Log24

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Saturday April 30, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm
City of God

Kevin Baker in 2001 on
E. L. Doctorow’s City of God:

“…the nature of the cosmos
(Augustine’s City of God?)”

David Van Biema in Time Magazine
(May 2, 2005, p. 43)

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050430-TIME.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

on Augustine’s City of God:

“A key concept in Augustine’s great
The City of God is that the Christian church
is superior and essentially alien

to its earthly surroundings.”


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  Click on the above for a rendition of
  Appalachian Spring.

This year’s April – Mathematics Awareness Month –
theme is “Mathematics and the Cosmos.”

For my own views on this theme as it applies
to education, see Wag the Dogma.

For some other views, see this year’s
Mathematics Awareness Month site.

One of the authors at that site,
which is mostly propaganda
for the religion of Scientism,
elsewhere quotes
an ignorant pedagogue:

“‘The discovery of non-Euclidean geometries
contradicted the “absolute truth” view
of the Platonists.'”

Sarah J. Greenwald,
   Associate Professor,
   Department of Mathematics
   Appalachian State University, Boone, NC

Damned nonsense.  See Math16.com.

Saturday April 30, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am
Nine is a Vine,
continued

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/HopeOfHeaven1938-2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Larry Gelbart on the film
Up Close and Personal:
“A Brenda Starr is Born.”

Related material:
O’Hara’s Fingerpost,
Eight is a Gate,
Art Wars,
In the Details,
and the words
“White Christmas.”

Friday, April 29, 2005

Friday April 29, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:07 pm
X in a Box,
continued:

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Friday April 29, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:10 am
Midrash Jazz Quartet

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Harvard's Barry Mazur likes to quote Aristotle's Metaphysics.  See 1, 2, 3.

Here, with an introductory remark by Martha Cooley, is more from the Metaphysics:

The central aim of Western religion —

"Each of us has something to offer the Creator...
the bridging of
                 masculine and feminine,
                      life and death.
It's redemption.... nothing else matters."
-- Martha Cooley in The Archivist (1998)

The central aim of Western philosophy —

                 Dualities of Pythagoras
              as reconstructed by Aristotle:
                 Limited     Unlimited
                     Odd     Even
                    Male     Female
                   Light     Dark
                Straight     Curved
                  ... and so on ....

"Of these dualities, the first is the most important; all the others may be seen as different aspects of this fundamental dichotomy. To establish a rational and consistent relationship between the limited [man, etc.] and the unlimited [the cosmos, etc.] is… the central aim of all Western philosophy."
— Jamie James in The Music of the Spheres (1993)

"In the garden of Adding,
Live Even and Odd….
And the song of love's recision
is the music of the spheres."
— The Midrash Jazz Quartet in City of God, by E. L. Doctorow (2000)

Harvard University, Department of English:

The Morris Gray Lecture, a reading by E.L. Doctorow.
Wednesday, April 27, 6:00 PM

Thompson Room, The Barker Center

CANCELED

Today's birthday: Jerry Seinfeld.
Related material:
Is Nothing Sacred? and Symmetries.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Thursday April 28, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 pm

Black Moses

For an explanation of the title, see
the previous entry and
Robert P. Moses and The Algebra Project.

For another algebra project, see
Log24 entries of April 14-25 as well as
the following “X in a box” figure

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050310-hex.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

from March 10, 2005 and
April 5, 2005.

Those interested in artistic rather than mathematical figures may compare this diagram with that of Samuel Beckett in Quad (1981):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050428-Quad.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


Related quotations:

Barry Mazur on a seminal paper of algebraist Saunders Mac Lane:

The paper was rejected “because the editor thought that it was ‘more devoid of content’ than any other he had read.  ‘Saunders wrote back and said, “That’s the point,”‘ Mazur said.  ‘And in some ways that’s the genius of it. It’s the barest, most Beckett-like vocabulary that incorporates the theory and nothing else.'”

J. Peter May, a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago quoted in the Chicago Tribune:

“There are some ideas you simply could not think without a vocabulary to think them.”

Amen.

Thursday April 28, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm
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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Tuesday April 26, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:29 am
The Ring of Falsehood
 
In memory of Philip Morrison, bombmaker,

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Morrison

Scientific American columnist,
  pioneer of the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
and author of
The Ring of Truth.

Morrison died
in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
on Friday, April 22, 2005.

From The Measure of a Life:

Does religion play a role in attitudes toward ETIs? Philip Morrison gave his considered opinion… “Well, it might, but I think that it’s just one of the permissive routes; it isn’t an essential factor. My parents were Jewish. Their beliefs were conventional but not very deep. They belonged to the Jewish community; they went to services infrequently, on special occasions—funerals and high holidays”….

Although Sagan did not believe in God, he nevertheless said this about SETI’s importance… “It touches deeply into myth, folklore, religion, mythology; and every human culture in some way or another has wondered about that type of question. It’s one of the most basic questions there is.” In fact, in Sagan’s novel/film Contact, described by Keay Davidson as “one of the most religious science-fiction tales ever written”… Ellie discovers that pi—the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter—is numerically encoded in the cosmos and this is proof that a super-intelligence designed the universe…

The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle—another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.

Nell

See also yesterday's entry Mathematical Style.

Extra credit:
Discuss the difference betweeen physical constants and mathematical constants. Use the results of your discussion to show that the above discussion of pi is nonsense.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Monday April 25, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:31 am

Mathematical Style:
Mac Lane Memorial, Part Trois

(See also Part I and Part II.)

“We have seen that there are many diverse styles that lead to success in mathematics. Choose one mathematician… from the ones we studied whose ‘mathematical style’ you find most rewarding for you…. Identify the mathematician and describe his or her mathematical style.”



Nell

— Sarah J. Greenwald,
take-home exam from
Introduction to Mathematics
at Appalachian State U.,
Boone, North Carolina

From today’s Harvard Crimson:

Ex-Math Prof Mac Lane, 95, Dies

[Saunders] Mac Lane was most famous for the ground-breaking paper he co-wrote with Samuel Eilenberg of Columbia in 1945 which introduced category theory, a framework to show how mathematical structures relate to each other. This branch of algebra has since influenced most mathematical fields and also has functions in philosophy and linguistics, but was first dismissed by many practical mathematicians as too abstract to be useful.

Gade University Professor of Mathematics Barry Mazur, a friend of the late Mac Lane, recalled that the paper had at first been rejected from a lower-caliber mathematical journal because the editor thought that it was “more devoid of content” than any other he had read.

“Saunders wrote back and said, ‘That’s the point,'” Mazur said. “And in some ways that’s the genius of it. It’s the barest, most Beckett-like vocabulary that incorporates the theory and nothing else.”

He likened it to a sparse grammar of nouns and verbs and a limited vocabulary that is presented “in such a deft way that it will help you understand any language you wish to understand and any language will fit into it.”

Beckett-like vocabulary
from April 24:

.


Also from Appalachian State University

(with illustration by Ingmar Bergman):

Confession in 'The Seventh Seal'

“In my hour of weakness,
that old enemy
tries to steal my soul.
But when he comes
like a flood to surround me
My God will step in
and a standard he’ll raise.”

Jesus Be a Fence

Related material:
The Crimson Passion
 

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Sunday April 24, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:23 am
April 24

Today’s sermon:

.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Friday April 22, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am

Mac Lane Memorial

In memory of Saunders Mac Lane, mathematician, who died Thursday, April 14, 2005:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/BirkhoffMacLane.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

From MacTutor

“It was during these years [the late 1930’s] that he wrote his famous text A Survey of Modern Algebra with G. Birkhoff which was published in 1941. Kaplansky writes in [*] about this text:-

A Survey of Modern Algebra opened to American undergraduates what had until then been largely reserved for mathematicians in van der Waerden‘s Moderne Algebra, published a decade earlier. The impact of Birkhoff and Mac Lane on the content and teaching of algebra in colleges and universities was immediate and long sustained. What we recognise in undergraduate courses in algebra today took much of its start with the abstract algebra which they made both accessible and attractive.

[*] I. Kaplansky, “The early work of Saunders Mac Lane on valuations and fields,” in I Kaplansky (ed.), Saunders Mac Lane: Selected Papers (New York – Heidelberg, 1979), 519-524.”

Mac Lane is noted for introducing, with Eilenberg, category theory.

For some remarks on the place of category theory in the history of mathematics, see Log24  entries of Dec. 3, 2002.

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Saturday April 16, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

Seal

The Log24 entry for yesterday, the date of Prince Rainier’s funeral, discussed a figure sometimes called “Solomon’s seal.”  Here are some further reflections.

“Time and chance
happeneth to them all.”
— Solomon, Ecclesiastes 9:11

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Mid-day lottery number,
State of Grace,
April 15, 2005

5/28, 2003:

The Eightfold Way
and Solomon’s Seal

Friday, April 15, 2005

Friday April 15, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:11 am
Leonardo Day

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In memory of Leonardo and of Chen Yifei (previous entry), a link to the Sino-Judaic Institute’s review of Chen’s film “Escape to Shanghai” —

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050415-PointsEast.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Click on the above for details.

Related material
from Log24.net:


Saturday, December 27, 2003  10:21 PM

Toy

“If little else, the brain is an educational toy.  While it may be a frustrating plaything — one whose finer points recede just when you think you are mastering them — it is nonetheless perpetually fascinating, frequently surprising, occasionally rewarding, and it comes already assembled; you don’t have to put it together on Christmas morning.

The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too.  Sometimes they’d rather play with yours than theirs.  Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs.  The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated.  If you don’t play some people’s game, they say that you have ‘lost your marbles,’ not recognizing that,

while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain.

One brain game that is widely, if poorly, played is a gimmick called ‘rational thought.’ “

— Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Sol LeWitt
June 12, 1969
:

“I took the number twenty-four and there’s twenty-four ways of expressing the numbers one, two, three, four.  And I assigned one kind of line to one, one to two, one to three, and one to four.  One was a vertical line, two was a horizontal line, three was diagonal left to right, and four was diagonal right to left.  These are the basic kind of directions that lines can take…. the absolute ways that lines can be drawn.   And I drew these things as parallel lines very close to one another in boxes.  And then there was a system of changing them so that within twenty-four pages there were different arrangements of actually sixteen squares, four sets of four.  Everything was based on four.  So this was kind of a… more of a… less of a rational… I mean, it gets into the whole idea of methodology.”

Yes, it does.
See Art Wars, Poetry’s Bones, and Time Fold.


Friday, December 26, 2003  7:59 PM

ART WARS, St. Stephen’s Day:

The Magdalene Code

Got The Da Vinci Code for Xmas.

From page 262:

When Langdon had first seen The Little Mermaid, he had actually gasped aloud when he noticed that the painting in Ariel’s underwater home was none other than seventeenth-century artist Georges de la Tour’s The Penitent Magdalene — a famous homage to the banished Mary Magdalene — fitting decor considering the movie turned out to be a ninety-minute collage of blatant symbolic references to the lost sanctity of Isis, Eve, Pisces the fish goddess, and, repeatedly, Mary Magdalene.

Related Log24 material —

December 21, 2002:

A Maiden’s Prayer

The Da Vinci Code, pages 445-446:

“The blade and chalice?” Marie asked.  “What exactly do they look like?”

Langdon sensed she was toying with him, but he played along, quickly describing the symbols.

A look of vague recollection crossed her face.  “Ah, yes, of course.  The blade represents all that is masculine.  I believe it is drawn like this, no?”  Using her index finger, she traced a shape on her palm.

“Yes,” Langdon said.  Marie had drawn the less common “closed” form of the blade, although Langdon had seen the symbol portrayed both ways.

“And the inverse,” she said, drawing again upon her palm, “is the chalice, which represents the feminine.”

“Correct,” Langdon said….

… Marie turned on the lights and pointed….

“There you are, Mr. Langdon.  The blade and chalice.”….

“But that’s the Star of Dav–“

Langdon stopped short, mute with amazement as it dawned on him.

The blade and chalice.

Fused as one.

The Star of David… the perfect union of male and female… Solomon’s Seal… marking the Holy of Holies, where the male and female deities — Yahweh and Shekinah — were thought to dwell.

Related Log24 material —

May 25, 2003:
Star Wars.
 


Concluding remark of April 15, 2005:
For a more serious approach to portraits of
redheads, see Chen Yifei’s work.

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Thursday, April 14, 2005

Thursday April 14, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 am
Final Arrangements,
continued
From Log24, April 5, 2005:

Father Richard John Neuhaus yesterday argued that John Paul II should be called “the Great.”
 
Neuhaus stated that “If any phrase encapsulates the message that John Paul declared to the world, it is probably ‘prophetic humanism.'”  If there is such a thing, it is probably best exemplified by the I Ching.  For further details, see Hitler’s Still Point.

See also last Saturday’s entry,
Prophetic Humanism.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050414-Huan.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Saturday, April 9, 2005

Saturday April 9, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 am

Prophetic Humanism

"The solution is dissolution."–  Murray L. Bob,
A Contrarian's Dictionary
Strikes Again!

Related material:

Dissolution

IMAGE- Hexagram 59, 'Wind over Water,' i.e. 'Feng Shui'

For a larger view, see
the five Log24 entries ending at
midnight Sept. 5-6, 2003:

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on,
and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
(Prospero in The Tempest, IV.i)

Saturday April 9, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:59 am

Skewed Views

The Baltimore Sun on Saul Bellow, who died April 5, and women:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice McDermott said she most admires the way that Mr. Bellow carefully structured his novels and short stories.

“He’s a writer’s writer,” she said…. “There’s a classical shape to everything he writes, and that gives his novels and stories an air of inevitability….”

…. In spite, or perhaps because, of all the praise, Mr. Bellow also had detractors….  Critic Alfred Kazin thought the author had become a “university intellectual” with “contempt for the lower orders.”

Even Ms. McDermott said she had to “park my feminism at the door” while reading Mr. Bellow’s work.

“Despite all my resistance to his characters’ worldview, through his prose he’s able to let you enter fully into the life of this white, Jewish intellectual who has a skewed view of women,” she said.

A great woman artist on skewed views:

“That’s what you’re supposed to do as an artist. We’re not here to stick a mirror on you. Anybody can do that,” [Julie] Taymor said. “We’re here to give you a more cubist or skewed mirror, where you get to see yourself with fresh eyes. That’s what an artist does. When you paint the Crucifixion, you’re not painting an exact reproduction….”

Finally, a skewed view
of Pope John Paul II in Paradise:

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The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Thursday, April 7, 2005

Thursday April 7, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:26 pm

In the Details

Wallace Stevens,
An Ordinary Evening in New Haven:

XXII

Professor Eucalyptus said, "The search
For reality is as momentous as
The search for God."  It is the philosopher's search
For an interior made exterior
And the poet's search for the same exterior made
Interior….

   … Likewise to say of the evening star,
The most ancient light in the most ancient sky,
That it is wholly an inner light, that it shines
From the sleepy bosom of the real, re-creates,
Searches a possible for its possibleness.

Julie Taymor, "Skewed Mirrors" interview:

"… they were performing for God. Now God can mean whatever you want it to mean. But for me, I understood it so totally. The detail….

They did it from the inside to the outside. And from the outside to the in. And that profoundly moved me then. It was…it was the most important thing that I ever experienced."

"Skewed Mirrors"
illustrated:

Click on the above to enlarge.

Details:

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The above may be of interest to students
of  iconology — what Dan Brown in
The Da Vinci Code calls "symbology" —
and of redheads.

The artist of Details,
"Brenda Starr" creator
Dale Messick, died on Tuesday,
April 5, 2005, at 98.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050407-Messick.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
AP Photo
Dale Messick in 1982

For further details on
April 5, see
Art History:
The Pope of Hope

Thursday April 7, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am
Nine is a Vine

“Heaven is a state,
a sort of metaphysical state.”
— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/HopeOfHeaven1938.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 “Mathematical realism holds that mathematical entities exist independently of the human mind.  Thus humans do not invent mathematics, but rather discover it, and any other intelligent beings in the universe would presumably do the same. The term Platonism is used because such a view is seen to parallel Plato’s belief in a “heaven of ideas”, an unchanging ultimate reality that the everyday world can only imperfectly approximate. Plato’s view probably derives from Pythagoras, and his followers the Pythagoreans, who believed that the world was, quite literally, built up by the numbers. This idea may have even older origins that are unknown to us.” — Wikipedia

Amen.

Related material:

In memory of Jesus of Nazareth,
the “true vine,”
who, some historians believe,
died on this date:

The Crucifixion of John O’Hara.

In memory of the Anti-Vine:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/DayOfTheLocust.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

See Dogma and
Heaven, Hell,
and Hollywood.
 
Related material:

The Usual Suspects

and

Thursday, December 26, 2002:

Holly for Miss Quinn 

Tonight’s site music is for Stephen Dedalus
and Miss Quinn, courtesy of Eithne Ní Bhraonáin. 

Miss Quinn

Holly

Eithne

Thursday April 7, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
ART WARS Toys

From Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column of June 9, 2002:

“The shape of the government is not as important as the policy of the government. If he makes the policy aggressive and pre-emptive, the president can conduct the war on terror from the National Gallery of Art.”

Last year’s suggested ART WARS toy:

     Wednesday, April 07, 2004

As a Little Child

Today’s birthdays:

Francis Ford Coppola and
Russell Crowe.

From MindfulGroup.com:

Welcome to our imaginative and inspiring toy catalog!

Today is Wednesday 7-April 2004. On this day in 30 Jesus crucified by Roman troops in Jerusalem (scholars’ estimate)

What you will discover in this site is what we have been able to find in our everlasting search for the most original, innovative, amusing and mind bending toys from around the world.

Have Fun.    

Coliseum Tell me more
Coliseum The Coliseum Builder Block System can be used to recreate the Roman Coliseum. Reenact ancient Gladiator matches and bring Ancient Rome into your home.


This year’s suggested ART WARS toy:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050407-MusicBox.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

To order, see the
Amazing Music Box & Gifts Company.

Wednesday, April 6, 2005

Wednesday April 6, 2005

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

A Birthday Gift for Barry Levinson
(born April 6, or maybe June 2, 1942)

The following excerpts from page 162*
in three different books
with Catholic backgrounds
may or may not prove useful
to a film director.

 Locution:

Narrative Form

 
162

satires, forgeries, fakes
parody
illocutionary stance
documentary novel
pseudofactual fiction
authorial reading
history of the book

Illocution:

Pocket Catholic Dictionary

162

wisdom (sapientia)
understanding (intellectus)
knowledge (scientia)
fortitude or courage (fortitudo)
counsel (consilium)
piety or love (pietas), and
fear of the Lord (timor Domini

Perlocution:

The Nick Tosches Reader

162

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050406-Tosches2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


Never play the pizza man
for a fool
.

The seven items in the list from the

Pocket Catholic Dictionary are from the
definition of “Gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

* The page number 162 may be regarded,
in honor of the late Saul Bellow
(see previous entry), as
Humboldt’s Gift.

Wednesday April 6, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am
Final Arrangements, continued:
Confession
“A corpse will be transported by express!”
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry (1947)

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050406-Confession.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Then he began to narrate in his original style…. After this came disclosure, confession.  Then he accused, fulminated, stammered, blazed, cried out.  He crossed the universe like light….

He had no old friends, only ex-friends.  He could become terrible, going into reverse without warning.  When this happened, it was like being caught in a tunnel by the Express.  You could only cling to the walls, or lie between the rails, praying.”

— Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift,

page 162

See also

Sunday, December 12, 2004  7:59 PM

Monday, April 4, 2005  4:04 AM

Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Tuesday April 5, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:10 pm
“Bingo!”

Part I On Linguistic Creation
Part II Saul Bellow
Part III Sequel

“Call the Vatican.
Ask them if anything’s missing.”

Analyze This   

Tuesday April 5, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm
At Eight 

In Memoriam

For further details, click
on the black monolith.

Tuesday April 5, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 3:17 pm
Art History:
The Pope of Hope

At the Vatican on
Shakespeare's Birthday
(See Log24.net,
Oct. 4, 2002)

See also the iconology
what Dan Brown in
The Da Vinci Code
  calls "symbology" —
of Pandora's Box
at Log24.net,
March 10, 2005:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050310-Nell2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

"Man and woman are a pair of locked caskets,
each containing the key to the other."

Baroness Karen Blixen

"Karol Wojtyla had looked into
the heart of darkness–
and at the heart of darkness
discovered reason
for an indomitable hope.

He lived on the far side of
the greatest catastrophe
in human history,
the death of the Son of God,
and knew that evil
did not have the last word.
This is the key…."

Richard John Neuhaus,
April 4, 2005

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050405-JoyceGeometry.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Finnegans Wake, p. 293,
"the lazily eye of his lapis"

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050403-StPetersSq3.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

Perette Elizabeth Michelli on the Ovato Tondo:

 

"Notice how the Pope turns out to be
at the center of the breaking and
redefining of the Classical system."

"Derrida on Plato on writing says 'In order for these contrary values (good/evil, true/false, essence/appearance, inside/outside, etc.) to be in opposition, each of the terms must be simply EXTERNAL to the other, which means that one of these oppositions (the opposition between inside and outside) must already be accredited as the matrix of all possible opposition.' "

Peter J. Leithart

See also


Skewed Mirrors
,
Sept. 14, 2003

"Evil did not  have the last word."
Richard John Neuhaus, April 4, 2005

Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone
a last a loved a long the

PARIS,
1922-1939

"There is never any ending to Paris."
— Ernest Hemingway

For the first word, see Louis Armand on
Lethe, erinnerung, and riverrun.

See also the following passage,
linked to on the Easter Vigil, 2005:

  You will find to the left of the House of Hades
    a spring,
  And by the side thereof standing
    a white cypress.
  To this spring approach not near.
  But you shall find another,
    from the lake of Memory
  Cold water flowing forth, and there are
    guardians before it.
  Say, "I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven;
  But my race is of Heaven alone.
    This you know yourselves.
  But I am parched with thirst and I perish.
    Give me quickly
  The cold water flowing forth
    from the lake of Memory."

Tuesday April 5, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:28 am
The Garden of Good and Evil
continued

"Just the facts, ma'am" — Joe Friday

See the entry Lucky (?) Numbers of Saturday, April 2, 2005, 11:07 AM ET, for links to a few facts about the historical role of the Number of the Beast in the Pennsylvania Lottery.

The Pennsylvania Lottery mid-day drawings take place at about 1:10 PM ET.

Pope John Paul II died on Saturday, April 2, at 2:37 PM ET. 

Thus the final PA drawing of his lifetime was on that Saturday afternoon.

The winning mid-day number that day was…

034.

In the I Ching, this is the number of
The Power of the Great.

Father Richard John Neuhaus yesterday argued that John Paul II should be called "the Great."

 

Neuhaus stated that "If any phrase encapsulates the message that John Paul declared to the world, it is probably 'prophetic humanism.'"  If there is such a thing, it is probably best exemplified by the I Ching.  For further details, see Hitler's Still Point.

Father Neuhaus's argument included the following mysterious phrase:

"God's unfolding covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus."

Compare the following two passages from Holy Scripture:

Genesis 22:13

"…behold behind him
a ram caught in a thicket by his horns"

I Ching Hexagram 34

"A goat butts against a hedge
And gets its horns entangled."

A topic for discussion by the foolish:

In the current historical situation,
who is Isaac and who is the goat?

From yet another Holy Scripture,
a topic for discussion by the wise: 

“Anyone can create a pretty little bamboo garden in the world. But I doubt that the gardener would succeed in incorporating the world in his bamboo grove.”

Monday, April 4, 2005

Monday April 4, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:04 am
Fourth Day of the Fourth Month,
4:04:04

“My wife took, unnoticed, this picture, unposed, of me in the act of writing a novel…. The date (discernible in the captured calendar) is February 27, 1929. The novel, Zashchita Luzhina (The Defense), deals with the defense invented by an insane chess player….”
— Vladimir Nabokov, note to photograph following page 256 in Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, Vintage International paperback, August 1989

— Quoted in The Matthias Defense

From a site titled Meaning of the Twentieth Century —

“Freeman Dyson has expressed some thoughts on craziness. In a Scientific American article called ‘Innovation in Physics,’ he began by quoting Niels Bohr. Bohr had been in attendance at a lecture in which Wolfgang Pauli proposed a new theory of elementary particles. Pauli came under heavy criticism, which Bohr summed up for him: ‘We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that is not crazy enough.’ To that Freeman added: ‘When a great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer, himself, it will be only half understood; to everyone else, it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope!’ “

Kenneth Brower, The Starship and the Canoe, 1979, pp. 146, 147

It is my hope that the speculation, implied in The Matthias Defense, that the number 162 has astonishing mystical properties (as a page number, article number, etc.) is sufficiently crazy to satisfy Pauli and his friend Jung as well as the more conventional thinkers Bohr and Dyson.

— Log24.net, Feast of St. Mark, 2003

See also The Black Queen and The Eight.
 
In accordance with the theology of the previous entry, based on Zein’s list of the most common Chinese characters, here are some meanings of

character 162:

[si4] {sì} /to watch/to wait/to examine/to spy/
[si4] {sì} /to seem/to appear/similar/like/to resemble/
[si4] {sì} /until/wait for/
[si4] {sì} /rhinoceros indicus/
[si4] {sì} /four/
[si4] {sì} /(surname)/wife of older brother/
[si4] {sì} /Buddhist temple/
[si4] {sì} /6th earthly branch/9-11 a.m./
[si4] {sì} /stream which returns after branching/
[si4] {sì} /place name/snivel/
[si4] {sì} /offer sacrifice to/
[si4] {sì} /hamper/trunk/
[si4] {sì} /plough/ploughshare/
[si4] {sì} /four (fraud-proof)/market/
[si4] {sì} /to feed/
[si4] {sì} /to raise/to rear/to feed/
[si4] {sì} /team of 4 horses/
[si4 bai3 wan4] {sì bǎi wàn} /four million/
[si4 bai3 yi4] {sì bǎi yì} /40 billion/
[si4 cao2] {sì cáo} /feeding trough/
[si4 cao3] {sì cǎo} /forage grass/
[si4 chu4] {sì chù} /all over the place/everywhere and all directions/
[si4 chuan1] {sì chuān} /Sichuan province, China/
[si4 chuan1 sheng3] {sì chuān shěng} /(N) Sichuan, a south west China province/
[si4 de5] {sì de} /seem as if/rather like/
[si4 fang1] {sì fāng} /four-way/four-sided/
[si4 fen1 zhi1 yi1] {sì fēn zhī yī} /one-quarter/
[si4 fu2] {sì fú} /servo/
[si4 fu2 qi4] {sì fú qì} /server (computer)/
[si4 ge4 xiao3 shi2] {sì gè xiǎo shí} /four hours/
[si4 hu5] {sì hu} /apparently/to seem/to appear/as if/seemingly/
[si4 hu5 hen3 an1 quan2] {sì hu hěn ān quán} /to appear (to be) very safe/
[si4 ji1] {sì jī} /to watch for one's chance/
[si4 ji4] {sì jì} /(n) the four seasons/
[si4 liao4] {sì liào} /feed/fodder/
[si4 lun2 ma3 che1] {sì lún mǎ chē} /chariot/
[si4 men2 jiao4 che1] {sì mén jiào chē} /sedan (motor car)/
[si4 mian4 ba1 fang1] {sì miàn bā fāng} /in all directions/all around/far and near/
[si4 mian4 ti3] {sì miàn tǐ} /tetrahedron/
[si4 miao4] {sì miào} /temple/monastery/shrine/
[si4 nian2] {sì nián} /four years/
[si4 nian2 qian2] {sì nián qián} /four years previously/
[si4 nian2 zhi4 de5 da4 xue2] {sì nián zhì de dà xué} /four-year university/
[si4 qian1] {sì qiān} /four thousand/4 000/
[si4 shi2] {sì shí} /forty/40/
[si4 shi2 duo1] {sì shí duō} /more than 40/
[si4 shi2 liu4] {sì shí liù} /forty six/46/
[si4 shi2 san1] {sì shí sān} /43/forty three/
[si4 shi4 er2 fei1] {sì shì ér fēi} /(saying) appeared right but actually was wrong/
[si4 tian1] {sì tiān} /four days/
[si4 xiao4 fei1 xiao4] {sì xiào fēi xiào} /(saying) resemble a smile yet not smile/
[si4 xue3] {sì xuě} /snowy/
[si4 yang3] {sì yǎng} /to raise/to rear/
[si4 yang3 zhe3] {sì yǎng zhě} /feeder/
[si4 yuan4] {sì yuàn} /cloister/
[si4 yue4] {sì yuè} /April/fourth month/
[si4 yue4 shi2 qi1 hao4] {sì yuè shí qī hào} /April 17/
[si4 zhi1] {sì zhī} /(n) the four limbs of the body/
[si4 zhou1] {sì zhōu} /all around/

ktmatu.com Chinese-English dictionary

Sunday, April 3, 2005

Sunday April 3, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:11 pm
Lottery Theology,
Day 3

The Pennsylvania Lottery Daily Number
for Sunday, April 3, 2005:

689

The most common Chinese characters
in order of frequency:

689 The image “http://log24.com/log/pix05/050403-Fu3.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors. [fú] blessing, good fortune

The image “http://log24.com/log/pix05/050403-FuStrokes.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Diagram taken from R. Sing,
  “Chinese New Year’s Dragon Teacher’s Guide,”
  in Multicultural Celebrations,
by The Boston Children’s Museum
(Cleveland, Ohio: Modern Curriculum Press, 1992)



The two previous PA daily numbers
may also be interpreted according to
Patrick Zein‘s list of Chinese
characters in order of frequency.

April 1: 666

[chuang4] {chuàng}
begin/initiate/inaugurate/start/create/
[chuang1] {chuāng}
a wound/cut/injury/trauma/

April 2: 613

[ji4] {jì}
discipline/age/era/period/order/record/

Sunday April 3, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:26 pm
Wager

Pennsylvania Lottery Daily Number

for yesterday evening,
Saturday, April 2, 2005:

613

Related material:

From 6/13 2004

An 8-rayed star:

Another 8-rayed star:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050403-StPetersSq.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

St. Peter’s Square in Rome
 
From 6/13 2003

A link to a 2001 First Things essay,

The End of Endings:

“Here is the heart of the matter:

The underwriting of Hebraic–Hellenic literacy, of the normative analogue between divine and mortal acts of creation, was, in the fullest sense, theological. As was the wager (pronounced lost in deconstruction and postmodernism) on ultimate possibilities of accord between sign and sense, between word and meaning, between form and phenomenality. The links are direct between the tautology out of the Burning Bush, that ‘I am’ which accords to language the privilege of phrasing the identity of God, on the one hand, and the presumptions of concordance, of equivalence, of translatability, which, though imperfect, empower our dictionaries, our syntax, our rhetoric, on the other. That ‘I am’ has, as it were, at an overwhelming distance, informed all predication. It has spanned the arc between noun and verb, a leap primary to creation and the exercise of creative consciousness in metaphor. Where that fire in the branches has gone out or has been exposed as an optical illusion, the textuality of the world, the agency of the Logos in logic—be it Mosaic, Heraclitean, or Johannine—becomes ‘a dead letter.’

That passage bears rereading.”

— Richard John Neuhaus quoting
   George Steiner’s Grammars of Creation
   (Yale University Press, April 1, 2001)

Saturday, April 2, 2005

Saturday April 2, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:07 am
Lucky (?) Numbers

From a Log24 post of April 2, 2005

From Dogma, a link in yesterday's noon entry:

"Sky is high and so am I,
If you're a viper — a vi-paah."

— The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West (1939),
    New Directions paperback, 1969, page 162

"Mystery surrounds the death of young actor River Phoenix…. The actor… was declared dead at 1:51 a.m. PT Sunday. Phoenix died about 50 minutes after collapsing in front of the Viper Room, a new club on the Sunset Strip…."
— Karen Thomas, USA Today,
    Monday, November 1, 1993

On the night of October 30-31, 1993, also known as Devil's Night, there was a full Hunter's Moon and the Pennsylvania Lottery number was 666.
— Steven H. Cullinane, 03/20/01

"Do Catholics believe that when you die your soul goes up in the sky? To heaven, if they go to heaven?"
— Hope of Heaven, by John O'Hara (1938),
    Carroll & Graf paperback, 1985, page 162

Pennsylvania Lottery Daily Number,
April 1, 2005:
666.

Friday, April 1, 2005

Friday April 1, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

April 1 at Noon

“Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday.”

— Bernard Holland, C12, N.Y. Times, 5/20/96

From Nov. 24, 2002:

Searched the web for “Joyce and Aquinas” “William T. Noon“.  Results 1-5 of about 15:

Dogma
Dogma, theological” — entry in the index (paper, not marble) to Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, SJ, Yale U. Press 1957, 2nd printing 1963, page 162.
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-20-dogma.html – 9k 

The Matthias Defense
Contemplatio: aesthetic joy of, 54-5″ — index to Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, SJ, Yale University Press, second printing, 1963, page 162.
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-22-matthias.html – 6k 

Wag the Dogma
One economy would be to teach the trivium using only one book — Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon (Yale, 1957), which ties together philology, logic, and
m759.freeservers.com/2001-04-06-wag.html – 6k 

Shining Forth
Please go away, Paz begged silently…. “De veras! It’s so romantic!”. — Let Noon Be Fair William T. Noon, SJ, Chapter 4 of Joyce and Aquinas, Yale University
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-15-shining.html – 10k 

Midsummer Eve’s Dream
notions… The quidditas or essence of an angel is the same as its form. (See William T. Noon, SJ, Joyce and Aquinas, Yale, 1957).
m759.freeservers.com/1995-06-23-midsummer.html – 12k

See also Monday’s entry.

Friday April 1, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:32 am

April 1 continued

“In Finnegans Wake, the number 1132 appears
in each chapter in one way or another.”
noseyflynn.com

Time of this entry — 11:32:55.

Friday April 1, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
For graphic-novel fans:

The Cruelest Month

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050401-April.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

April O'Neil, Issue #1, January 1993

Those desiring more literary depth
may consult Nick Tosches, Trinities.

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