Log24

(Continued from yesterday afternoon)

From yesterday's online New York Times  (5:59 PM ET)—

"Tenser, said the tensor…"

" What you mean 'we' ? "

The late Colin Wilson appears at the head
of this afternoon's New York Times  obituaries —

Margalit Fox's description this afternoon of 
Wilson's first book, from 1956—

"The Outsider  had an aim no less ambitious
than its scope: to delineate the meaning of
human existence."

This suggests a review of Log24 posts on "The Zero Theorem"
that yields—

See also Log24 on the date of Wilson's death.

Related material: Devil's Night, 2011.

"My God, it's full of numbers!"

For the late Jim Hall—

Backstory:   Icon, 1:44 PM ET today.

Update of 11 PM ET Dec. 10, 2013 — 

For all  the notes, see Da Capo  (11 AM today)
and the Cullinane frequency matrix (12×12).

Matrix used to illustrate the well-tempered
scale. The integer frequency-ratio values
are only approximate in such a scale.

"Let’s love, and kill like 17 now."
— AFI song, soundtrack of "City of Bones"

See also Comic Strip Dead and
Llewyn Davis in this journal.

An upload date —

Related material — 

•  That date in this journal
•  Zettel  (in last night's 1 AM post)
• "Metaphor instead of mathematics"

* The title is a musical term…

The title refers to a post of April 26, 2009.

For Blancanieves, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lily Collins.

See also this journal on the above upload date— June 21, 2012.

Update of 2:02 PM ET:

From this journal on the day of Wilson's death—

Click to enlarge. See also All About Eve (Dec. 31, 2009).

 Backstory (update of 11:45 AM ET Dec. 8):

… and Little Colva—

Two links on a Jewish approach to such matters:
Bee Season and, more generally, Kabbalah.

"My way is much more simple."

"So it's the laughter we will remember…." —Streisand

Speak for yourself, Barbra.
Wachs reportedly died on Monday, December 2, 2013.

"What's too painful to remember…" — Streisand
"So set 'em up, Joe…" — Sinatra

I've got a little story you oughta know .

A recent addition to Barry Mazur's home page—

"December 1, 2013: Here are rough notes for
a short talk entitled The Faces of Evidence
(in Mathematics) ([PDF]) to be given at the
Cambridge Scientific Club, Dec. 5 2013."

The PDF link does not work, but some earlier remarks by
Mazur on this topic have been published elsewhere:

Related material:

The Proof and the Lie (St. Andrew's Day, 2003), and
a recent repetition of the lie in Wikipedia:

"Around 1955, Japanese mathematicians Goro Shimura 
and Yutaka Taniyama observed a possible link between
two apparently completely distinct, branches of mathematics, 
elliptic curves and modular forms."

This statement, from the article on Algebraic number theory,
was added on Oct. 22, 2013 by one "Brirush," apparently a
Temple University postdoctoral researcher, in what he rightly
called a "terrible history summary."

Happy Feast of Saint Nicholas.

See the previous post, the remarks of Roger Kimball
on Frank Stella's lecture at Harvard on Oct. 12, 1983,
and "Study of O" in this journal, with my own images
of space from October 1983.

* The title refers to a 1996 film.
   Happy birthday to Jeff Bridges.

Related remarks: yesterday's post at this hour.

Excerpt from a poem by Johanna Skibsrud
(Toronto Quarterly , April 2, 2011)—

Related material: Into the Bereshit.

See also the remarks on space in Skibsrud's
January 2012 doctoral thesis at the University
of Montreal—

" 'The nothing that is': An Ethics of Absence
    Within the Poetry of Wallace Stevens."

— as well as Bull Run I and Bull Run II.

First edition, 1973, cover art by Gene Szafran

"It's going to be accomplished in steps,
this establishment of the Talented
in the scheme of things."

— To Ride Pegasus ,
     by Anne McCaffrey (Radcliffe '47)

Click for clearer image.

From Willard Van Orman Quine Guest Book Volume 1—

"May 7, 1997 'McX and Wyman' — In his essay 'On What There Is', Willard Quine introduces two fictional philosophers who put forward certain ontological doctrines: McX and Wyman. It would be interesting to know whether Quine was thereby alluding to some real philosophers. My guess for McX would be Hugh MacColl, but I have no idea who Wyman might stand for. Thanks for considering the question! from Dr. Kai F. Wehmeier — Email: Kai.Wehmeier (at) math.uni-muenster.de Web Page: http://wwwmath.uni-muenster.de/math/users/wehmeier/"

"I spoke with Prof Quine last night regarding your question which he found interesting. He says his intention was to create some fictional philosophers ('X' and 'Y') to illustrate some of his concerns. There may also have been a 'Z' man. These fictional philosophers were not designed to represent any particular philosophers although their viewpoints may happen [to] reflect those of actual philosophers. – Doug” [Douglas Boynton Quine]

Related material: 

The X-Men Tree (Nov. 12),
X-Men Tree continued (Nov. 17),
Waiting for Ogdoad (Oct. 30),
Interpenetrative Ogdoad (Oct. 31),
Waiting for Ogdoad continued (Nov. 30),
For Sean Connery on St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30).

"These are odd facts…." — G. H. Hardy,
quoted in the previous post, "Centered"

Other odd facts:

If n  is odd, then the object at the center  
of the n×n  square is a square.
Similarly for the n×n×n  cube.

Related meditation:

“In a sense, we would see that change
arises from the structure of the object,” he said.
“But it’s not from the object changing.
The object is basically timeless.”

— Theoretical physicist quoted in a
Simons Foundation article of Sept. 17, 2013,
"A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics"

See also "My God, it's full of… everything."

"I have now come to the most difficult part of my story."

— George MacDonald

"265" — Page number and centered square number

"153" — Triangular number (as noted by St. Augustine)

"265/153" — Object Lesson

An accurate description of such number lore:

"These are odd facts, very suitable for puzzle columns
and likely to amuse amateurs, but there is nothing
in them which appeals much to a mathematician.
The proofs are neither difficult nor interesting—
merely a little tiresome. The theorems are not serious;
and it is plain that one reason (though perhaps not the
most important) is the extreme speciality of both the
enunciations and the proofs, which are not capable of
any significant generalization." — G. H. Hardy

See also some remarks on figurate numbers in this journal.

For the birth date of C. S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle.

"Now he believed that where there was a key, there must also be a lock…."

— The Brothers Grimm

Continued from Deo Gratias , a post at noon last Saturday
that featured blues singer R. L. Burnside.

"It is a fresh spiritual that he defines"
— "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven"

A Yale death between Saturday night and Sunday morning—

Also known as Virgil the Geometer.

" Art, in other words, can speak to social conflicts,
and not always how you might think. Yvonne Scott,
a professor here at Trinity College, remarked
before the wake that in 1972 the invention of
Patrick Ireland was 'hard for people to grasp
because for a long while conceptual art wasn’t
understood here.' She added, 'Times have changed.' "

— Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times ,
     May 22, 2008

Related art:

The "Square Round" link at the end of the previous post.

A story dated December 16, 2008, from the parish of Shannon.

A post dated December 16, 2008, from this journal.

Continued from Pensée  (Feb. 10, 2012).*

Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker  of Dec. 2, 2013—

" When one speaks of Zwirner the gallerist, one is speaking
as much of a handful of women in their forties who have been
with the gallery fifteen or more years. Zwirner has made them
partners, meaning, he says, that they 'will participate in profits
as the gallery does well.' They are Angela Choon, who runs the
London gallery; Hanna Schouwink, from Holland; Bellatrix Hubert,
from France; and Kristine Bell, from outside Buffalo. Seeing them
all together, at an opening or a dinner, brings to mind David
Carradine’s gang of glamorous assassins in 'Kill Bill.' " 

See also the previous post, on An Object of Beauty.

* For some related art, see Square Round.

From two posts of June 14, 2013:

* Click on Lois for the title.

Continued from yesterday afternoon and evening.

To the chief musician :

Que cantaba el Rey David.

In memory of a composer who reportedly died
on Thursday, November 21, 2013:

This journal on that date.

Related material, for mature audiences only, "based on the
confessional poetry of Anne Sexton," from Nov. 8, 2012: 

See also Confessional :   this journal on that  date.

Peter Keepnews on the late jazz musician Chico Hamilton:

"He was a charter member of the baritone saxophonist
Gerry Mulligan’s quartet, which helped lay the groundwork
for the cool movement. His own quintet, which he formed
shortly after leaving the Mulligan group, came to be
regarded as the quintessence of cool." 

Example: a recording uploaded on October 27, 2013,
and this journal on that date.

Related material: Working Backward.

Suggested by a theater review titled "Filling the Existential Void."

Companion piece: A Poem for Pinter.

"Waiting for Ogdoad" continues…

"You want Frye's with that?" — A recent humanities graduate.

 Frye's backstory:  Ogdoad.

 Other material suggested by the previous post and by the time of this  post…
 No Man's Land,  Gods and Monsters,  and Forty and Eight.

From a slide show of Pinter's "No Man's Land"—

 * Footnotes on the title—

For Hirst:  Wikipedia.
For Spooner:  Into the Woods.

For the groundlings: Urban Dictionary.

From the New York Times  obituary of philanthropist
Fred Kavli, who died on Thursday, November 21—

” In 2005, when Mr. Kavli announced that
he planned to start the prizes, he recalled
skiing in the Norwegian mountains as a boy.

‘At times,’ he told a gathering in New York,
‘the whole sky was aflame with the Northern Lights
shifting and dancing across the sky down to the
white-clad mountaintops. In the stillness and
loneliness of the white mountains, I pondered the
universe, the planet, nature and the wonders of
man. I’m still pondering.’ “

“And we may see the meadow in December, icy white
and crystalline….” — Johnny Mercer, lyrics to Lionel
Hampton and Sonny Burke’s “Midnight Sun”

* Lyche

Ben Brantley reviewing a show by the X-Men patriarchs
that opened on Sunday:

"This isn’t just a matter of theatergoers chuckling
to show that they’re smart and cultured and had
damn well better be having a good time after
forking out all that money…."

I prefer reality (which includes the life of Fred Kavli) :

See also Saturday's posts Chess and Frame Tale.

Whether the patriarch Kavli, pictured above, is now having
a good time, I do not know. I hope so.

From a poem in today's previous post:

"Thou art not August unless I make thee so."

This, along with two obituaries in this evening's
online New York Times , suggests the following
passage:

See also Surfaces of a Diamond  and  Storyville.

In memory of the translator of Foucault's Pendulum ,
who reportedly died on Tuesday, November 12th—

A detail from an image search (2 MB) linked to here 
on that date:

See also Milano  in this journal.

From a weblog post today—

"one of our great achievements as a species
is the rhetorical question. indeed, this is what
separates us from the higher animals. it is
how we make sense of our lives. our lives 
are rhetorical questions, aren't they?"

And our deaths?

Backstory:

This  journal on Oct. 25, 2013— St. Crispin's Day—
and a eulogy last night in The New York Times  by an
art-department professor, Crispin Sartwell, who is also
the author of the above remarks on rhetorical questions.

Sartwell's Times  eulogy was for an older
professor and art theorist, Arthur Danto.

Danto died on Crispin's Day.

Update:

"Michael Smith… is currently working on a novel
and a three-part history of MI6 entitled:
SIX: A History of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service ."

And then there is…

From a reader review—

"Apparently a classic of the sci-fi cannon…."

Backstory :  The Talented

Related material:  Parts of a World and Ace in the Hole.

New York Times  theater critic Ben Brantley
last night at 10 PM ET on the opening of a
play by Samuel Beckett —

"The cause of this incontinent mirth?
The dirtiest joke of all time. I mean life itself.

No playwright of the 20th century, and quite
possibly ever, has told this joke with the
clarity, simplicity and richness of Beckett."

Related material — This journal yesterday.

See also Lead Balloon.

The first two pages of a 1989 book by George Steiner—

(Click to enlarge)

See also yesterday's posts The Field of the Possible
and Abstraction. 

Compare and contrast with Socrates in the Meno 
quoting Pindar then discussing with a slave boy 
the duplication of the square.

Was Socrates a great philosopher or, as the above
figure seems to indicate and as some say of Steiner,
too clever by half ?

This post was suggested by the recent Log24
posts Film Politics,  The Wind Rises,  and
Figure and Ground, as well as the related
Wikipedia article The Wind Has Risen.

Cover design by Helen Yentus.​
 

Μή, φίλα ψυχά, βίον ἀθάνατον σπεῦδε,
τὰν δ' ἔμπρακτον ἄντλει μαχανάν.

— Pindar, Pythian III ,  epigraph to
Le Cimetière Marin  by Paul Valéry (1920)
 

O mon âme, n’aspire à la vie immortelle,
mais épuise le champ du possible.

— Pindar, 3^e Pythique ,  epigraph to
   The Myth of Sisyphus  by Albert Camus (1942)
 

O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life,
but exhaust the limits of the possible.

— Pindar, Pythian iii , as translated 
    from the French (or Greek) by Justin O'Brien
​    in the Knopf Myth of Sisyphus , 1955

… Or: The Japanese Aesthetics of  Zero

Related aesthetic remarks by an author mentioned here
Thursday morning —

"#Haiyan has reached perfection…
  8.0 on the Dvorak intensity scale."

Spell  "chrysanthemum."

(Where Entertainment Is God, continued)

Sources: Ctrl  Alt  Del

Related material: A Log24 post from the release date,
September 10, 2013, for the DVD of "Delete"—

Moss on the Wall.

This post was suggested by…

1.  Movie reviews links on the NY Times  online front page—

2.  "When Death tells a story…" in this journal

3.  A search for "Recognition" in this journal
     (suggested by Terence Cave's Recognitions ,
      mentioned in a post of October 31.)

4.  The play "Magic," by G. K. Chesterton

5.  The following posts —

The post itself  consists simply of the title,
together with the above items that suggested
the title.

Bead-Game Structuralism:
Excerpts from Comments by Robert de Marrais
on Interpenetration and The Raw and the Cooked

Click the image below for the webpage:

Continued from 12:03 PM.

See also 12/03 last year.

Starring Chris Chase as Dr. Caitlin Lightcap…
if you catch my drift.

Only the Dead…

(Continued)

Suggested by a story in today's Harvard Crimson —

"You want Frye's with that?"

The Flickr source of the above hashtags photo,
titled "Lots of Hash" —

See also this journal on the date the photo was taken.

#Source

From a book by Harvard mathematician Barry Mazur —

"Part of the self leaves the body when we sleep…"

The video —

See also the Saturday evening post "Fingo."

"And behold, a white horse." — Johnny Cash

See also references to such a horse here.

The title, that of a novel by Arthur Koestler,
has appeared before in this journal.

The title was quoted in a Log24 note of
May 29, 2002 (G.K. Chesterton's birthday).

The link in Saturday evening's post to a Chesterton
essay suggested a further search that yielded
the following quotation—

Then silence sank. And slowly
      Arose the sea-land lord
Like some vast beast for mystery,
He filled the room and porch and sky,
And from a cobwebbed nail on high
      Unhooked his heavy sword.

— G. K. Chesterton,
   The Ballad of the White Horse

This, together with some Log24 remarks 
from 2004, suggests two images—

Above: A 1955 cover design by Robert Flynn.

The arrow theme also appears in a figure from
John Sealander's Road to Nowhere in the 2004
remarks:

The remarks quoting the Sealander image, from 
March 5, 2004, were on mathematics and narrative.

Related material from a year later:

See an announcement, saved from March 16, 2005,
of a conference on mathematics and narrative that
was held in July 2005. Some context: Koestler's novel.

The title, derived from a saying of Newton,
might apply to an essay by David Justice
that contains the following passage—

Some context:

Sparks Middle School and the film "Insidious"—

See All Souls in this journal.

In memory of Anca Petrescu,
"the Albert Speer of Communism."

(Click to enlarge.)

Source: www.thezerotheorem-movie.com.

The Gilliam quotes are from insidemovies.ew.com.

See the title phrase in this journal.

See also posts from last August tagged Storyville.

See Josh Lederman's AP story on this year's
colorful White House Halloween decorations.
Orange and black are also the Princeton colors.
See as well The Crosswicks Curse.