Log24

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Thursday September 30, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:25 pm

Out for Blood
____________________

Dedication added on
Oct. 4, 2004, 2:10 PM:
To Jacques Levy,
who died on Sept. 30, 2004.
Levy directed “Red Cross,”
a Sam Shepard play that is
said to be about
the vampire quality
of language
.”
_____________________

Kerry “shouldn’t be looking to score
technical points like this is
Harvard-Yale debate society.”

— Chris Lehane, quoted in
today’s Washington Post

From today’s Harvard Crimson:

Ben and Jerry:

Affleck

Bruckheimer

“I know I’m in the minority,
but I like Bush.”

Jerry Bruckheimer,
quoted in the
New York Daily News
of April 11, 2004

Thursday September 30, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:14 pm

Zeros

Related reading:

Love is strong as death.”

Related viewing:

Today is the birthday of
Deborah Kerr and also
Translators’ Day.

Thursday September 30, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Midnight in the Garden

“With a little effort,
anything can be shown
to connect with anything else:
existence is infinitely

cross-referenced.”

— Opening sentence
of Martha Cooley’s
The Archivist

Woe unto
them that
call evil
good, and
good evil;
that put
darkness
for light,
and light
for darkness

Isaiah 5:20

As she spoke
about the Trees
of Life and Death,
I watched her…

The Archivist

The world
has gone
mad today
And good’s
bad today,
And black’s
white today,
And day’s
night today

Cole Porter

 Example:
Mozart’s K 265,
the page number 265,
and a story by George MacDonald.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Wednesday September 29, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:11 pm

Hounded
7:11:08 PM

"Scalia said he made the decision to stay on the case based on past practice. 'Not a single case was brought up in the motion to recuse, it was based on nothing other than newspaper editorials, and I'll be doggone if I'm to get hounded off the case by newspaper editorials.'"

Boston Globe, Sept. 29, 2004

Entries related both to the previous entry and to the above (in style, if not in substance):

The Black Queen and Amores Perros.

Wednesday September 29, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:02 am

A Tune for Michaelmas

Mozart, K 265, midi

Wednesday September 29, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:00 am

Romantic Interaction,
continued

(See parts 1, 2, 3, 4)

From Karl Iagnemma:

From Log24.net, March 3, 2004:

"No se puede vivir sin amar."

— Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano

Photo by Gerry Gantt

From Four Quartets:

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light….

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Tuesday September 28, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:33 pm

3:33:33 PM

Romantic Interaction, continued…

The Rhyme of Time

From American Dante Bibliography for 1983:

Freccero, John. "Paradiso X: The Dance of the Stars" (1968). Reprinted in Dante in America … (q.v.), pp. 345-371. [1983]

Freccero, John. "The Significance of terza rima." In Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento … (q.v.), pp. 3-17. [1983]

Interprets the meaning of terza rima in terms of a temporal pattern of past, present, and future, with which the formal structure and the thematics of the whole poem coordinate homologically: "both the verse pattern and the theme proceed by a forward motion which is at the same time recapitulary." Following the same pattern in the three conceptual orders of the formal, thematical, and logical, the autobiographical narrative too is seen "as forward motion that moves towards its own beginning, or as a form of advance and recovery, leading toward a final recapitulation." And the same pattern is found especially to obtain theologically and biblically (i.e., historically). By way of recapitulation, the author concludes with a passage from Augustine's Confessions on the nature of time, which "conforms exactly to the movement of terza rima." Comes with six diagrams illustrating the various patterns elaborated in the text.

From Rachel Jacoff's review of Pinsky's translation of Dante's Inferno:

"John Freccero's Introduction to the translation distills a compelling reading of the Inferno into a few powerful and immediately intelligible pages that make it clear why Freccero is not only a great Dante scholar, but a legendary teacher of the poem as well."

From The Undivine Comedy, Ch. 2, by Teodolinda Barolini (Princeton University Press, 1992):

"… we exist in time which, according to Aristotle, "is a kind of middle-point, uniting in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time."* It is further to say that we exist in history, a middleness that, according to Kermode, men try to mitigate by making "fictive concords with origins and ends, such as give meaning to lives and to poems." Time and history are the media Dante invokes to begin a text whose narrative journey will strive to imitate– not escape– the journey it undertakes to represent, "il cammin di nostra vita."

* Aristotle is actually referring to the moment, which he considers indistinguishable from time: "Now since time cannot exist and is unthinkable apart from the moment, and the moment is a kind of middle-point, uniting as it does in itself both a beginning and an end, a beginning of future time and an end of past time, it follows that there must always be time: for the extremity of the last period of time that we take must be found in some moment, since time contains no point of contact for us except in the moment. Therefore, since the moment is both a beginning and an end there must always be time on both sides of it" (Physics 8.1.251b18-26; in the translation of R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon [New York: Random House, 1941]).  

From Four Quartets:

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Monday, September 27, 2004

Monday September 27, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 pm

Romantic Interaction
continued…

(See previous entry.)

From today's Harvard Crimson:

"Pudding Show Features
Wild West Theme
"

From yesterday's entry,
a tribute to Olivia Newton-John:

"At the still point,
there the dance is."
— T. S. Eliot

Xanadu (1980)

For related material, see

Balanchine's Birthday (1/9/03)
and Deep Game (6/26/04).

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Sunday September 26, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:11 pm

Romantic Interaction

(See previous entry.)

"At the still point,
 there the dance is."
— T. S. Eliot 

For Olivia Newton-John
on her birthday,
at 1:11:11 pm EDT

"Keep me suspended in time with you;
Don't let this moment die.
I get a feeling when I'm with you
None of the rules apply.
But I know for certain
Goodbye is a crime;
So love if you need me,
Suspend me in time."

— Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu

 

Saturday, September 25, 2004

Saturday September 25, 2004

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 5:30 pm

Writings for
Yom Kippur

by Borges and God:

Thirsty for knowing what God knows,
Juda Loew devoted himself to permutations
of letters and complex variations

New York State Lottery,
evening, Sept. 24, 2004:  185

and finally said the Name which is the Key…

New York State Lottery,
midday, Sept. 25, 2004:   673.

On 185:

See Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (PI), section 185, on the nature of rules.

On 673:

See the following works:

Moral of these writings, thanks to Gregory Chaitin:

“Mais quand une regle est fort composée, ce qui luy est conforme, passe pour irrégulier.”

[But when a rule is extremely complex, that which conforms to it passes for random.]

— Leibniz, Discours de métaphysique, VI, 1686

See also the previous entry, High Holy Hexagram, and Pi continued.

Friday, September 24, 2004

Friday September 24, 2004

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 6:49 pm

Readings for
Yom Kippur

The film Pi is, in part, about an alleged secret name of God that can be uttered only on Yom Kippur.  This is my personal version of such a name– not an utterance, but instead a picture:

6:49:32 PM
Sept. 24, 2004

Complete graph K6

The Details:

 

Sylvester's Music 

The Unity of Mathematics

720 in the Book

Synthemes and Spreads (pdf)

(Appendix A of
"Classification of
Partial Spreads in PG(4,2)
,"
by Leonard H. Soicher et al.)

Friday September 24, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:06 pm

Time and Chance

“Time and chance happeneth to them all.”

— Ecclesiastes 9-11

“With the passage of time, everyone participated in the ever-increasingly secret lottery.”

Summary of Borges’s Lottery

The winning evening lottery number for Sunday, September 19, 2004, and for Thursday, September 23, 2004, in the State of Grace (Kelly) was

408.

See a 9/20/04 story about 408

and a 1/4/03 story about Grace and jazz.

From the latter:

Now you has jazz.

— Cole Porter, lyric for “High Society,”
set in Newport, Rhode Island, 1956

Note that yesterday’s entries dealt with “the jazz church” and that Sunday, Sept. 19, 2004– the first of the “408” days above– was the date of death of Ellis Marsalis Sr., patriarch of a family of jazz musicians.  The second of the “408” days above– yesterday– was Ray Charles’s birthday.


In Ray We Trust
June 28, 2004 cover
by Eric Palma  

(See New Gold Standard: Cultural Capital)

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Thursday September 23, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm

Aluminum, Your Shiny Friend

(Continued)

Citicorp Center

Vital Statistics:
Location: New York, NY
Completion Date: 1977
Cost: $175 million
Height: 915 feet
Stories: 59
Materials: Steel
Facing Materials: Aluminum,
reflective glass

Citicorp Center
Click photo
for larger image.

“From the very beginning, the Citicorp Center (today, the Citigroup Center) in New York City was an engineering challenge. When planning for the skyscraper began in the early 1970s, the northwest corner of the proposed building site was occupied by

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04A/040923-StPeters.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
St. Peter’s
Lutheran Church
.

The church allowed Citicorp to build the skyscraper under one condition: a new church would have to be built on the same corner, with no connection to the Citicorp building and no columns passing through it.

Church and skyscraper

How did the engineers do it? They set the 59-story tower on four massive columns, positioned at the center of each side, rather than at the corners. This design allowed the northwest corner of the building to cantilever 72 feet over the new church.”

Source: PBS, Building BIG.

Citigroup (NYSE:C) is said to be the largest financial services conglomerate in the world. 

For more on the close relationship between churches and banks, see the works of T. S. Eliot and a description of the City of London,

The Square Mile.

For more on Eliot, architecture,  and another Harvard man, use links in the previous entry.

Thursday September 23, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 am

Church Architecture

In memory of Harvard-trained
architect Edward Larrabee Barnes

From Martha Cooley’s The Archivist,
April 1999 paperback, page 301:

Cooley text, page 301

For related design issues
at Harvard, click here.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Wednesday September 22, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:38 pm

Tribute

In memory of Russ Meyer, who "made industrial films for Standard Oil and lumber companies before making his own films," a picture that might aptly (see Pi continued) be titled

The Magic Schmuck:

Aluminum puzzle by Niek Neuwahl.

By the same designer:

Game: Auf Teufel komm raus

Click on picture for details.

Object of game:
Connect the devils
with their tail ends
.

Manufacturer:

Click on logo for details.

Related material:
The Crimson Passion
 

Wednesday September 22, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:17 pm
Semitism

Norman F. Cantor on Christianity:

"Christianity itself was a Jewish enterprise, and not simply because Jesus was a Jew; Cantor points out, in his characteristically flippant way, that 'the Church of Rome is officially dedicated to Peter and Paul– two good Jewish boys, Simon Rocky and Saul of Tarsus.'"

— Lawrence Grossman, review of The Sacred Chain: The History of the Jews, by Norman F. Cantor

See also a Palm Sunday, 2003, entry on

Peter, Paul, and Murray.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Tuesday September 21, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:25 am

First Idea and Last Night

In memory of Saint Norman Cantor, an author of “stunning heartlessness” — my kind of historian — who died on Saturday, September 18, 2004…

a link to Log24.net entries of that date.

Give ’em Hell, Norman.

 

Above: recommended videos
from the date of Cantor’s death

“Dante’s hell was intended to be a shocking literary device. The Divine Comedy is not a work of theology or a spiritual treatise any more than James Joyce’s Ulysses is a sociological study of Dublin.”

— Norman F. Cantor
   Hollywood, Florida

Monday, September 20, 2004

Monday September 20, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Pi continued:

(see 9/15/04)

Above:

Renegade mathematician Max Cohen (Sean Gullette, left) and the leader of the Kabbalah sect, Lenny Meyer (Ben Shenkman) have a chance encounter on a Chinatown street corner.

The Magic Schmuck

"Confucius is said to have received only one inappropriate answer, i.e., hexagram 22, GRACE — a thoroughly aesthetic hexagram. This is reminiscent of the advice given to Socrates by his daemon — 'You ought to make more music' — whereupon Socrates took to playing the flute. Confucius and Socrates compete for first place as far as reasonableness and a pedagogic attitude to life are concerned; but it is unlikely that either of them occupied himself with 'lending grace to the beard on his chin,' as the second line of this hexagram advises. Unfortunately, reason and pedagogy often lack charm and grace, and so the oracle may not have been wrong after all."

— Carl Jung, Foreword to the I Ching 

Yesterday, class, in keeping with our morning German lesson, our evening (5:01:22 PM ET) entry was Hexagram 22, Pi (pronounced "bee"). The Chinese term pi may be translated in various ways… As ornament, as adornment, or as in a German web page:

I-Ching 22 Pi Der Schmuck

The Wilhelm translation of pi is "grace."  This suggests we examine yesterday's evening lottery number in the State of Grace, Pennsylvania:

408.

As kabbalists know, there are many ways of interpreting numbers.  In keeping with the viewpoint of Ecclesiastes — "time and chance happeneth" — let us interpret this instance of chance as an instance of time… namely, 4/08.  Striving for consistency in our meditations, let us examine the lessons for…

4/08 2003 — Death's Dream Kingdom

and 4/08 2004 — Triple Crown

From the former:

"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals; they always come in handy."

Stanislaw J. Lec

From the latter: 

"The tug of an art that unapologetically sees itself as on a par with science and religion is not to be underestimated…. Philosophical ambition and formal modesty still constitute Minimalism's bottom line."

Michael Kimmelman

In keeping with the above, from
this year's Log24.net
Rosh Hashanah service

A Minimalist
Pedestal:

 

For a poetic interpretation
of this symbol, see
Hexagram 20,
Contemplation (View).

Sunday, September 19, 2004

Sunday September 19, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 pm

Man and His Symbols

5:01:22

  

Sunday September 19, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

Sunday Shul

From this date last year:

“Time’s a round.”

Today’s Hebrew lesson:

From Wikipedia

“In the Bible, Gershom (גרשם “Expulsion”…) was the firstborn son of Moses and Zipporah.”

He was circumcised by Zipporah, hence saving Moses from God’s wrath.

This article is a stub.”

A search for information on circumcision by zipper yields the following gem:

“Doctor Paul M. Fleiss, MD, MPH, is assistant clinical professor of Pædiatrics at the University of Southern California Medical Center. He is the author of numerous scientific articles published in leading national and international medical journals. Paul M. Fleiss is a Jewish Intactivist — one who promotes genital integrity of children while opposing genital mutilation of children. He is also a convicted felon, having been convicted in connection with his daughter Heidi Fleiss’s activities in running a prostitution ring.”

Wikipedia

Today’s German lesson:

Properties of an image
on a German web page:

Location: http://www.1001-schmuck.de/
geschenke-images/
ButtonNavigation/5216.jpg
Width: 160px
Height: 220px
Size of File: 12.5 KB
Alternate text: Schmuck

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Saturday September 18, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

The First Idea

From aldaily.com,
a service of
The Chronicle of
Higher Education:

New Books

Mr. Oppenheimer, given what has happened since, would you again accept to develop the bomb? Even after Hiroshima?” “Yes”… more»


The foundations of civilization are but modest: consider for instance games of peekaboo and patty-cake… more»

Peekaboo:

Wallace Stevens on “The First Idea”

Patty-cake:

Language, Poetry, Philology

A specialist in Homer’s Odyssey and early Greek lyric poetry, Joseph Russo is the only American classicist among six international scholars to provide commentary for Oxford University Press’ three-volume edition of the epic poem.”

Introduction to an inaugural lecture, “Language, Poetry, Philology, and ‘The Stateliest Measure,'” at Haverford College given by Joseph Russo on Feb. 26, 1999

Saturday September 18, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 am

Soul at Harvard

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Log24.net, Thursday,
September 16, 2004,
3:57 PM

Soul and
The Fullness of Time

“In the fullness of time,
educated people will believe
there is no soul
independent of the body,
and hence no life after death.”
 — Francis Crick

Click on pictures for details.

Saturday September 18, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:12 am

Playing God

Interview in TIME Magazine, issue dated Sept. 6, 2004:

“Ellen DeGeneres has been cast as God in a remake of the 1977 George Burns film Oh, God!…

TIME: What do you think God’s house is like?

DeGeneres: There’s a coffee table with two magazines — Teen People and Guns & Ammo.”

… and a TV with two videos:

 

Click on pictures for details.

Friday, September 17, 2004

Friday September 17, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:57 pm

3:57:09…
Time is a Weapon

In memory of rock star and NRA member Johnny Ramone, who died on Wednesday, Sept. 15:

“You’ve got to ask yourself a question.”
Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry

“At the end, when the agent pumps Neo full of lead, the agent is using a .357 Magnum. That gun only holds 9 bullets, but the agent shoots 10 shots at Neo. I don’t know where he got that gun.”

— Jesse Baumann,
    The Matrix: The Magic Bullet 

Manufacturer:
Ta’as Israel Industries,
Ramat Hasharon, Israel

Friday, August 01, 2003:

Fearful Meditation 

Ray Price - Time

TIME, Aug. 4, 2003

Ray Price — Time

“The Max D. Barnes-penned title track, with its stark-reality lyrics, is nothing short of haunting: ‘Time is a weapon, it’s cold and it’s cruel; It knows no religion and plays by no rules; Time has no conscience when it’s all said and done; Like a beast in the jungle that devours its young.’ That’s so good, it hurts! Price’s still-amazing vocals are simply the chilling icing on the cake.”

— Lisa Berg, NashvilleCountry.com

O fearful meditation!
Where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel
from time’s chest lie hid?

— Shakespeare, Sonnet 65

Clue: click here.  This in turn leads to my March 4 entry Fearful Symmetry, which contains the following:

“Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery….”

— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

“How strange the change from major to minor….”

— Cole Porter, “Every Time We Say Goodbye

Friday September 17, 2004

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

God is in…
The Details

From an entry for Aug. 19, 2003 on
conciseness, simplicity, and objectivity:

Above: Dr. Harrison Pope, Harvard professor of psychiatry, demonstrates the use of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale "block design" subtest.

Another Harvard psychiatrist, Armand Nicholi, is in the news lately with his book The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.

Pope

Nicholi

Old
Testament
Logos

New
Testament
Logos

For the meaning of the Old-Testament logos above, see the remarks of Plato on the immortality of the soul at

Cut-the-Knot.org.

For the meaning of the New-Testament logos above, see the remarks of R. P. Langlands at

The Institute for Advanced Study.

On Harvard and psychiatry: see

The Crimson Passion:
A Drama at Mardi Gras

(February 24, 2004)

This is a reductio ad absurdum of the Harvard philosophy so eloquently described by Alston Chase in his study of Harvard and the making of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski.  Kaczynski's time at Harvard overlapped slightly with mine, so I may have seen him in Cambridge at some point.  Chase writes that at Harvard, the Unabomber "absorbed the message of positivism, which demanded value-neutral reasoning and preached that (as Kaczynski would later express it in his journal) 'there is no logical justification for morality.'" I was less impressed by Harvard positivism, although I did benefit from a course in symbolic logic from Quine.  At that time– the early 60's– little remained at Harvard of what Robert Stone has called "our secret culture," that of the founding Puritans– exemplified by Cotton and Increase Mather.

From Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise:

"Our secret culture is as frivolous as a willow on a tombstone.  It's a wonderful thing– or it was.  It was strong and dreadful, it was majestic and ruthless.  It was a stranger to pity.  And it's not for sale, ladies and gentlemen."

Some traces of that culture:

A web page
in Australia:

A contemporary
Boston author:

Click on pictures for details.

A more appealing view of faith was offered by PBS on Wednesday night, the beginning of this year's High Holy Days:

Armand Nicholi: But how can you believe something that you don't think is true, I mean, certainly, an intelligent person can't embrace something that they don't think is true — that there's something about us that would object to that.

 

Jeremy Fraiberg: Well, the answer is, they probably do believe it's true.

Armand Nicholi: But how do they get there? See, that's why both Freud and Lewis was very interested in that one basic question. Is there an intelligence beyond the universe? And how do we answer that question? And how do we arrive at the answer of that question?

Michael Shermer: Well, in a way this is an empirical question, right? Either there is or there isn't.

Armand Nicholi: Exactly.

Michael Shermer: And either we can figure it out or we can't, and therefore, you just take the leap of faith or you don't.

Armand Nicholi: Yeah, now how can we figure it out?

Winifred Gallagher: I think something that was perhaps not as common in their day as is common now — this idea that we're acting as if belief and unbelief were two really radically black and white different things, and I think for most people, there's a very — it's a very fuzzy line, so that —

Margaret Klenck: It's always a struggle.

Winifred Gallagher: Rather than — I think there's some days I believe, and some days I don't believe so much, or maybe some days I don't believe at all.

Doug Holladay: Some hours.

Winifred Gallagher: It's a, it's a process. And I think for me the big developmental step in my spiritual life was that — in some way that I can't understand or explain that God is right here right now all the time, everywhere.

Armand Nicholi: How do you experience that?

Winifred Gallagher: I experience it through a glass darkly, I experience it in little bursts. I think my understanding of it is that it's, it's always true, and sometimes I can see it and sometimes I can't. Or sometimes I remember that it's true, and then everything is in Technicolor. And then most of the time it's not, and I have to go on faith until the next time I can perhaps see it again. I think of a divine reality, an ultimate reality, uh, would be my definition of God.

Winifred
Gallagher

Sangaku

Gallagher seemed to be the only participant in the PBS discussion that came close to the Montessori ideals of conciseness, simplicity, and objectivity.  Dr. Montessori intended these as ideals for teachers, but they seem also to be excellent religious values.  Just as the willow-tombstone seems suited to Geoffrey Hill's style, the Pythagorean sangaku pictured above seems appropriate to the admirable Gallagher.

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Thursday September 16, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:57 pm

The Fullness of Time

“In the fullness of time,
educated people will believe
there is no soul
independent of the body,
and hence no life after death.”
 — Francis Crick

PARAPHRASE OF THE PROSE
OF “THE DIARY”

after Walter Benjamin

You live alone in
      the diary of my life
Leading an immortal existence
      page by page….

— Gershom Scholem,
The Fullness of Time,
page 53

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Wednesday September 15, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm

11:59 PM: The Last Minute

For the benefit of Grace (Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute), here are the September 15 lottery numbers for Pennsylvania, the State of Grace (Kelly):

Midday: 053 Evening: 373.

For the significance of the evening number, 373, see Directions Out and Outside the World (both of 4/26/04).  In both of these entries, and others to which they are linked, the number 373 signifies eternity.

The two most obvious interpretations of the midday number, 53, are as follows:

  • As a famous number of tones in musical harmonic analysis (i.e., tuning theory), as opposed to mathematical harmonic analysis ( The Square Wheel, 9/14/04), and
  • as a reference to the year 1953– a good year for Grace Kelly and the year of the classic film From Here to Eternity (the latter being signified, as noted above, by yesterday’s evening lottery number in the State of Grace).

Time and chance
happeneth to them all.”
Ecclesiastes 9-11

Wednesday September 15, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:11 pm

High Holy
Hexagram

7:11:20 PM

For a poetic interpretation
of this symbol, see
Hexagram 20,
Contemplation (View).

For a religious interpretation
suited to the High Holy Days,
see the film

.

 “The truth is that man’s capacity for symbol-mongering in general and language in particular is so intimately part and parcel of his being human, of his perceiving and knowing, of his very consciousness itself, that it is all but impossible for him to focus on the magic prism through which he sees everything else.”

— Walker Percy, The Message in the Bottle

Wednesday September 15, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:00 pm

Shakespeare
for Rosh Hashanah

From “Walter Benjamin,
1892-1940,”
by Hannah Arendt
(Introduction to
Benjamin’s Illuminations.):

THE PEARL DIVER

Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
THE TEMPEST, I, 2

“… we are dealing here with something which may not be unique but is certainly extremely rare: the gift of thinking poetically.

And this thinking, fed by the present, works with the ‘thought fragments’ it can wrest from the past and gather about itself.  Like a pearl diver who descends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and bring it to light but to pry loose the rich and the strange, the pearls and the coral in the depths, and to carry them to the surface, this thinking delves into the depths of the past– but not in order to resuscitate it the way it was and to contribute to the renewal of extinct ages. What guides this thinking is the conviction that although the living is subject to the ruin of the time, the process of decay is at the same time a process of crystallization, that in the depth of the sea, into which sinks and is dissolved what once was alive, some things ‘suffer a sea-change’ and survive in new crystallized forms and shapes that remain immune to the elements, as though they waited only for the pearl diver who one day will come down to them and bring them up into the world of the living– as ‘thought fragments,’ as something ‘rich and strange,’ and perhaps even as everlasting Urphänomene.”

For examples of everlasting Urphänomene, see Translation Plane for Rosh Hashanah and The Square Wheel; recall that on this date

“In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws deprived German Jews of their citizenship and made the swastika the official symbol of Nazi Germany.”

Today in History, the Miami Herald

(For some further reflections on square wheels, see Triumph of the Cross.)

Wednesday September 15, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

On Translation

From Illuminations, by Walter Benjamin, translated by Harry Zohn:

“If there is such a thing as a language of truth, the tensionless and even silent depository of the ultimate truth which all thought strives for, then this language of truth is– the true language.  And this very language, whose divination and description is the only perfection a philosopher can hope for, is concealed in concentrated fashion in translations.  There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation.  But despite the claims of sentimental artists, these two are not banausic.  For there is a philosophical genius that is characterized by a yearning for that language which manifests itself in translations: ‘Les langues imparfaites en cela que plusieurs, manque la suprême: penser étant écrire sans accessoires, ni chuchotement mais tacite encore l’immortelle parole, la diversité, sur terre, des idiomes empêche personne de proférer les mots qui, sinon se trouveraient, par une frappe unique, elle-même matériellement la vérité.’*  If what Mallarmé evokes here is fully fathomable to a philosopher, translation, with its rudiments of such a language, is midway between poetry and doctrine.  Its products are less sharply defined, but it leaves no less of a mark on history.”

* “The imperfection of languages consists in their plurality, the supreme one is lacking: thinking is writing without accessories or even whispering, the immortal word still remains silent; the diversity of idioms on earth prevents everybody from uttering the words which otherwise, at one single stroke, would materialize as truth.’

Stéphane Mallarmé / Crise de vers

(The Benjamin is from a copy of Illuminations I purchased exactly 12 years ago, on Sept. 15, 1992.)

Wednesday September 15, 2004

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:30 am

Translation Plane
for Rosh Hashanah

Figure A

From the website of

Priv.-Doz. Dr. H. Klein,
Arbeitsgruppe Geometrie,
Mathematisches Seminar der
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel —

The Translation Plane of Order Nine

There are exactly four projective planes of order nine, and one of these planes is a non-Desarguesian translation plane.

Theorem. Up to isomorphism, there exists exactly one non-Desarguesian translation plane of order 9.

This translation plane is defined by a spreadset in a 2-dimensional vector space over the field GF(3), consisting of the following matrices.


 

As it turns out, the coordinatizing quasifield is a nearfield. Moreover the non-Desarguesian translation plane of order 9 has Lenz-Barlotti type IVa.3.

Two versions of the defining spreadset for this plane are shown in Figure A.  In the left part of Fig. A, the matrices of Dr. Klein are altered by the use of “2” instead of “-1” (since these are the same, modulo 3).  In the right part of Fig. A, the corresponding figures from my 1985 note Visualizing GL(2, p) are shown.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Tuesday September 14, 2004

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:00 pm

The Square Wheel

Harmonic analysis may be based either on the circular (i.e., trigonometric) functions or on the square (i. e., Walsh) functions.  George Mackey's masterly historical survey showed that the discovery of Fourier analysis, based on the circle, was of comparable importance (within mathematics) to the discovery (within general human history) of the wheel.  Harmonic analysis based on square functions– the "square wheel," as it were– is also not without its importance.

For some observations of Stephen Wolfram on square-wheel analysis, see pp. 573 ff. in Wolfram's magnum opus, A New Kind of Science (Wolfram Media, May 14, 2002).  Wolfram's illustration of this topic is closely related, as it happens, to a note on the symmetry of finite-geometry hyperplanes that I wrote in 1986.  A web page pointing out this same symmetry in Walsh functions was archived on Oct. 30, 2001.

That web page is significant (as later versions point out) partly because it shows that just as the phrase "the circular functions" is applied to the trigonometric functions, the phrase "the square functions" might well be applied to Walsh functions– which have, in fact, properties very like those of the trig functions.  For details, see Symmetry of Walsh Functions, updated today.

"While the reader may draw many a moral from our tale, I hope that the story is of interest for its own sake.  Moreover, I hope that it may inspire others, participants or observers, to preserve the true and complete record of our mathematical times."

From Error-Correcting Codes
Through Sphere Packings
To Simple Groups
,
by Thomas M. Thompson,
Mathematical Association of America, 1983

Monday, September 13, 2004

Monday September 13, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:24 pm

x

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Sunday September 12, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:13 pm

The Turning

A way a lone
a last a loved
a long the

PARIS,
1922-1939

Click on pictures
for further details.

"For the essence and the end
Of his labor is beauty… 
one beauty, the rhythm of that Wheel
"

Robinson Jeffers,
"Point Pinos and Point Lobos"

Sunday September 12, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Dark Lady

“Each time we come closer to Shakespeare’s life, we escape from the aridity of formal criticism or the cheap generalities of social history into a recognizable world of real experience.  When A. L. Rowse insists that Emilia Bassano Lanier, the tempestuous, adulterous, musical, poetic wife of a court musician, was the original ‘Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets, we can buy it or not, as we please. But the very existence of a woman like Emilia demonstrates that the clichéd images of Elizabethan women, as subservient wives or unruly whores, are too grossly tuned to capture the reality of Shakespeare’s world. Whether she is the Dark Lady or not, Emilia is a dark lady. Good biographical criticism dissolves determinisms, and replaces them not with gossipy puzzle-solution certainties but with glimpses of life as it is lived, and art as it is made.”

— Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, issue dated Sept. 13, 2004

 

“En librairie depuis le 12 septembre 2003, ce livre correspond au désir du mouvement ‘ni putes ni soumises’ de briser l’omerta et de poursuivre les débats engagés depuis la marche des femmes. À travers ce récit, ce sont les voix de milliers de jeunes femmes qui se font entendre, exprimant leurs interrogations et leur révolte.”

niputesnisoumises.com

On Samira Bellil, who died on Sept. 3:

“Bellil was considered the ‘godmother’ of the womens’ rights group ‘Ni Putes Ni Soumises’ (Neither Whores Nor Submissive.)”

Hendersonville (NC) Times-News

Saturday, September 11, 2004

Saturday September 11, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

September Morn

“Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red to orange. The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter. For leaves, birds and animals, turning comes instinctively. But for us, turning does not come so easily.”

President Clinton,
Prayer Breakfast,
September 11, 1998

Friday, September 10, 2004

Friday September 10, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 pm

x

Friday September 10, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 pm

x

Friday September 10, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:13 pm

Philosophy

For Samira Bellil,

who died in Paris on
Friday, Sept. 3, 2004… 

From the link at
Symmetry and Change
in the Dreamtime
,
Part 8, Friday,
Sept. 3, 2004,
Noon…

Under heaven 
thunder rolls

Log24 on Sept. 10, 2002

Three songs from Sept. 10
in various preceding years–

Good morning little schoolgirl
Good morning little schoolgirl
Can I come home with
Can I come home with you

— Rod Stewart, Sept. 10, 1964

Tell your mamma, girl, I can’t stay long
We got things we gotta catch up on
Mmmm, you know
You know what I’m sayin’

— Neil Diamond, Sept. 10, 1966

A time of war, a time of peace
A time of love, a time of hate
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing

— The Byrds, Sept. 10, 1965

Further verses from the Byrds
seem appropriate on this, the day
of Samira Bellil’s funeral:

To everything, turn, turn, turn,
there is a season, turn, turn, turn…

Tournante

“It’s not even called rape. They call it
a tournante, or pass-round.
The banality is deliberate:
a joint, a girl – same difference.”

… and a time to every purpose
under heaven.

“… The kind of school where teacher
Fabrice Genestal kept hearing
the word “tournante” and didn’t click
what it meant, till he and Sillam
sat the kids down in after-school
workshops, and got talking.”

Metropolitan Police Service, London

Monday, September 6, 2004

Monday September 6, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:29 pm

An Invariant Feast

In memory of philosopher Robert D. Cumming, who took part in the liberation of Paris on the Feast of St. Louis, 1944, and who died on that same feast day, August 25, in 2004:

"We'll always have Paris."
 

Sunday, September 5, 2004

Sunday September 5, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:29 pm

A Story of Sorts

Sometimes one’s journal entries seem to be telling a story…

This was the case for Log24 entries of Tuesday through Friday last week.  Unfortunately, the story they told is about as coherent as Finnegans Wake.

Anyone interested can find the story, put into chronological order and prefaced with a summary, at

Symmetry and Change
in the Dreamtime
.

Sunday September 5, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 pm

Symmetry and Change
in the Dreamtime

Notes from the Journal
of Steven H. Cullinane

Summary:

Aug 31 2004 
07:31:01 PM
Early Evening,
Shining Star 
Sep 01 2004
09:00:35 AM
Words
and Images
Sep 01 2004
12:07:28 PM
Whale Rider
Sep 02 2004
11:11:42 AM
Heaven
and Earth

Sep 02 2004
07:00:23 PM
Whale Road

Sep 03 2004
12:00:54 AM

Cinderella’s
Slipper
 
Sep 03 2004
10:01:56 AM
Another
September Morn

 

Sep 03 2004
12:00:25 PM

Noon

Sep 03 2004
01:13:49 PM

De Nada

Sep 03 2004
03:17:13 
PM

Ite, Missa Est 


Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 1…

Early Evening,
Shining Star

7:31:01 PM ET

Hexagram 01
The Creative:

 

The Image

Heaven

Heaven

The movement of heaven
is full of power.

Click on picture
for details.

The Clare Lawler Prize
for Literature goes to…

Under the Volcano,
Chapter VI:

“What have I got out of my life? Contacts with famous men… The occasion Einstein asked me the time, for instance. That summer evening…. smiles when I say I don’t know. And yet asked me. Yes: the great Jew, who has upset the whole world’s notions of time and space, once leaned down… to ask me… ragged freshman… at the first approach of the evening star, the time. And smiled again when I pointed out the clock neither of us had noticed.”

For the thoughts on time
of another famous man,
from Mexico, see the
Nobel Prize acceptance speech
of Octavio Paz,
In Search of the Present.”


Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 2…

Words and Images

9:00:35 AM ET

Hexagram 35
Progress:

The Image

Fire

Earth

The sun rises over the earth.

From Aug. 18, 2004:

“Oh, my Lolita. I have only words
to play with!” (Nabokov, Lolita)

“This is the best toy train set
a boy ever had!”
(Orson Welles, after first touring
RKO Studios, quoted in Halliwell)

“As the quotes above by Nabokov and Welles suggest, we need to be able to account for the specific functions available to narrative in each medium, for the specific elements that empirical creators will ‘play with’ in crafting their narratives.”

Donald F. Larsson

For
James Whale
and
William French Anderson —

Words
In the Spirit of
Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs:

Stay for just a while…
Stay, and let me look at you.
It’s been so long, I hardly knew you.
Standing in the door…
Stay with me a while.
I only want to talk to you.
We’ve traveled halfway ’round the world
To find ourselves again.

September morn…
We danced until the night
      became a brand new day,
Two lovers playing scenes
      from some romantic play.
September morning still can
      make me feel this way.

Look at what you’ve done…
Why, you’ve become a grown-up girl…

— Neil Diamond

Images
In the Spirit of
September Morn:

The Last Day of Summer:
Photographs by Jock Sturges

In 1990, the FBI entered Sturges’s studio and seized his work, claiming violation of child pornography laws.”

Related material:

Bill’s Diamond Theory

and

Log24 entries of
Aug. 15, 2004
.

Those interested in the political implications of Diamond’s songs may enjoy Neil Performs at Kerry Fundraiser.

I personally enjoyed this site’s description of Billy Crystal’s remarks, which included “a joke about former President Clinton’s forthcoming children’s book — ‘It’s called The Little Engine That Could Because It Could.'”

“Puff, puff, woo, woo, off we go!” 

 


 

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 3…

Whale Rider

12:07:28 PM

Hexagram 28
Preponderance of
the Great:

The Image

Lake

Wind

The lake rises
above
the trees.

 

Cullinane College News:

“Congratulations to Clare Lawler, who participated very successfully in the recently held Secondary Schools Judo Championships in Wellington.”

For an explanation of this entry’s title, see the previous two entries and

Oxford Word
(Log24, July 10, 2004) 


Thursday, September 2, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 4…

Heaven and Earth

11:11:42 AM ET

Hexagram 42
Increase:

The Image

Wind

Thunder

Wind and thunder:
the image of Increase.

“This time resembles that of
the marriage of heaven and earth”


Kylie


Finney

Well if you want to ride
you gotta ride it like you find it.
Get your ticket at the station
of the Rock Island Line.
Lonnie Donegan (d. Nov. 3)
and others
The Rock Island Line’s namesake depot 
in Rock Island, Illinois

“What it all boiled down to really was everybody giving everybody else a hard time for no good reason whatever… You just couldn’t march to your own music. Nowadays, you couldn’t even hear it… It was lost, the music which each person had inside himself, and which put him in step with things as they should be.”

The Grifters, Ch. 10, 1963, by
James Myers Thompson

“The Old Man’s still an artist
with a Thompson.”
— Terry in “Miller’s Crossing

For some of “the music which
each person had inside,”
click on the picture
with the Thompson.

It may be that Kylie is,
in her own way, an artist…
with a 357:

(Hits counter at
The Quality of Diamond
as of 11:05 AM Sept. 2, 2004)

For more on
“the marriage of heaven and earth,”
see
Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star


Thursday, September 2, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 5…

Whale Road

7:00:23 PM

Hexagram 23
Splitting Apart:

The Image

Mountain

Earth

The mountain rests
on the earth
.

“… the plot is different but the monsters, names, and manner of speaking will ring a bell.”

— Frank Pinto, Jr., review of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf 

Other recommended reading, found during a search for the implications of today’s previous entry, “Hexagram 42”:

Water Wings.

This excellent meditation
on symmetry and change
comes from a site whose
home page
has the following image:


Friday, September 3, 2004

 Symmetry and Change, Part 6…

Cinderella’s Slipper

12:00:54 AM ET

Hexagram 54
The Marrying Maiden:

 

The Image

Thunder


Lake
See
The hundredletter
thunderwords of
Finnegans Wake


“… a Thoreau-like retreat
by a nearby lake….
Both men have
a ‘touch of the poet’….
The symmetry is perfect.”

Friday, September 3, 2004  

Symmetry and Change, Part 7…

Another September Morn

10:01:56 AM ET

Hexagram 56:
The Wanderer

 

The Image

Fire


Mountain

Fire on the mountain,
Run boys run…
Devil’s in the House of
The Rising Sun!
 


Friday, September 3, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 8…

Noon

12:00:25 PM ET

Hexagram 25
Innocence:

The Image

Heaven


Thunder

Under heaven
thunder rolls.
 


Friday, September 3, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 9…

De Nada

Helen Lane

1:13:49 PM ET

Hexagram 49
Revolution:

The Image

Lake


Fire
 Fire in the lake:
the image of Revolution
.

“I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart.”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano 


Friday, September 3, 2004

Symmetry and Change, conclusion…

Ite, Missa Est

3:17:13 PM ET

Hexagram 13
Fellowship With Men:

The Image

Heaven


Fire

Heaven together with fire.

“A pretty girl —
is like a melody —- !”

 For details, see
A Mass for Lucero


Friday, September 3, 2004

Friday September 3, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:17 pm

Symmetry and Change, conclusion…

Ite, Missa Est

3:17:13 PM ET

Hexagram 13
Fellowship With Men:

The Image

Heaven

Fire

Heaven together with fire.

“A pretty girl —
is like a melody —- !”

 For details, see
A Mass for Lucero.

Friday September 3, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:13 pm

Symmetry and Change, Part 9…

De Nada

Helen Lane

1:13:49 PM ET

Hexagram 49
Revolution:

The Image

Lake



Fire

 

 Fire in the lake:
the image of Revolution
.

"I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart."

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

Friday September 3, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Symmetry and Change, Part 8…

Noon

12:00:25 PM ET

Hexagram 25
Innocence:

The Image

Heaven

Thunder

Under heaven
thunder rolls.

Friday September 3, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:01 am

Symmetry and Change, Part 7…

Another September Morn

10:01:56 AM ET

Hexagram 56:
The Wanderer

 

The Image

Fire


Mountain

Fire on the mountain,
Run boys run…
Devil’s in the House of
The Rising Sun!

Friday September 3, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Symmetry and Change, Part 6…

Cinderella’s Slipper

12:00:54 AM ET

Hexagram 54
The Marrying Maiden:

 

The Image

Thunder


Lake
 
See
 
The hundredletter
thunderwords of
Finnegans Wake


“… a Thoreau-like retreat
by a nearby lake….
Both men have
a ‘touch of the poet’….
The symmetry is perfect.”

Thursday, September 2, 2004

Thursday September 2, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm

Symmetry and Change, Part 5…

Whale Road

7:00:23 PM

Hexagram 23
Splitting Apart:

The Image

Mountain

Earth

The mountain rests
on the earth
.

“… the plot is different but the monsters, names, and manner of speaking will ring a bell.”

— Frank Pinto, Jr., review of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf 

Other recommended reading, found during a search for the implications of today’s previous entry, “Hexagram 42”:

Water Wings.

This excellent meditation
on symmetry and change
comes from a site whose
home page
has the following image:


Thursday September 2, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:11 am

Symmetry and Change, Part 4…

Heaven and Earth

11:11:42 AM ET

Hexagram 42
Increase:

The Image

Wind

Thunder

Wind and thunder:
the image of Increase.

“This time resembles that of
the marriage of heaven and earth”


Kylie


Finney

 
Well if you want to ride
you gotta ride it like you find it.
Get your ticket at the station
of the Rock Island Line.
Lonnie Donegan (d. Nov. 3)
and others
 
 
The Rock Island Line’s namesake depot 
in Rock Island, Illinois

“What it all boiled down to really was everybody giving everybody else a hard time for no good reason whatever… You just couldn’t march to your own music. Nowadays, you couldn’t even hear it… It was lost, the music which each person had inside himself, and which put him in step with things as they should be.”

The Grifters, Ch. 10, 1963, by
James Myers Thompson

“The Old Man’s still an artist
with a Thompson.”
— Terry in “Miller’s Crossing

For some of “the music which
each person had inside,”
click on the picture
with the Thompson.

It may be that Kylie is,
in her own way, an artist…
with a 357:

(Hits counter at
The Quality of Diamond
as of 11:05 AM Sept. 2, 2004)

For more on
“the marriage of heaven and earth,”
see
Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Wednesday September 1, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:07 pm

Symmetry and Change, Part 3…

Whale Rider

12:07:28 PM

Hexagram 28
Preponderance of
the Great:

The Image

Lake

Wind

The lake rises
above
the trees.

 

Cullinane College News:

“Congratulations to Clare Lawler, who participated very successfully in the recently held Secondary Schools Judo Championships in Wellington.”

For an explanation of this entry’s title, see the previous two entries and

Oxford Word
(Log24, July 10, 2004)

Wednesday September 1, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

Symmetry and Change, Part 2…

Words and Images

9:00:35 AM ET

Hexagram 35
Progress:

The Image

Fire

Earth

The sun rises over the earth.

From Aug. 18, 2004:

“Oh, my Lolita. I have only words
to play with!” (Nabokov, Lolita)

“This is the best toy train set
a boy ever had!”
(Orson Welles, after first touring
RKO Studios, quoted in Halliwell)

“As the quotes above by Nabokov and Welles suggest, we need to be able to account for the specific functions available to narrative in each medium, for the specific elements that empirical creators will ‘play with’ in crafting their narratives.”

Donald F. Larsson

For
James Whale
and
William French Anderson —

Words
In the Spirit of
Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs:

Stay for just a while…
Stay, and let me look at you.
It’s been so long, I hardly knew you.
Standing in the door…
Stay with me a while.
I only want to talk to you.
We’ve traveled halfway ’round the world
To find ourselves again.

September morn…
We danced until the night
      became a brand new day,
Two lovers playing scenes
      from some romantic play.
September morning still can
      make me feel this way.

Look at what you’ve done…
Why, you’ve become a grown-up girl…

— Neil Diamond

Images
In the Spirit of
September Morn:

The Last Day of Summer:
Photographs by Jock Sturges

In 1990, the FBI entered Sturges’s studio and seized his work, claiming violation of child pornography laws.”

Related material:

Bill’s Diamond Theory

and

Log24 entries of
Aug. 15, 2004
.

Those interested in the political implications of Diamond’s songs may enjoy Neil Performs at Kerry Fundraiser.

I personally enjoyed this site’s description of Billy Crystal’s remarks, which included “a joke about former President Clinton’s forthcoming children’s book — ‘It’s called The Little Engine That Could Because It Could.'”

“Puff, puff, woo, woo, off we go!”

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