘plaited together’ or ‘woven.’
This is wonderfully apt….”
The above symplectic figure appears in remarks on
the diamond-theorem correlation in the webpage
Rosenhain and Göpel Tetrads in PG(3,2). See also
related remarks on the notion of linear (or line ) complex
in the finite projective space PG(3,2) —
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Numbers
See also The Derrida Reader: Writing Performances, edited by
Julian Wolfreys (U. of Nebraska Press, 1998), pages 112-113,
discussed here in the previous two posts, and this journal on
1/12-1/13. Related material: Polytropos .
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Algebra
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Interlacing, Interweaving
The above title should be sung to the following tune —
"Right through hell
there is a path…."
— Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano
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Ahem
(Click to enlarge. Note the infinity favicon.)
" Indeed, one might say that it is possible (ahem ), in another world,
for this article to have been entitled, 'The modal logic of various
set-theoretic multiverse conceptions.' "
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Saturday, December 9, 2017
Lackaday Quotation
The previous post discussed an alleged description by
William H. Gass of his fellow author Malcolm Lowry as
"a black magician."
In defense of Gass, it seems that quote is inaccurate:
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Friday, December 8, 2017
Mythos and Logos
Part I: Black Magician
"Schools of criticism create their own canons, elevating certain texts,
discarding others. Yet some works – Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano
is one of them – lend themselves readily to all critical approaches."
— Joan Givner, review of
A Darkness That Murmured: Essays on Malcolm Lowry and the Twentieth Century
by Frederick Asals and Paul Tiessen, eds.
The Asals-Tiessen book (U. of Toronto Press, 2000) was cited today
by Margaret Soltan (in the link below) as the source of this quotation —
"When one thinks of the general sort of snacky
under-earnest writers whose works like wind-chimes
rattle in our heads now, it is easier to forgive Lowry
his pretentious seriousness, his old-fashioned ambitions,
his Proustian plans, [his efforts] to replace the reader’s
consciousness wholly with a black magician’s."
A possible source, Perle Epstein, for the view of Lowry as black magician —
Part II: Mythos and Logos
Part I above suggests a review of Adam Gopnik as black magician
(a figure from Mythos ) —
|
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Polarities and Correlation
|
— and of an opposing figure from Logos ,
Paul B. Yale, in the references below:
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Logos (Continued)
"Denn die Welt braucht ewig die Wahrheit,
also braucht sie ewig Heraklit:
obschon er ihrer nicht bedarf.
Was geht ihn sein Ruhm an?
Der Ruhm bei »immer fortfließenden Sterblichen!«,
wie er höhnisch ausruft.
Sein Ruhm geht die Menschen etwas an, nicht ihn,
die Unsterblichkeit der Menschheit braucht ihn,
nicht er die Unsterblichkeit des Menschen Heraklit.
Das, was er schaute, die Lehre vom Gesetz im Werden
und vom Spiel in der Notwendigkeit , muß von jetzt
ab ewig geschaut werden: er hat von diesem größten
Schauspiel den Vorhang aufgezogen."
Logos for Philosophers
(Suggested by Modal Logic) —
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Thursday, December 7, 2017
William H. Gass reportedly died on December 6
"William H. Gass, a proudly postmodern author
who valued form and language
more than literary conventions
like plot and character
and who had a broad influence
on other experimental writers
of the 1960s, ’70s and beyond,
died on Wednesday in St. Louis. He was 93."
— Dee Wedemeyer, The New York Times ,
12:40 AM ET Thursday, December 7, 2017
"Mr. Gass was widely credited with coining the term
'metafiction' to describe writing in which the author
is part of the story. He himself was one of the form’s
foremost practitioners." — ibid.
See as well yesterday's Log24 post and
Discovery of Heaven in this journal.
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Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Scully on Architecture
"It is not easy to set aside firmly seated preconceptions
in order to look at old material with fresh eyes —
hardest of all to face facts which, if true, are
so obvious and simple that they should patently have been
recognized long before."
— Vincent Scully, preface to the 1969 edition of
The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture
See also, in this journal, Slave Boy.
Update of 10:30 PM ET —
This post was suggested by the following eulogy:
"All work and no play . . . ." — The Shining
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Bucharest for Kinbote
New York Times online headline this afternoon —
King Michael of Romania Is Dead at 96
See as well . . .
Log24 posts on Bucharest.
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Space Tune
Wikipedia on "Dancing in the Moonlight" —
"The song was played as a wake-up call for Daniel M. Tani,
an astronaut on board the STS-120: Discovery mission
headed for the International Space Station,
on the early morning of October 24, 2007."
See also Log24 on October 24, 2007.
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Monday, December 4, 2017
In the Service of Narrative
See also posts tagged May 19 Gestalt.
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Sunday, December 3, 2017
The Unreliable Narrator
"We are very much within the mind of an unreliable narrator . . . ."
— Jim Holt, "Obsessive-Genius Disorder,"
NYT Sunday Book Review , Sept. 3, 2006
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Saturday, December 2, 2017
Friday, December 1, 2017
The Architect and the Matrix
In memory of Yale art historian Vincent Scully, who reportedly
died at 97 last night at his home in Lynchburg, Va., some remarks
from the firm of architect John Outram and from Scully —
Update from the morning of December 2 —
The above 3×3 figure is of course not unrelated to
the 4×4 figure in The Matrix for Quantum Mystics:
.
See as well Tsimtsum in this journal.
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Thursday, November 30, 2017
Far Out
"Archimedes thought that he could move the world
if only he could get outside of it, and the same idea
inspires writers in the transcendental genre of fiction.
Find some place sufficiently far out and put your fulcrum there."
— The late Jerry Fodor, who reportedly died on Nov. 29, 2017
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The Matrix for Quantum Mystics
Scholia on the title — See Quantum + Mystic in this journal.
"In Vol. I of Structural Anthropology , p. 209, I have shown that
this analysis alone can account for the double aspect of time
representation in all mythical systems: the narrative is both
'in time' (it consists of a succession of events) and 'beyond'
(its value is permanent)." — Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1976
I prefer the earlier, better-known, remarks on time by T. S. Eliot
in Four Quartets , and the following four quartets (from
The Matrix Meets the Grid) —
.
From a Log24 post of June 26-27, 2017:
A work of Eddington cited in 1974 by von Franz —
See also Dirac and Geometry and Kummer in this journal.
Ron Shaw on Eddington's triads "associated in conjugate pairs" —
For more about hyperbolic and isotropic lines in PG(3,2),
see posts tagged Diamond Theorem Correlation.
For Shaw, in memoriam — See Contrapuntal Interweaving and The Fugue.
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Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Definitions
See also Inscape in this journal and, for a related Chapel Hill thesis,
the post Kummer and Dirac.
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The Room
The concluding instance of a search for "the room"
in this journal (from Mike Nichols's birthday, 2002) —
"His visitor sat upright, oppressed by the silence,
acutely conscious that the doors to the room were locked."
— Recreation by Sylvia Nasar of a scene starring
mathematicians George Mackey and John Nash.
See also today's previous post, Perhaps Not Strange Enough.
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Perhaps Not Strange Enough
See also Mackey + Nash in this journal.
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Tuesday, November 28, 2017
For Quantum Mystics
"An awful lot of important dualities in four and fewer dimensions
follow from this six-dimensional theory and its properties."
— Edward Witten, interviewed by Natalie Wolchover,
in Quanta Magazine on November 28, 2017
See also Six Dimensions in this journal.
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Monday, November 27, 2017
The Golay Code via Witt’s Construction
Hansen, Robert Peter, "Construction and Simplicity of
the Large Mathieu Groups" (2011). Master's Theses. 4053.
http://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4053.
See also The Matrix Meets the Grid (Log24, Nov. 24).
More generally, see SPLAG in this journal.
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Sunday, November 26, 2017
Upper West Side Story:
The Linotype Fixer
( Sequel to "The Typewriter Fixer" * )
From The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017 —
* "The Typewriter Fixer" refers to a typewriter repair shop
on New York's Upper West Side —
The Hollywood Reporter 's promotional piece above is from
Tuesday, November 7, 2017. For another meditation suited to
the Upper West Side, see this journal on that date —
|
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Polarities and Correlation
|
Comments Off on Upper West Side Story:
Saturday, November 25, 2017
Night at the Museum
The previous post suggests a review of remarks by Adam Gopnik
in The New Yorker on February 27, 2017 on "The Matrix" hypothesis—
"The thesis that we are in a simulation is, as people who
track such things know—my own college-age son has
explained it to me—far from a joke, or a mere conceit.
The argument, actually debated at length at the
American Museum of Natural History just last year, is that
the odds are overwhelming that ours is a simulated universe.
The argument is elegant."
No, it is not.
See as well my own remarks on the date of the above museum debate —
Tuesday, April 5, 2016.
From those remarks, a Halloween 2014 image that provides a
companion-piece to the "Easy E" of today's previous post —
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E-Elements
German mathematician Wolf Barth reportedly died
on December 30, 2016.
Flashback to this journal on that date * —
|
From "The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic" —
"The following June, 1945, von Neumann penned Image from von Neumann's report —
Version converted to text —
|
* And, of course, to the later post Easy E for Cullinan (Feb. 28, 2017).
Cullinan, second from left below, is the now-famous Oscars accountant.
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Friday, November 24, 2017
Scholia
From this evening's online New York Times :
"Eric Salzman, a composer and music critic who
championed a new art form, music theater,
that was neither opera nor stage musical, died
on Nov. 12 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 84."
. . . .
"The first American Music Theater Festival
took place in the summer of 1984.
Among that first festival’s featured works was
'Strike Up the Band!,' Mr. Salzman’s 'reconstructed
and adapted' version of a satirical musical
with a score by George and Ira Gershwin
that had not been staged in 50 years. The director
of that production, Frank Corsaro, died
the day before Mr. Salzman did."
Synchronology check :
"The day before" above was November 11, 2017.
Links from this journal on November 11 —
A Log24 search for Michael Sudduth and an
October 28, 2017, Facebook post by Sudduth.
Detail of Sudduth's Nov. 11 Facebook home page —
Click the above for an enlarged view of the Sudduth profile picture.
Related material :
Aooo.
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The Typewriter Fixer
Adelman reportedly died on Wednesday, November 22, 2017.
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The Matrix Meets the Grid
The Matrix —
The Grid —
Picturing the Witt Construction —
"Read something that means something." — New Yorker ad
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Thursday, November 23, 2017
The Matrix
David Brooks in The New York Times today —
"We once had a unifying national story, celebrated each Thanksgiving.
It was an Exodus story. Americans are the people who escaped oppression,
crossed a wilderness and are building a promised land. The Puritans brought
this story with them. Each wave of immigrants saw themselves in this story.
The civil rights movement embraced this story.
But we have to admit that many today do not resonate with this story. . . .
Today, we have no common national narrative, no shared way
of interpreting the flow of events. Without a common story,
we don’t know what our national purpose is. We have no
common set of goals or ideals.
We need a new national narrative."
From a post of August 15, 2010 —
For some background, see Java Jive and Today's Theology.
Related readings —
From 1928:
From the previous post:
"Thus, instead of Propp's chronological scheme,
in which the order of succession of events
is a feature of the structure . . .
another scheme should be adopted, which would present
a structural model defined as the group of transformations
of a small number of elements. This scheme would appear
as a matrix . . . ."
— Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1960
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Lévi-Strauss vs. Propp
| Claude Lévi-Strauss
From his “Structure and Form: To maintain. as I have done. that the permutability of contents is not arbitrary amounts to saying that, if the analysis is carried to a sufficiently deep level, behind diversity we will discover constancy. And, of course. the avowed constancy of form must not hide from us that functions are also permutable. The structure of the folktale as it is illustrated by Propp presents a chronological succession of qualitatively distinct functions. each constituting an independent genre. One can wonder whether—as with dramatis personae and their attributes— Propp does not stop too soon, seeking the form too close to the level of empirical observation. Among the thirty-one functions that he distinguishes, several are reducible to the same function reappearing at different moments of the narrative but after undergoing one or a number of transformations . I have already suggested that this could be true of the false hero (a transformation of the villain), of assigning a difficult task (a transformation of the test), etc. (see p. 181 above), and that in this case the two parties constituting the fundamental tale would themselves be transformations of each other. Nothing prevents pushing this reduction even further and analyzing each separate partie into a small number of recurrent functions, so that several of Propp’s functions would constitute groups of transformations of one and the same function. We could treat the “violation” as the reverse of the “prohibition” and the latter as a negative transformation of the “injunction.” The “departure” of the hero and his “return” would appear as the negative and positive expressions of the same disjunctive function. The “quest” of the hero (hero pursues someone or something) would become the opposite of “pursuit” (hero is pursued by something or someone), etc.
In Vol. I of Structural Anthropology , p. 209, I have shown that this analysis alone can account for the double aspect of time representation in all mythical systems: the narrative is both “in time” (it consists of a succession of events) and “beyond” (its value is permanent). With regard to Propp’s theories my analysis offers another advantage: I can reconcile much better than Propp himself his principle of a permanent order of wondertale elements with the fact that certain functions or groups of functions are shifted from one tale to the next (pp. 97-98. p. 108) If my view is accepted, the chronological succession will come to be absorbed into an atemporal matrix structure whose form is indeed constant. The shifting of functions is then no more than a mode of permutation (by vertical columns or fractions of columns). These critical remarks are certainly valid for the method used by Propp and for his conclusions. However. it cannot be stressed enough that Propp envisioned them and in several places formulated with perfect clarity the solutions I have just suggested. Let us take up again from this viewpoint the two essential themes of our discussion: constancy of the content (in spite of its permutability) and permutability of functions (in spite of their constancy). * Translated from a 1960 work in French. It appeared in English as Chapter VIII |
See also “Lévi-Strauss” + Formula in this journal.
Some background related to the previous post —
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Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Goethe on All Souls’ Day
David E. Wellbery on Goethe
From an interview published on 2 November 2017 at
http://literaturwissenschaft-berlin.de/interview-with-david-wellbery/
as later republished in
The logo at left above is that of The Point .
The menu icon at right above is perhaps better
suited to illustrate Verwandlungslehre .
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The Prize
Bernd Sturmfels to Receive 2018
George David Birkhoff Prize in Applied Mathematics
— American Mathematical Society on
Monday, November 20th, 2017
See also Sturmfels and Birkhoff + Geometry in this journal.
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“Design is how it works” — Steve Jobs
News item from this afternoon —
The above phrase "mapping systems" suggests a review
of my own very different "map systems." From a search
for that phrase in this journal —
See also "A Four-Color Theorem: Function Decomposition
Over a Finite Field."
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Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Provocative Exhibitions
Wikipedia on a figure from the previous post —
" Antonelli was recognized with an AIGA Medal in 2015
for 'expanding the influence of design in everyday life
by sharing fresh and incisive observations and
curating provocative exhibitions at MoMA'.[4] She was
rated one of the one hundred most powerful people in
the world of art by Art Review and Surface Magazine.[5] "
Speaking of exhibitions —
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Monday, November 20, 2017
Dating Charlie*
Washington Post dateline . . .
November 20 at 6:34 PM
Address . . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/
eight-women-say-charlie-rose-sexually-harassed-them–
with-nudity-groping-and-lewd-calls/2017/11/20/ . . .
See also Charlie Rose in this journal.
The only post found in a Log24 search for "Charlie Rose" is about
his May 7, 2008, interview with a Museum of Modern Art figure,
Paola Antonelli. A more recent appearance by Antonelli —
Synchronolgy check — Log24 on the date 5 June 2012.
* Title and wording of post revised the following day.
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Snowflake
Made-up quote from an imaginary celebrity
in today's online New York Times —
"Lighten up and enjoy the act, snowflake."
Related material —
Ending Credits, a Log24 post of Jan. 26, 2015.
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Sunday, November 19, 2017
Nightmare for Midsummer
In memory of a Brooklyn art figure who reportedly killed himself
on November 9, 2017 —
From an obituary linked to here in a post, "Information from the Middle
of the Night," at 2:02 AM ET on June 23, 2017 —
"In 1976, Ms. DeAk, with Mr. Robinson, Sol LeWitt and
Lucy Lippard, helped found Printed Matter, a publisher
and distributor of artists’ books."
"A version of this article appears in print on June 23, 2017,
on Page B15 of the New York edition with the headline:
Edit DeAk, a Champion of Artists Outside the Mainstream,
Dies at 68."
Related material —
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Galois Space
This is a sequel to yesterday's post Cube Space Continued.
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Other Entertainment
Suggested by the previous post …
" 'Dark Horse' is a song recorded by American singer
Katy Perry featuring rapper Juicy J. It was originally
released on September 17, 2013, by Capitol Records
as the first promotional single from Perry's fourth
studio album, Prism (2013)."
See also a link from the above date in this journal —
"In the Neighborhood of Mathematical Space,"
by Karen Shenfeld (1993).
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Review
"New to the series are the Trials of the Gods events
that pit players against Ancient Egyptian gods."
— Review of the new game Assassin's Creed: Origins
"How much story do you want?" — George Balanchine
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Saturday, November 18, 2017
Cube Space Continued
James Propp in the current Math Horizons on the eightfold cube —
For another puerile approach to the eightfold cube,
see Cube Space, 1984-2003 (Oct. 24, 2008).
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Thursday, November 16, 2017
Orison
The title, which of course means "Prayer,"
may also mean "Smartphone" — See
other Log24 posts tagged Orisons.
Detail from a Log24 post on May 21, 2005 —
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Lost Horizon
Comments Off on Lost Horizon
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Orison as Smartphone
— Cloud Atlas , by David Mitchell (2004).
See also the previous post as well as
other posts now tagged Orisons.
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In Thy Orisons
Midrash from
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/
showthread.php?16457-Decoding-Shakespeare —
"It's an extremely complicated scene that needs a great deal of discussion
to fully appreciate. But essentially, Hamlet is arguing 'beauty' versus 'truth.'
And notice that Hamlet bases his whole argument on how beautiful Ophelia is,
as he sees her. There's the old saying, and it's perfectly true, that beauty is in
the eye of the beholder. As Hamlet looks at Ophelia, she's the most beautiful
thing he ever saw.
So we know how Hamlet feels about Ophelia, no matter what he says. When
he says he doesn't love her, he's lying through his teeth. If he didn't love her,
she wouldn't look so beautiful to him.
The Nunnery Scene is one of the great scenes in all of literature, and it's
beastly intricate and complicated. It's Hamlet's logical argument about truth
versus beauty, and as he says it to Ophelia, he's lyin' like a dog."
— "Amleth," 03-28-2006, 08:55 PM
See also this journal on that date.
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Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Dissident Bunk
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Monday, November 13, 2017
Plan 9 at Yale
Yale Professors Race Google and IBM to the First Quantum Computer
"So, after summer, in the autumn air,
Comes the cold volume* of forgotten ghosts,
But soothingly, with pleasant instruments,
So that this cold, a children's tale of ice,
Seems like a sheen of heat romanticized."
— Wallace Stevens,
"An Ordinary Evening in New Haven"
* Update of 10:20 the same evening:
|
An alternative to The Snow Queen On The King in the Window , by Adam Gopnik —
"The book is dedicated to Adam Gopnik's son,
'A fantasy that is as ambitious in theme,
The unlikely eponymous hero is Oliver Parker,
His enemy is the dreaded Master of Mirrors,
Oliver's mission is to defeat the Master of Mirrors — Description at https://biblio.co.nz/. . . . |
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New from Harlan Kane
Comments Off on New from Harlan Kane
In Nomine Patris
See also Norbert Wiener in this journal and …
Related material for the Church of Synchronology —
The Log24 post on the above New York Times death date.
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Sunday, November 12, 2017
Alice
John Malkovich in the closing scene of
the recent film "Unlocked" —
1055
01:31:49,801 –> 01:31:53,301
We have time for a coffee.
There's a pastry shop by the river.
1056
01:31:54,092 –> 01:31:55,842
Excellent strudel.
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Review
|
Sunday, October 29, 2017
File System… Unlocked
|
See as well Chloë Grace Moretz portraying a schoolgirl problem.
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Meta Property
<meta property="article:published" itemprop="datePublished"
content="2017-11-12T12:05:08-05:00" />
Related entertainment —
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Devil’s Music
From the groom in the previous post — Swedenborg Chapel —
And from November 7 last year —
Monday, November 7, 2016
Subway Art for Times Square ChurchFiled under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 9:11 PM
Click images for related material. |
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Saturday, November 11, 2017
For Your Consideration
From today's online Wall Street Journal —
A synchronology check of the above 2015 Taylor Swift date —
The above remarks suggest Swift as a possible presidential candidate:
From The Harvard Crimson on Halloween —
.
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Dating
Related material —
Michael Sudduth in this journal and an October 28, 2017,
Facebook post by Sudduth.
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Friday, November 10, 2017
The Rogin Gambit
See today's New York Times Rogin obituary.
"What happens next?"
Good question.
See also this journal on November 4.
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A Mathematician’s Apology
(Click to enlarge.)
For the paper on Steiner systems, see the bibliographic link in
the previous Log24 post.
See as well Cameron's posts before and after his post above:
Comments Off on A Mathematician’s Apology
Annals of Rarefied Scholarship
From Cambridge Core, suggested by a reference to
that website in the previous post and by the following
bibliographic data . . .
https://doi.org/10.1017/fmp.2016.5
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core
on 10 Nov 2017 at 19:06:19
See Conwell + Princeton in this journal.
Related art —
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Style
“Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88) is, by any measure, an obscure figure,
little known outside the exclusive circles of a certain very rarefied kind of
scholarship, hardly read at all even in his native Germany, and perhaps
truly understood by next to no one. And yet . . . .”
— “The Laughter of the Philosophers,” by David Bentley Hart,
First Things , January 2005
Update at 7 the same morning . . .
Meanwhile, back in 1963 —
… and at 7:15 the same morning, from a different Cambridge —
Comments Off on Style
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Aesthetics: A Reading
See also posts from St. Andrew's Day now tagged "In Nuce."
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Anti-Christian Rumor at St. Andrews
The St. Andrews in Focus article is not available online.
That periodical is not affiliated with the University of St. Andrews.
A University of St. Andrews source — "Honorary Reader" Peter Maxwell-Stuart —
contradicts the above tale about the Archbishop of St. Andrews.
See his scholarly account in the following book —
See particularly pages 98, 99, 100, 101,
102, 103, 104, 105, 106, and 107.
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Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Polarities and Correlation
"Read something that means something."
— New Yorker ad
.
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The Seventh Symbol Revisited
The above square is from
a post of Aug. 30, 2006.
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Monday, November 6, 2017
The Chomsky Koan
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is a sentence
composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book
Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence
that is grammatically correct, but semantically nonsensical."
— Wikipedia article on the sentence
Buddhist midrash from The New York Times today —
"For example, psychology has lately started to let go of its
once-sharp distinction between 'cognitive' and 'affective'
parts of the mind; it has started to see that feelings are so
finely intertwined with thoughts as to be part of their very
coloration."
See also other recent Log24 posts now tagged Coloration.
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Castle Rock…
… According to a comment on the latest Instagram
post of Oslo artist Josefine Lyche —
🏰💎.
See also "Castle Rock" in this journal.
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Babble On
A midrash on the previous post, "Spectrum at the Center" . . .
In lieu of Judy Garland singing "Somewhere Over the Spectrum,"
a flashback to a post from 2013 —
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Babble On
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Sunday, November 5, 2017
Spectrum at the Center
The top article in the New York Times Wire list below is about
a new play that opened at the Sheen Center on All Souls' Day.
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Trinity
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Saturday, November 4, 2017
Seven-Cycles in an Octad
Figures from a search in this journal for Springer Knight
and from the All Souls' Day post The Trojan Pony —
For those who prefer pure abstraction to the quasi-figurative
1985 seven-cycle above, a different 7-cycle for M24 , from 1998 —
Compare and contrast with my own "knight" labeling
of a 4-row 2-column array (an M24 octad, in the system
of R. T. Curtis) by the 8 points of the projective line
over GF(7), from 2008 —
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Friday, November 3, 2017
Thursday, November 2, 2017
The Trojan Pony
From a search in this journal for Springer Knight —
Related material from Academia —
See also Log24 posts from the above "magic" date,
December 4, 2014, now tagged The Pony Argument.
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Of Many Changes
Thanks to Emily Wilson and Wyatt Mason for an excellent
discussion in today's online New York Times on Wilson's
new translation of Homer's Odyssey (to be released Nov. 7).
A detail from the Wilson-Mason article —
-
The translation of the Greek adjective polytropos as
" Herbert Bates’s 'of many changes.' " [Links added.]
See as well …
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History of Mathematics for All Souls’ Day
Schoolgirl Problem
"Buy this image" . . . Or not.
Related material from the date of the above photo —
For related drama, see "Child's Play" in this journal.
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Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Many Years
From Tony Phillips's American Mathematical Society column
for November 2017 —
" It is significant that the authors chose to place this announcement
of their results not in a mathematics journal but in one aimed at a
much larger scientific audience; their writing is appropriately
expository, especially in the introduction. Nature itself ran an
assessment of the paper in their 'News and Views' section,
October 4: 'Mathematics: A pariah finds a home,' by Terry Gannon.
Gannon sets the stage, again in terms suitable for wide consumption,
and sketches out the story. He ends 'It is always difficult to gauge
the importance of a mathematical result without the hindsight
that many years brings. Nevertheless, Duncan et al. have shown us
a door. Whether it is to a new closet, house or world, we cannot yet say,
but the results are certainly unexpected, and no one will think of
the pariahs in the same way again.' "
See as well Log24 on the above date — Text and Context.
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Cameron on All Saints’ Day
"Nowdays, Halloween involves plastic figures of ghosts and bats
bought from the supermarket; this is driven by commerce and
in some people’s view is an American import. But it is clear that
this time of year was traditionally regarded as one where the barrier
between this world and the other was low, and supernatural
manifestations were to be expected."
Remarks related to another "barrier" and vértigo horizontal —
See also a search for Horizon + "Western Australia" in this journal.
From that search: A sort of horizon, a "line at infinity," that is perhaps
more meaningful to most Cameron readers than the above remarks
by Borges —
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Aleph Meets Zahir
For the "Aleph" of the title in the seal of
the College of the Desert, see the final post
in a search for the College in this journal.
A better-known Aleph appears in a story by Borges.
See Borges + Aleph in this journal.
For the "Zahir" of the title, see another story by Borges
and the coin scenes in the films "No Country for Old Men"
(2007) and "Mojave" (2015).
The word "Zahir" has appeared previously in this journal
in a post of January 11, 2011, Soul and Spirit.
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Tuesday, October 31, 2017
One Fell Shmoop
https://www.shmoop.com/no-country-for-old-men/coin-symbol.html —
"You know the date on this coin?"
Related material —
This journal on March 7, 2014 —
From Klein’s 1893 Lectures on Mathematics —
“The varieties introduced by Wirtinger may be called
Kummer varieties….” — E. Spanier, 1956
From the "varieties introduced by Wirtinger" link above —
.
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For All Hallows’ Eve
See the previous post and College of the Desert in this journal.
From the latter, see particularly Slide 69 in Geoff Hagopian's Symmetry.
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Monday, October 30, 2017
For Devil’s Night
From a Los Angeles Times piece on Epiphany (Jan. 6), 1988 —
“Some 30 paces east of the spooky old Chateau Marmont is
the intersection of Selma and Sunset Boulevard.” . . . .
“Though it is not much of an intersection, the owner of
the liquor store on that corner might resent that you have
slotted his parking lot in the Twilight Zone. . . .
And directly across Sunset from Selma looking south is
where the infamous Garden of Allah used to stand. . . .”
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The Lore and Language of Dan Brown
In memory of two beloved folklorists —
"Iona Opie, a British folklorist who worked with her husband,
Peter, to produce major studies of nursery rhymes as well as
the oral traditions of games, jokes, nicknames, taunts and
pranks among schoolchildren, died on Oct. 23 in the town of
Petersfield, in Hampshire, England. She was 94."
— The New York Times this evening
Scholium on this journal's remarks of October 23 —
"Hello there, Dapper Dan, where were you when …."
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Plato and His Modern Rivals
The previous post's Lewis Carroll cover,
modified to illustrate Plato's diamond —
See also "To Forge
a Head" (Oct. 27).
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Sunday, October 29, 2017
Rivals
The passage from Lewis Carroll's Euclid and His Modern Rivals
in the previous post suggests two illustrations —
Click the Trudeau book for related Log24 posts.
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File System… Unlocked
Logo from the above webpage —
See also the similar structure of the eightfold cube, and …
Related dialogue from the new film "Unlocked" —
1057
01:31:59,926 –> 01:32:01,301
Nice to have you back, Alice.
1058
01:32:04,009 –> 01:32:05,467
Don't be a stranger.
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Sunday in the Park
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Damnation… Or Not?
Related material —
Faust Vivifies Death with Wit and Humor
by April H. N. Yee, Harvard Crimson , Feb. 7, 2008.
See as well all posts now tagged Willow and Mandorla.
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Saturday, October 28, 2017
Lowell Brown at Vanity Fair
A sequel to the post CP is for Consolation Prize (Sept. 3, 2016)
An image from Log24 on this date last year:
A recent comment on a discussion of CP symmetry —
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Dating Harvard
(Continued from 10 AM)
"Think of a DO NOT ENTER pictogram,
a circle with a diagonal slash, a type of ideogram.
It tells you what to do or not do, but not why.
The why is part of a larger context, a bigger picture."
— Customer review at Amazon.com
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Layered and Crisscrossed
The title is from the previous post —
"It’s an aesthetic that presents,
so to speak, just the facts,
as if the facts themselves weren’t
deeply layered with living history
and crisscrossed with vectors
of divergent ideas and ideals."
— Richard Brody, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2017
From Brody's New Yorker contributor page —
"Reading List: Richard Brody recommends
Louis Menand’s “Browbeaten,” about Dwight Macdonald."
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Just the Facts
The New Yorker on the recent film "The Square" —
"It’s an aesthetic that presents,
so to speak, just the facts,
as if the facts themselves weren’t
deeply layered with living history
and crisscrossed with vectors
of divergent ideas and ideals."
— Richard Brody, Thursday, Oct. 26, 2017
For other images deeply layered and crisscrossed ,
see Geometry of the I Ching.
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Friday, October 27, 2017
To Forge a Head
The title was suggested by a 2014 Vanity Fair piece
by James Toback (Harvard '66).
"He squinted at this vision of a Qualityless world for a while,
conjured up more details, thought about it, and then squinted
some more and thought some more and then finally circled
back to where he was before.
Squareness.
That's the look. That sums it. Squareness. When you subtract
quality you get squareness. Absence of Quality is the essence
of squareness."
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
And when you add quality?
A related Zen joke from Final Club (June 19, 2017) —
.
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Thursday, October 26, 2017
To Forge Ahead
"Harvard Man" director James Toback (Harvard '66) in 2014 —
See also, in this journal, Preparation (April 1, 2013) —
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A Center
This post was suggested by a New York Times obituary this evening —
"Tom Mathews, Promoter of Liberal Causes and Candidates, Dies at 96."
Mathews reportedly died on October 14, 2017.
"Mr. Mathews and his business partner Roger Craver 'dreamed for years
of finding the perfect citizen-candidate,' the authors wrote, 'a man or
woman of the center-left with a feel for issues, a history of independence,
a winning television manner and, most important of all, a center — a core
of beliefs more important to him or her than getting elected.'
Dream on.
From the date of Mathews's death:
Posts now tagged A Center for Krauss —
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Wednesday, October 25, 2017
To the Egress
The New York Times at 8:22 PM ET —
"Knight Landesman, a longtime publisher of Artforum magazine
and a power broker in the art world, resigned on Wednesday
afternoon, hours after a lawsuit was filed in New York accusing
him of sexually harassing at least nine women in episodes that
stretched back almost a decade."
See as well, in this journal, Way to the Egress.
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The Palo Alto Edge
From Stanford — The death on October 9, 2017, of a man who
“always wanted to be at the most cutting of cutting-edge technology.”
Related material from Log24 on April 26, 2017 —
A sketch, adapted from Girl Scouts of Palo Alto —
Click the sketch for further details.
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The Source (Not by Michener)
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Wikipedia: Taiji (philosophy) Etymology The word 太極 comes from I Ching : "易有太極，是生兩儀，兩儀生四象，四象生八卦，八卦定吉凶，吉凶生大業。" Taiji (太極) is a compound of tai 太 "great; grand; supreme; extreme; very; too" (a superlative variant of da 大 "big; large; great; very") and ji 極 "pole; roof ridge; highest/utmost point; extreme; earth's pole; reach the end; attain; exhaust". In analogy with the figurative meanings of English pole, Chinese ji 極 "ridgepole" can mean "geographical pole; direction" (e.g., siji 四極 "four corners of the earth; world's end"), "magnetic pole" (Beiji 北極 "North Pole" or yinji 陰極 "negative pole; cathode"), or "celestial pole" (baji 八極 "farthest points of the universe; remotest place"). Combining the two words, 太極 means "the source, the beginning of the world". Common English translations of the cosmological Taiji are the "Supreme Ultimate" (Le Blanc 1985, Zhang and Ryden 2002) or "Great Ultimate" (Chen 1989, Robinet 2008); but other versions are the "Supreme Pole" (Needham and Ronan 1978), "Great Absolute", or "Supreme Polarity" (Adler 1999). |
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Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Visual Insight
The most recent post in the "Visual Insight" blog of the
American Mathematical Society was by John Baez on Jan. 1, 2017 —
A visually related concept — See Solomon's Cube in this journal.
Chronologically related — Posts now tagged New Year's Day 2017.
Solomon's cube is the 4x4x4 case of the diamond theorem —
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