Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Fantasy: Moment by Stella
Reality: A Death on October 25
Intersection:
For related British humor, see a Venn diagram by
Alexander Matthews.* I prefer the Venn intersection
in Object Lesson continued, a Log24 post from
July 1, 2007.
* The Matthews diagram is from July 31, 2012.
For less-facetious remarks from that date
see Rowling Birthday in this journal.
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Or: Chinny-Chin-Chin .
This post will be meaningless unless you
have seen the recent film "R.I.P.D.," starring
James Hong and Jeff Bridges.
(In that film, two deceased lawmen appear to
the living in disguised form— as Hong, and
as Bridges in the guise of a major babe.)
From the AP Today in History page
for October 29, 2013 —
On this date in:
1967 The musical "Hair" opened off-Broadway.
This, together with the Halloween season and
"R.I.P.D.," suggests a bizarre show:
"And there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space…"
– Don McLean, "American Pie"
The show would star Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges
as, respectively, Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman in…
V.I.P.D.
See also some related posts with Jeff Bridges.
Backstory: Sermon (Nov. 18, 2012) and
Eternal Recreation (Dec. 24, 2012).
"We've lost the plot!" — "Slipstream." Small wonder.
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Monday, October 28, 2013
From the AP Today in History page
for October 28, 2013 —
From this journal seven years ago:
Recommended.
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The Whitney Museum of American Art has stated
that artist Frank Stella in 1959
"wanted to create work that was methodical,
intellectual and passionless."
Source: Whitney Museum, transcript of audio guide.
Related material:
A figure from this journal on July 13, 2003…
… and some properties of that figure.
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"Frank actually makes the moment.
He captures it and helps to define it."
— Architect Robert Kahn on artist
Frank Stella, as quoted by
Nancy Wolfson in "Rings of Art,"
Cigar Aficionado , Autumn 1995
Related material: A review of a work
by Stella quoted here on Friday,
October 25, 2013 (Picasso's birthday,
and the date of death for art theorist
Arthur C. Danto).
See also this journal on July 13, 2003.
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Art in America —
"After considering and dismissing a number of definitions,
Danto comes down on one that he thinks captures the
'artness of art': artworks are embodied meanings. As such,
they elicit from viewers acts of interpretation designed to
'grasp the intended meaning they embody.' "
The New York Times —
"The critic Hilton Kramer, writing in The New Criterion
in 1987, likened Mr. Danto’s views to one of 'those
ingenious scenarios that are regularly concocted to
relieve the tedium of the seminar room and the
philosophical colloquium.' "
Sounds about right.
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Sunday, October 27, 2013
See August 9, 2009 at Haaretz and in this journal.
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Comments Off on Imaginary Playmate
Scene I:
"Pinter's particular usage of reverse chronology
in structuring the plot is innovative…."
— Wikipedia on the play "Betrayal," a version of which
opens tonight
Scene II:
Reverse Chronology in Wikipedia —
"As a hypothetical example, if the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk
was told using reverse chronology, the opening scene would depict
Jack chopping the beanstalk down and killing the giant. The next
scene would feature Jack being discovered by the giant and climbing
down the beanstalk in fear of his life. Later, we would see Jack running
into the man with the infamous magic beans, then, at the end of the film,
being sent off by his mother to sell the cow."
Scene III:
Dialogue for Scene III —
"Sell the damn cow, Jack."
Epilogue: Jack + Jill.
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"The Cardinal seemed a little preoccupied today."
The New Yorker , May 13, 2002
See also Log24 , January 8, 2012.
" … Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?"
— Four Quartets
Good question.
Comments Off on Days of Future Past
Friday, October 25, 2013
Rhetorical questions by art critic Michael Glover—
"Has this kind of abstraction to do with ideas
of the spiritual? Are we supposed to see behind
what we have here some kind of evidence of
superhuman energies at work in the universe?
Is this some kind of manifestation of the force
that through the green fuse drives the flower—
to quote a line from Dylan Thomas?"
Rhetorical answer —
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Thursday, October 24, 2013
Comments Off on Annals of Academic Prose
(Continued)
Wikipedia —
"Danvers is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts,
United States, located on the Danvers River near the
northeastern coast of Massachusetts. Originally known
as Salem Village, the town is most widely known for its
association with the 1692 Salem witch trials. It is also
known for the Danvers State Hospital, one of the state's
19th-century psychiatric hospitals, which was located here."
"The summer's gone and all the roses fallin' "
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Wednesday, October 23, 2013
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Comments Off on Windmills (continued)
Vigil for a teacher slain yesterday —
"Another student tweeted today to bring a candle
to Danvers High School at 8 p.m. tonight."
"How many miles to Babylon?"
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… Continues.
"24 Hour Psycho" at the Museum of Modern Art in the novel
Point Omega is illustrated in a New York Times review—
Related material — Today's 1 PM post and…
See also yesterday's 1 PM post.
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… Continues.
Detail —
Discuss.
Comments Off on Blackboard Jungle…
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
For Jack and Jill.
The above motivational video is from the web page of a middle school
math teacher who was shot to death yesterday morning.
Related journalism —
See also "S in a Diamond" (here, October 2013)
and "Superman Comes to the Supermarket,"
by Norman Mailer (Esquire , November 1960).
In a recent film, Amy Adams asked Superman,
"What's the S stand for?"
One possible answer, in light of Stephen King's
recent sequel to The Shining and of
the motivational video above—
Steam.
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Monday, October 21, 2013
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The title was suggested by Gardner + Darkness in this journal
and by recent remarks on the Devil by Justice Scalia and the Pope.
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New! Improved!
"Euclid's edifice loomed in my consciousness
as a marvel among sciences, unique in its
clarity and unquestionable validity."
—Richard J. Trudeau in
The Non-Euclidean Revolution (First published in 1986)
Readers of this journal will be aware that Springer's new page
advertising Trudeau's book, pictured above, is a bait-and-switch
operation. In the chapter advertised, Trudeau promotes what he
calls "the Diamond Theory of Truth" as a setup for his real goal,
which he calls "the Story Theory of Truth."
For an earlier use of the phrase "Diamond Theory" in
connection with geometry, see a publication from 1977.
Comments Off on Edifice Complex
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes
— Ovid, Metamorphoses , VIII, 188,
epigraph to Joyce's Portrait
Log24 last month —
Paul Hertz, alias "Ignotus the Mage" —
"When we're doing the fortunetelling, as soon
as we finish capturing the face and the voice,
they get sent right over to the table." — Paul Hertz,
"Ignotus" video, 2013
Commentary:
"… ignotus has faint connotations of lowness,
baseness, vulgarity"
— "International Eyesore: Joyce the Pornographer,"
by S. J. Boyd, pp. 31-60 in Troubled Histories,
Troubled Fictions , ed. by C. C. Barfoot et al.
Or not so faint.
Related material:
The villanelle from A Portrait , and
a Log24 post of St. Stephen's Day, 2011.
Comments Off on Face, Voice, Table
(Continued)
The above figure is from “Special Topics,”
a post of August 17, 2006. That post
contains the phrase
a scholar at a Jesuit university.
James Joyce, the author discussed in
last night’s Green October post, might
be pleased to find there are still such
scholars.
Comments Off on The Forking
This post was suggested by the business card
scene in American Psycho .
See also a post of May 20, Church Logic. The link to that
post was suggested in part by the death on September 23
of the artistic director of a 1960s church theater, and in part
by a Log24 post on September 23, "For Danny Boy."
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… On the night of the October 18-19 full moon.
Related material for Richman from
the date of Hinds's death …
Knock, Knock, Knockin'.
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Friday, October 18, 2013
From the Spokane Spokesman-Review today —
"Services are pending for St. Aloysius Church at Gonzaga University"
This suggests a review of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ,
a novel by James Joyce in the Viking Critical Library containing
a brief discussion of St. Aloysius Gonzaga.
In keeping with the approach to epistemology in today's previous post…
See also the link to remarks on naturalized epistemology
at the end of "Scoop," a Log24 post from the date
of the above review — July 9, 2004.
Comments Off on Notes at the End (Or: Green October)
Yesterday's post on epistemology and geometry
suggests an Amazon customer review of Descartes's
Rules for the Direction of the Mind —
Quoted in that review —
"… we must make use of every assistance
of the intellect, the imagination, the senses,
and the memory" (Descartes, Rules, XII)
One such assistance is the calendar.
See the date of the Blasjo review, Dec. 20, 2009,
in this journal. See also Descartes.
Comments Off on Mathematical Epistemology
Thursday, October 17, 2013
On Monday, October 14, 2013, Jeremy Gray published
an article titled "Epistemology of Geometry" in the online
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Gray's article did not mention the role of finite geometry
in such epistemology.
For that role, see Finite Geometry and Physical Space
as a web page and as a Google image search.
See also my papers at Academia.edu.
Comments Off on Finite Geometry and Physical Space (continued)
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
(Continued)
Josefine Lyche’s large wall version of the twenty-four 2×2 variations
above was apparently offered for sale today in Norway —
Click image for more details and click here for a translation.
Comments Off on Theme and Variations
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Or perhaps the Richman.
Roger Richman, agent who represented image rights for the
estates of celebrities, reportedly died on October 9, 2013.
This journal on that date —
* For the title, see Apollo + Outram in this journal.
Comments Off on The Field of Reason*
Monday, October 14, 2013
Comments Off on Dream of the Expanded Field
Heraclitus, Fragment 60 (Diels number):
See also Blade and Chalice and, for a less Faustian
approach, Universe of Discourse.
Further context: Not Theology.
Comments Off on Up and Down
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Comments Off on Conundrum
Two links from the above post —
Gamalog and Separatrix.
The latter word has a technical meaning in mathematics.
It also has a non-technical meaning, as explained below.
The comparison of Derrida to Holmes is of course ridiculous
(like the rest of the Kipnis essay). For Moriarty, see (for instance)
"We've lost the plot!" (Feb. 27, 2008).
Comments Off on Les Mots
Saturday, October 12, 2013
(Continued)
At right above, a possible image of Queen Isabella I
of Castile, attributed to Gerard David.
At left above, a Hollywood version.
Happy birthday to Chris Wallace and Hugh Jackman.
Related material: The Foot Configuration
and Jews Telling Stories.
See also the epigraph to this morning's post Deconstruction —
" … Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?"
— Four Quartets
Comments Off on The Story Theory of Truth
From a post of Oct. 13, 2009 linked to
in Friday morning's post "A Wake"—
See also some related reading.
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" … Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?"
— Four Quartets
Log24 posts of 9/11, 2013 —
Those who enjoy lead balloons may
consult also Zeppelin in this journal.
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Friday, October 11, 2013
See a post of October 13, 2009 (the upload date
for the video below), and consider the line…
"I bet he's out there shinin' like a diamond don't you know"
Happy birthday, Paulette.
Comments Off on A Wake
Thursday, October 10, 2013
"… the walkway between here and there would be colder than a witch’s belt buckle. Or a well-digger’s tit. Or whatever the saying was. Vera had been hanging by a thread for a week now, comatose, in and out of Cheyne-Stokes respiration, and this was exactly the sort of night the frail ones picked to go out on. Usually at 4 a.m. He checked his watch. Only 3:20, but that was close enough for government work."
— King, Stephen (2013-09-24).
Doctor Sleep: A Novel (p. 133). Scribner. Kindle Edition.
|
From Space.com, the death of an astronaut this morning —
"Carpenter passed at 5:30 a.m. MDT (7:30 a.m. EDT; 1130 GMT)."
A link, "Continued," in this journal at 3:26 a.m. EDT today led to…
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From this date five years ago in The Guardian—
Alice Munro: An Appreciation by Margaret Atwood—
"The central Christian tenet is that
two disparate and mutually exclusive elements—
divinity and humanity— got jammed together
in Christ, neither annihilating the other.
The result was not a demi-god, or a God
in disguise: God became totally a human being
while remaining at the same time totally divine.
To believe either that Christ was only a man or
that he was simply God was declared heretical
by the early Christian church. Christianity thus
depends on a denial of either/or classifying logic
and an acceptance of both-at-once mystery.
Logic says that A cannot be both itself and non-A
at the same time; Christianity says it can. The
formulation 'A but also non-A' is indispensable to it."
Related literary material— "Excluded Middle" and "Couple of Tots."
See also "The Divided Cube" and "Mimsy Were the Borogoves."
Comments Off on Nobel Jam
For James Joyce, author of Dubliners …
See the posts of the Feast of St. Francis, 2013,
and today's New York Times —
* A phrase used here before.
Comments Off on Master Class*
This continues the post of 10 PM ET Oct. 8.
See, too, Plato's Ghost in this journal.
Comments Off on A Space for Scarlett
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Wednesday, October 9, 2013
From the upper right of the Google search screen —
For related religious remarks, see "The Ninth."
Comments Off on Sign in
See also the previous post.
"Some like it in the pot, nine days old."
Comments Off on According to Hoyle
Comments Off on To Apollo*
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
For Amy Adams, who in a recent
Superman film posed the question…
"What's the S stand for?"
This logo appears on the new game
Beyond: Two Souls . (See this evening's
earlier post on the game.)
In a more appealing sort of computer
entertainment, the S might stand for Scarlett.
"Please wait as your operating system is initiated."
(From the October 5th post Dream Girls.)
Comments Off on S in a Diamond
Continues.
A note on the image in this evening's previous post —
This journal on April 24, 2006 —
Her wallet's filled with pictures …
Comments Off on The Hunt for Green October…
From Wikipedia —
"The game, which features psychological, spiritual,
and thriller elements, is centered around questions
about what happens after death…. The game's
producer noted that players might be able to find out
'what lies beyond' after playing it….
… Beyond was the final project of composer
Normand Corbeil, who died of pancreatic cancer
on 25 January 2013."
For related material from 25 January 2013, see…
A Touch of Glass.
For such a touch, instead of game star Ellen Page,
I prefer music star Reba McEntire —
Image posted here on October 4th,
the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.
Related material: A Bishop for Ellen.
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"Lawrence seems simultaneously naïve and jaded in the face of elemental questions, and he is himself our greatest poet of the interrogative mode: his questions often begin by seeming inconsequential, even coy ('Would you like to throw a stone at me?'), but they unearth unexpected profundities of observation and thought. This process of discovery, not the profundities as such, is what makes the poems so gripping, and it takes place both within the poems and between them."
— James Longenbach on D. H. Lawrence,
The Nation , Oct. 1, 2013
|
"What then?" — D. H. Lawrence on the novel
"What then?" — Yeats on Plato's ghost
Comments Off on Question
Monday, October 7, 2013
This journal on Oct. 2, the date of death for
the developer of mathematical Braille —
Clicking on the image of St. Peter's Square in that post led to…
Braille, as noted in last midnight's post, is based
on a six-dot cell. For some pure mathematics of
the six-dot cell, see
Modeling the 21-point plane
with outer automorphisms of S6
Two quotations that seem relevant —
"When Death tells a story, you really have to listen"
— Cover of The Book Thief
"This is not theology, this is mathematics."
— Steven H. Cullinane, Sept. 22, 2013
Comments Off on Post-Production (continued)
On Abraham Nemeth, the developer of Braille
for blind students of mathematics —
"… he began tinkering with the six-dot cell
that is the foundation of Braille."
For a different six-dot cell, see Nocciolo .
"Throughout his life, he dedicated much of his
spare time to creating Braille versions of Jewish
texts, including helping to proofread a Braille
Hebrew Bible in the 1950s." — Nemeth's obituary
Those who prefer entertainment may consult The Book of Eli.
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Sunday, October 6, 2013
A theater review by Ben Brantley tonight of "Big Fish"
suggests a review of a Log24 post from January 9, 2004.
This in turn suggests another reviewer's remark…
"As over-the-top as a dinner theater production of 'The Crucible' "
— Frank Rich in The New York Times , November 2004
For such a production, see today's Sermon as well as
Amy Adams in this journal in May 2009 and this afternoon.
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(Saturday's Dream Girls, continued)
"How would you touch me?"
— The computer in the new film Her
For some remarks on Arcade Fire, see Saturday's 10 PM post
and Sunday's 10:10 AM post.
In related news…
See also posts with Slow Art and Amy Adams
shooting pool (scroll to the bottom).
Comments Off on The Curve
(Continued from the Feast
of St. Francis (Oct. 4), 2013)
An image suggested by the flower
on the cover of the book
Beautiful Mathematics —
Two Lips
(Those of Amy Adams in 2008)
"In the Master's chambers,
they gathered for the feast…"
Related material for the religiously inclined :
The Date (August 8th, 2013)
Comments Off on Cover Girl
Judith Shulevitz in The New York Times
on Sunday, July 18, 2010
(quoted here Aug. 15, 2010) —
“What would an organic Christian Sabbath look like today?”
One possibility —
See also The Pride of Lowell (Oct. 3, 2012)
and, a year later, The Hunt for Green October .
Comments Off on Sunday Dinner (continued)
(Continued from Frame Tale (Oct. 1) and
this morning's Church with Josefine.)
See Trinity Knot in this journal.
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Father
Son
Holy Spirit
Ite, missa est.
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A sequel to last night's "For Baron Samedi" —
Sigils
The music in the trailer for the new film "American Hustle"
is a 1969 tune by Led Zeppelin. This, together with the
magick sigils posted at Facebook yesterday by artist
Josefine Lyche, suggests a review of Zeppelin sigils
from a 1971 album. These are, as shown above on a
record label, the personal symbols of the four musicians
in the band. Two of the symbols may, of course, be
interpreted as representing the Holy Trinity.
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(Continued from last Sunday)
For some background, see Permutahedron in this journal.
See also…
* Jews may prefer to retitle this post "Sunday Shul with Josefine"
and stage it as a SNL sketch, "Norwegian Disco," with
The Sunshine Girls. (For the Norwegian part, see Kristen Wiig,
of Norwegian ancestry. For the disco part, see Amy Adams,
who stars in a new disco-era movie.)
Comments Off on Church with Josefine*
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Click on the image for a video.
See also Josefine Lyche's "Grids, you say?"
I prefer Lyche's versions of the diagonal
3×3 grid. Her versions have no lettering.
(This post was suggested by a photo of magical sigils
that Lyche posted a few hours ago at Facebook.
The above seems to be another such sigil that may
or may not be intended to function like those posted
today by Lyche.)
Comments Off on For Baron Samedi
Her —
"Please wait as your operating system is initiated."
See also the Oct. 13, 2011, post
"Now, Here's My Plan"
and Bester's The Deceivers —
His excitement drove him into the workshop to get a better view of the end product on the giant prime video of his computer. During those few moments the development had accelerated into its dénouement, for he arrived just in time to have the huge screen explode into his face. Demi Jeroux burst out of the computer in a shower of plastic particles, rolled and sprawled on top of him. She was naked, sweating, trembling.
“Golly!” she gasped. “Getting in was easy compared to getting out. Are you hurt, darling?”
“I’m fine. I’m great. I’m ennobled. I’m stupefied. Hi, hey. Hi, my love. Hi, my darling sprite. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like that?”
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Comments Off on Dream Girls
Friday, October 4, 2013
"Now, who's the master?"
— Christian Bale in "American Hustle," a film
scheduled for limited release on St. Lucy's Day
and wide release on Christmas Day, 2013
See also this journal on November 26, 2012.
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Comments Off on Walter’s Wake
"According to Vladimir Nabokov, Salvador Dalí
was 'really Norman Rockwell’s twin brother
kidnapped by gypsies in babyhood.'
But actually there were triplets: the third one is
Stephen King."
— Margaret Atwood, "Shine On,"
online Sept. 19, 2013
"The metaphor for metamorphosis
no keys unlock."
— Steven H. Cullinane, Nov. 7, 1986
Comments Off on For the Feast of St. Francis
(Continued from yesterday's STEM and Truman Show.)
Comments Off on Color News
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Thursday, October 3, 2013
Part I: Paranoia
" 'The Truman Show' did not single-handedly cause
Truman delusions, any more than 'The Manchurian
Candidate' caused Cold War paranoia. In the fifteen
years since 'The Truman Show' was released, its
premise has increasingly come to seem nonbizarre."
— Andrew Marantz in The New Yorker ,
issue dated Sept. 16, 2013, page 35
Part II: Amen
Part III: The Magic 8-Ball
Part IV: Sinking the Magic 8-Ball
Part V: The Color of Money
Comments Off on Truman Show
“ ‘A babbled of green fields”
— Phrase attributed to Shakespeare
quoted here on September 15th
From a New York Times piece online today,
a quote promoting science and technology,
and a quote on aptitude :
… the STEM fields (“STEM” being the current shorthand
for “science, technology, engineering and mathematics”),
which offer so much in the way of job prospects, prestige,
intellectual stimulation and income….
… scientific and mathematical aptitude at
the very highest end of the spectrum ….
From a post of June 9, 2013 :
… the MAA Spectrum program —
Related material — yesterday’s posts
- Post-Production
- Color News
- Noon News
- Knock, Knock, Knockin’
- Spectral Theory
- Bright Star
and today’s previous post.
See as well Mood Indigo.
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"Righty tighty, lefty loosey." — Folk saying
See also a figure from this journal
on Lee Marvin's birthday in 2011 —
The square root of the former is the latter.
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Wednesday, October 2, 2013
(Continued. For the title, see Lucero in this journal.)
See Newton in several works of literary art:
The date, Nov. 23, 2010, of the Westminster Abbey remarks
in the second Newton link above suggests a quite different church
from that date.
Comments Off on Bright Star
Peter J. Cameron attributes failure of his usual
link to the NASA "Astronomy Picture of the Day"
(APOD) to the US government shutdown, and
gives a substitute link.
Here is yet another substitute link, this one
specifically to today's picture —
"All the Colors of the Sun."
Related literary remarks by Nabokov —
Among the many exhilarating things Lake taught
was that the order of the solar spectrum is not
a closed circle but a spiral of tints from cadmium
red and oranges through a strontian yellow and a
pale paradisal green to cobalt blues and violets,
at which point the sequence does not grade into
red again but passes into another spiral, which
starts with a kind of lavender gray and goes on to
Cinderella shades transcending human perception.
— Pnin
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(Continued from Monday, Sept. 30)
"The art of the playwright consists in
employing, to the most effective degree
possible, accident within the action."
— Friedrich Dürrenmatt, author of The Physicists
Comments Off on Knock, Knock, Knockin’
Comments Off on Noon News
See also "Red October" in this journal.
Comments Off on Color News
Click the above for some music and literary-philosophical remarks.
Related material: This journal on February 3 and 4, 2010.
Comments Off on Post-Production
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Comments Off on Dissolution
Part I:
The Alchemist
Part II:
Back to Square One (Click for some backstory.)
Part III:
Chapter Eleven
Part IV:
Oh, What Can It Mean?
(This journal, 7 AM on Sunday, January 20th, 2008,
the date the first episode of Breaking Bad was aired.)
Comments Off on Walter’s Wake
From Dark Side Tales, a Log24 post
of August 26, 2013—
"And then one day you find
ten years have got behind you."
— Lyrics to Dark Side of the Moon
Or eleven.
See also today's previous post in light of
the bottom line of Dark Side Tales:
"the spirit's alchemicana."
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From an academic's website:
For Josefine Lyche and Ignotus the Mage,
as well as Rose the Hat and other Zingari shoolerim —
Sabbatha hanti, lodsam hanti, cahanna risone hanti :
words that had been old when the True Knot moved
across Europe in wagons, selling peat turves and trinkets.
They had probably been old when Babylon was young.
The girl was powerful, but the True was all-powerful,
and Rose anticipated no real problem.
— King, Stephen (2013-09-24).
Doctor Sleep: A Novel
(pp. 278-279). Scribner. Kindle Edition.
From a post of November 10, 2008:
Twenty-four Variations on a Theme of Plato,
a version by Barry Sharples based on the earlier
kaleidoscope puzzle version of Steven H. Cullinane
The King and the Corpse —
"The king asked, in compensation for his toils
during this strangest of all the nights he had
ever known, that the twenty-four riddle tales
told him by the specter, together with the story
of the night itself, should be made known
over the whole earth and remain eternally
famous among men."
Frame Tale:
Finnegans Wake —
"The quad gospellers may own the targum
but any of the Zingari shoolerim may pick a peck
of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne."
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Monday, September 30, 2013
For those who understand spoken Norwegian.
I do not. The interview apparently gives some
background on Lyche’s large wall version of
“The 2×2 Case (Diamond Theorem) II.
(After Steven H. Cullinane)” 2012
Size: 260 x 380 cm
See also this work as displayed at a Kjærlighet til Oslo page.
(Updated March 30, 2014, to replace dead Kjaerlighet link.)
Comments Off on Interview with Josefine Lyche
(Continued from High White Noon,
Finishing Up at Noon, and A New York Jew.)
Above: Frank Langella in "Starting Out in the Evening"
Below: Frank Langella and Johnny Depp in "The Ninth Gate"
"Not by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin."
Above: Detail from a Wikipedia photo.
For the logo, see Lostpedia.
For some backstory, see Noether.
Those seeking an escape from the eightfold nightmare
represented by the Dharma logo above may consult
the remarks of Heisenberg (the real one, not the
Breaking Bad version) to the Bavarian Academy
of Fine Arts.
Those who prefer Plato's cave to his geometry are
free to continue their Morphean adventures.
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For the title, see the end of yesterday's post "For Michaelmas."
See also the Sept. 22 post Incarnation, Part 2
as well as Noether in this journal.
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The title is a reference to an article on page SR4 of
The New York Times Sunday Review on Michaelmas.
From Wired , a Saturday evening post —
(Click to enlarge.)
From a Breaking Bad recap by Logan Hill—
“I am not in danger, Skyler, I am the danger,” Walt growls,
in an electric shock of a scene that likely marks the beginning
of a new phase of Breaking Bad . If this show has been the story
of Walt’s deliberate, step-by-step descent into the bottom of
some bleak moral valley, this is him charging madly downhill
into darkness. “A guy opens his door and gets shot, you think
that of me? No, I am the one who knocks .”
Talk amongst yourselves.
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Sunday, September 29, 2013
Comments Off on Bavarian Gentians
The date of the above meditations was suggested by that of the post
"Theologia Mathematica" in the weblog The World of Dr. Justice .
Comments Off on For Michaelmas
Today, beginning at about 11 AM ET, I checked out
the latest news from Oslo artist Josefine Lyche,
often mentioned in these posts.
Lyche's Facebook page has a new cover photo—
geometric diagrams from Order in Space , a 1969
book by Keith Critchlow.
A search for more information on Critchlow yielded
information on his friend the impressive Kathleen Raine,
who reportedly died at 95 on July 6, 2003.
See also references to that date in this journal.
From Raine's obituary in The Guardian :
"When asked how she wished people
to remember her, Kathleen Raine said
she would rather they didn't. Or that
Blake's words be said of her: 'That in
time of trouble, I kept the divine vision.' "
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Saturday, September 28, 2013
Legendary Magician John Calvert Dies at 102
The Hollywood Reporter , 8:36 PM PDT 9/27/2013
by Mike Barnes —
" 'Out in Hollywood many years ago, Danny Kaye was
in my show and came out and impersonated Hitler,'
Calvert said in a 1998 interview. 'Then the Marines
would come out and grab him and put him in the buzz saw
and we’d cut his head off, put his head in a sausage grinder,
and out came German wieners!' "
See MAX in the posts of September 9th.
"Calvert died Friday [Sept. 27] in Lancaster, Calif., according to
The International Brotherhood of Magicians."
See also The Carlin Code (May 12, 2006).
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(Where Entertainment Is God , continued)
Yesterday's evening numbers in the New York Lottery
were 007 and 3856. You are free to supply your own
interpretation of the former. The latter may, if you like,
be interpreted as post 3856, The Illuminati Stone .
Some context:
(Click for a larger, clearer image.)
I prefer Richard Brautigan.
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Friday, September 27, 2013
"Let X equal the month of full bookstores."
— Proof by David Auburn
"Harvard Book Store is thrilled to welcome Stephen King
for a special event to celebrate the release of Doctor Sleep ,
the long-anticipated sequel to 1977’s The Shining .
Mr. King will read from and discuss the new book,
followed by a Q&A with the audience at Memorial Church
in Harvard Yard on September 27."
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See as well Corpse + Eliot and some remarks
on the mathematics of Kummer
from this September and from last September.
Comments Off on Proof (continued)
See yesterday's post Design Mastery and a post for Amy Adams's birthday in 2011
on Eliot's still point and the dance .
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Thursday, September 26, 2013
For T.S. Eliot on his birthday, a film review—
"… the Coens are… elegantly asserting design mastery…."
— Peter Bradshaw, review of "Inside Llewyn Davis"
in The Guardian on May 18, 2013
Related material— Two Log24 posts from that date—
Black Hole Revisited and Midnight in Bakhtin.
The former post presents a Jewish approach to
Eliot's concept of time and "the still point."
The latter post presents a more sophisticated approach.
Perhaps the Coens' design mastery extends to the phrase
"time stops" of Kerouac. See the remarks by Dean Moriarty
in On the Road quoted here in the previous post (Sept. 24).
The Coens' film contains, Bradshaw says, "a smoulderingly
Kerouac-y poet, played by Garrett Hedlund." Hedlund played
not Kerouac, but Moriarty, in the 2012 film of On the Road .
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Tuesday, September 24, 2013
“It’s not the tune that counts but IT.”
— Dean Moriarty in On the Road
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For the late Carolyn Cassady, once a wife of Neal Cassady
(Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac's classic novel On the Road ).
She reportedly died at 90 in England on Friday, September 20,
2013.
From a post in this journal on the night of September 20-21,
with waning Harvest Moon:
Click on "Aooo" for some related posts, tagged "Howl."
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Monday, September 23, 2013
"… It raced down the gossamer curtain of Its webbing,
a nightmare Spider from beyond time and space,
a Spider from beyond the fevered imaginings of
whatever inmates may live in the deepest depths of hell.
No, Bill thought coldly, not a Spider either, not really,
but this shape isn’t one It picked out of our minds;
it’s just the closest our minds can come to
(the deadlights)
whatever It really is."
— Stephen King, It (Sept. 15, 1986)
Related horror by Fritz Leiber—
"The Mind Spider" and "Damnation Morning."
Related fiction by Mark Helprin—
In Sunlight and in Shadow .
As a perceptive reviewer has noted, Helprin's title is
almost a verse from the song "Danny Boy."
See, too, the Danny Boy of The Shining ,
who returns tomorrow in a sequel, Doctor Sleep .
"The summer's gone and all the roses falling…."
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Sunday, September 22, 2013
From yesterday —
"… a list of group theoretic invariants
and their geometric incarnation…"
— David Lehavi on the Kummer 166 configuration in 2007
Related material —
"The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation."
— T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets
"This is not theology; this is mathematics."
— Steven H. Cullinane on four quartets
To wit:
Click to enlarge.
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Saturday, September 21, 2013
The Kummer 166 configuration is the configuration of sixteen
6-sets within a 4×4 square array of points in which each 6-set
is determined by one of the 16 points of the array and
consists of the 3 other points in that point's row and the
3 other points in that point's column.
See Configurations and Squares.
The Wikipedia article Kummer surface uses a rather poetic
phrase* to describe the relationship of the 166 to a number
of other mathematical concepts — "geometric incarnation."
Related material from finitegeometry.org —
* Apparently from David Lehavi on March 18, 2007, at Citizendium .
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Mathematics:
A review of posts from earlier this month —
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Unexpected connections between areas of mathematics
previously thought to be unrelated are sometimes referred
to as "moonshine." An example— the apparent connections
between parts of complex analysis and groups related to the
large Mathieu group M24. Some recent work on such apparent
connections, by Anne Taormina and Katrin Wendland, among
others (for instance, Miranda C.N. Cheng and John F.R. Duncan),
involves structures related to Kummer surfaces .
In a classic book, Kummer's Quartic Surface (1905),
R.W.H.T. Hudson pictured a set of 140 structures, the 80
Rosenhain tetrads and the 60 Göpel tetrads, as 4-element
subsets of a 16-element 4×4 array. It turns out that these
140 structures are the planes of the finite affine geometry
AG(4,2) of four dimensions over the two-element Galois field.
(See Diamond Theory in 1937.)
Thursday, September 5, 2013
(Continued from yesterday)
The foreword by Wolf Barth in the 1990 Cambridge U. Press
reissue of Hudson's 1905 classic Kummer's Quartic Surface
covers some of the material in yesterday's post Moonshine.
The distinction that Barth described in 1990 was also described, and illustrated,
in my 1986 note "Picturing the smallest projective 3-space." The affine 4-space
over the the finite Galois field GF(2) that Barth describes was earlier described—
within a 4×4 array like that pictured by Hudson in 1905— in a 1979 American
Mathematical Society abstract, "Symmetry invariance in a diamond ring."
"The distinction between Rosenhain and Goepel tetrads
is nothing but the distinction between isotropic and
non-isotropic planes in this affine space over the finite field."
The 1990 paragraph of Barth quoted above may be viewed as a summary
of these facts, and also of my March 17, 2013, note "Rosenhain and Göpel
Tetrads in PG(3,2)."
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Narrative:
Aooo.
Happy birthday to Stephen King.
Comments Off on Mathematics and Narrative (continued)
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Midrash: Butterfly and Bee.
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Wednesday, September 18, 2013
An LA obituary online yesterday suggests
a review of Kabbalah in this journal.
See also the final link in last weekend's
Log24 post Sunday Shul.
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Tuesday, September 17, 2013
(Continued)
Google News this morning —
For some remarks in greater depth, see
"In the Neighborhood of Mathematical Space,"
by Karen Shenfeld (1993).
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Chess lyrics, "Quartet" —
"A model of decorum and tranquillity
Become like any other sport
A battleground for rival ideologies
To slug it out with glee"
Communist leader Chin Peng, 88,
reportedly died in Bangkok yesterday.
"Is a puzzlement."
Comments Off on One Knight in Bangkok
Monday, September 16, 2013
Comments Off on A Word to the Wise
The above news item seems to exemplify Baudelaire's (and Murdoch's)
notion of contingency —
"La modernité, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitié de l’art, dont l’autre moitié est l’éternel et l’immuable."
— Baudelaire, "Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne," IV (1863)
"By 'modernity' I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable."
— Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," IV (1863), translated by Jonathan Mayne (in 1964 Phaidon Press book of same title)
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Thanks to the late Marshall Berman for pointing out this remark of Baudelaire.
(All That Is Solid Melts Into Air , Penguin edition of 1988, p. 133)
* For this post's title, see Language Game in this journal on 9/11,
the morning of Berman's reported death.
Comments Off on Fleur de Derrida*
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Comments Off on Babble On
Suggested by a poem in the current New Yorker.
Today's text —
"We have no more beginnings.
Incipit : that proud Latin word
which signals the start
survives in our dusty 'inception'."
— George Steiner, beginning of
Grammars of Creation
Reply in the Latin tradition—
.
Cast
(From the Log24 posts
of August 23-24, 2013)
Comments Off on Sermon
See Hollywood + Vine in this journal.
See also Jews on Fiction.
Comments Off on Sunday Shul
Saturday, September 14, 2013
(Continued)
"Motifs bleed off the edge of one Pynchon canvas
onto the next." — Review of Bleeding Edge in
tomorrow's New York Times Sunday Book Review
A RIDDLE for the Church of St. Frank:
AN ANSWER:
The red carpet is prepared for the 2013 Oscars at the Dolby Theatre.
Comments Off on Where Entertainment Is God
Thursday, September 12, 2013
"Agilizamos y automatizamos
el registro de su evento."
— Gamalog.mx
"… que cantaba el rey David."
Comments Off on A Beginning
* For the Church of St. Frank —
The above item from the 9/11 NY Times obituaries, and the
Log24 posts of Monday, Sept. 9.
Comments Off on The Sense of an Ending*
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