Log24

For John F. Kennedy’s birthday:

Strange Bedfellows

Ted Berkman, author of books about the Israeli military, died at 92 on May 12, 2006.

Dennis Hevesi in today’s New York Times:

“In World War II he served as the Middle East chief of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1946, as a radio correspondent for ABC, he provided an eyewitness account of the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by Jewish terrorists.”

He also worked as a screenwriter (with his brother-in-law Raphael Blau) on the films “Girl of the Night” (1960), starring Anne Francis, and  “Bedtime for Bonzo” (1951), starring Diana Lynn.

These are two of my all-time favorite actresses, and I am grateful to Berkman for providing them with roles.  I am less grateful for his Zionist politics.  Who he is in bed with now, God only knows.

Anne Francis

Diana Lynn

Wittgenstein’s
Passion
 
From today’s
London Daily Mail:

Related
Philosophy:

Related
Art in Our Schools:

Time Travel

“Since thirty mornings
    are required to make
A day of which we say,
    this is the day
That we desire, a day of
    blank, blue wheels,

Involving the four corners
    of the sky,
Lapised and lacqued
    and freely emeraldine
In the space it fills,
    the silent motioner

There, of clear, revolving
    crystalline;
Since thirty summers
   are needed for a year
And thirty years,
   in the galaxies of birth,

Are time for counting
   and remembering….”

— Wallace Stevens,
   “Of Ideal Time and Choice,”
   in The Necessary Angel, 1951

“When it’s time to railroad,
  people start railroading.”

— Robert A. Heinlein in
   The Door into Summer, 1957

“Everybody’s doin’
 a brand new dance now…”

— Kylie Minogue, 1987-88

Happy birthday, Kylie.

Ennui

May there be an ennui
   of the first idea?
What else, prodigious scholar,
   should there be?

— Wallace Stevens,
   “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction“

Related material: The Line.

Order and Ennui

Meanwhile, back at the Institute for Advanced Study:

May 25, 4:40 PM –
Research Seminar
(Simonyi Hall Seminar Room) –
Pirita Paajanen,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
Zeta functions of
finitely generated infinite groups

Some background cited by Paajanen:

M.P.F. du Sautoy, “Zeta functions of groups: The quest for order versus the flight from ennui,” Groups St Andrews 2001 – in Oxford, Volume 1, CUP 2003.

Those who prefer the showbiz approach to mathematics (the flight from ennui?) may enjoy a website giving further background from du Sautoy.

Exhibit A:
A science vulgarizer in today’s New York Times–

In the Quest for Coolness, Science Could Really Use a Vito Corleone

“Somewhere out there, more elusive than a snow leopard, more vaunted in its imagined cultural oomph than an Oprah book blurb, is the Science Movie.

You know, the film that finally does for science and scientists what ‘The Godfather’ did for crime and what ‘The West Wing’ did for politics, accurately reproducing the grandeur and grit of science while ushering its practitioners into the ranks of coolness.”

– Dennis Overbye

Exhibit B:
John Updike’s review in the May 22 New Yorker of a new novel by Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island–

“Nor is Houellebecq…. entirely without literary virtue.  His four novels– Whatever (1994), The Elementary Particles (1998), and Platform (2001) are the three others– display a grasp of science and mathematics beyond that of all but a few non-genre novelists.”

A character in the new novel– “a lengthy exercise in futuristic science fiction”– writes that

“The dream of all men is to meet little sluts who are innocent but ready for all forms of depravity– which is what, more or less, all teenage girls are.”

Exhibit C:
A mathematician hopes for more exciting vulgarizations of his subject–

“I would hope that clever writers might point out how mathematics is altering our lifestyles and do it in a manner that would not lead Garfield the Cat to say ‘ho hum.’”

— Philip J. Davis, “The Media and Mathematics Look at Each Other” (pdf), Notices of the American Mathematical Society, March 2006

Exhibit D:
Today’s Garfield–

Exhibit E:
Log24 entry of May 18, a parody of “Contact,” a 1997 film that vulgarized science–

Exhibit F:
Gilbert and Sullivan, “The Mikado“–

“(With great effort) How de do, little girls, how de do? (Aside) Oh, my protoplasmal ancestor!”

Coda

“It might be asking too much
to make us cool.”
— Science vulgarizer   
Dennis Overbye

Robert De Niro as the
young Vito Corleone

From pbs.org:

“In 1940 Dunham and her company appeared in the black Broadway musical, ‘Cabin in the Sky,’ staged by George Balanchine, in which Dunham played the sultry siren Georgia Brown….”

From the Library of Congress:

“George Balanchine and Katherine Dunham were, in effect, co-choreographers of the dances in the show, at least for those in which she and her dancers appeared. When choreographing for dancers trained in techniques other than classical ballet, Balanchine’s habit was to respect their expertise and their personal style, to allow them as much creative input as they wished to make, and then to arrange their steps, combinations, and movements into a unified choreographic composition. Dunham found this method of collaboration quite agreeable, and she and Balanchine enjoyed a particularly amicable working relationship.

The story of Cabin in the Sky centers on Little Joe, a kindhearted but morally ambivalent Everyman, who is stabbed in a dispute over a crap game, dies and is bound for Hell, but is saved by his good wife’s prayers and given extra time on earth to qualify for admission to Heaven. Dooley Wilson played Little Joe….”

From May 15 through May 26, there is a women-only meeting on zeta functions at the  Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.  Today’s activities:

The Great Bartender
by Peter Viereck (1948)

Being absurd as well as beautiful,
Magic– like art– is hoax redeemed by awe.
(Not priest but clown,
     the shuddering sorcerer
Is more astounded than
     his rapt applauders:
“Then all those props and Easters
     of my stage
Came true?  But I was joking all the time!”)
Art, being bartender, is never drunk;
And magic that believes itself, must die.
My star was rocket of my unbelief,
Launched heavenward as
     all doubt’s longings are;
     It burst when, drunk with self-belief,
I tried to be its priest and shouted upward:
“Answers at last!  If you’ll but hint
     the answers
For which earth aches, that famous
     Whence and Whither;
Assuage our howling Why? with final fact.”

— As quoted in The Practical Cogitator,
   or The Thinker’s Anthology,
   Selected and Edited by
   Charles P. Curtis, Jr., and
   Ferris Greenslet,
   Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged,
   With a new Introduction by
   John H. Finley, Jr.,
   Houghton Mifflin Company,
   Boston, 1962

The dates of Viereck’s birth and death are according to this morning’s New York Times.

” ‘I know what it is you last saw,’ she said; ‘for that is also in my mind. Do not be afraid! But do not think that only by singing amid the trees, nor even by the slender arrows of elvenbows, is this land of Lothlórien maintained and defended against the Enemy. I say to you, Frodo, that even as I speak to you, I perceive the Dark Lord and know his mind, or all his mind that concerns the Elves. And he gropes ever to see me and my thought. But still the door is closed!’
      She lifted up her white arms, and spread out her hands towards the East in a gesture of rejection and denial. Eärendil, the Evening Star, most beloved of the Elves, shone clear above. So bright was it that the figure of the Elven-lady cast a dim shadow on the ground. Its ray glanced upon a ring about her finger; it glittered like polished gold overlaid with silver light, and a white stone in it twinkled as if the Even-star had come to rest upon her hand. Frodo gazed at the ring with awe; for suddenly it seemed to him that he understood.
      ’Yes,’ she said, divining his thought, ‘it is not permitted to speak of it, and Elrond could not do so. But it cannot be hidden from the Ring-Bearer, and one who has seen the Eye. Verily it is in the land of Lórien upon the finger of Galadriel that one of the Three remains. This is Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, and I am its keeper.’ ”

— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Tombstone

From today’s New York Times:

Obituary–

“Jiri Frel, a mercurial and eccentric curator who helped build the J. Paul Getty Museum into a major center for Greek and Roman art but resigned after revelations about unscrupulous acquisition practices, died on April 29. He was 82…. a well-regarded expert in Greek tombstones….”

News story–

“ATHENS, May 16 — After four hours of talks here with the Greek culture minister, the director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles said Tuesday that he would press for the return of some of the Getty’s most prized ancient artifacts to Greece…. Greece is seeking the repatriation of a… tombstone….”

From a photo accompanying the obituary:

Museum
window

To Aster, from Plato

Asteras eisathreis, Aster emos.
Eithe genoimen ouranos,
‘os pollois ommasin eis se blepo.

You gaze at stars, my Star.
Would that I were born the starry sky,
that I with many eyes might gaze at you.

Related material:

Log24 entries of Dec. 31, 2002

Why Me?

Plato’s Diamond

The Halmos Tombstone

For the next generation:

Some websites on zeta functions (a classic topic of considerable current interest):

• The course descriptions, lecturers, and schedule of the Institute for Advanced Study women’s meeting on zeta functions that begins today and continues through May 26

• John Baez on zeta functions

• Riemann’s zeta function and A directory of known zeta functions by Matthew R. Watkins

Today’s birthday: George Lucas,
creator of the mother of all battle epics.

STAR WARS continued:

	March 29 eclipse
	Star of Venus (See March 26-29)

ART WARS continued…

Braque

“The senses deform, the mind forms.  Work to perfect the mind.  There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.”

— Georges Braque, Reflections on Painting, 1917

Those who wish to follow Braque’s advice may try the following exercise from a book first published in 1937:

Hint: See the above picture of
Braque and the construction of
a tesseract.

My Space

“… we have condensed six dimensions into four, then we either work by analogy into six, or we have to use math that apparently nobody but Jake and my cousin Ed understands. Unless you can think of some way to project six dimensions into three– you seem to be smart at such projections.”
I closed my eyes and thought hard. “Zebbie, I don’t think it can be done. Maybe Escher could have done it.”

The above screenshot shows a
moveable JavaScript display
of a space of six dimensions
(over the 2-element field).

(To see how the display works,
try the Kaleidoscope Puzzle first.)

“I laugh because I dare not cry.
This is a crazy world and
the only way to enjoy it
is to treat it as a joke.”

— Robert A. Heinlein,
The Number of the Beast

And so…

Compare and contrast:

Solomon’s Cube, the five
Log24 entries ending on 3/14,
and the
American Mathematical Society
on Mathematical Imagery.

Related material:

A more extensive excerpt from
The Number of the Beast, and

Story Theory and
the Number of the Beast.

My Space
 

x

Bagombo Snuff Box
 
(in memory of
 Burt Kerr Todd)

“Well, it may be the devil
    or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to
    serve somebody.”

— “Bob Dylan”
   (pseudonym of Robert Zimmerman),
    quoted by “Bob Stewart”
    on July 18, 2005

“Bob Stewart” may or may not be the same person as “crankbuster,” author of the “Rectangular Array Theorem” or “RAT.”  This “theorem” is intended as a parody of the “Miracle Octad Generator,” or “MOG,” of R. T. Curtis.  (See the Usenet group sci.math, “Steven Cullinane is a Crank,” July 2005, messages 51-60.)

“Crankbuster” has registered at Math Forum as a teacher in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon).   For a tall tale involving Ceylon, see the short story “Bagombo Snuff Box” in the book of the same title by Kurt Vonnegut, who has at times embodied– like Martin Gardner and “crankbuster“– “der Geist, der stets verneint.”

Here is my own version (given the alleged Ceylon background of “crankbuster”) of a Bagombo snuff box:

Related material:

Log24 entries of
April 16-30, 2005,

and the 5 Log24 entries
ending on Friday,
April 28, 2006.

x

Born on this date
100 years ago:
 
André Weil

“… just as God defeats the devil:
     this bridge exists….”
     — André Weil

“… I always prefer saying chance
     rather than Providence….”
     — Simone Weil

x

For Henriette D. Avram, a systems analyst who “had to enter the mind of the library cataloger, a profession whose arcane knowledge– involving deep philosophical questions about taxonomy, interconnectedness and the nature of similarity and difference– was guarded like priestly ritual.” — Margalit Fox in today’s New York Times

Mrs. Avram died on April 22.

For related material on priestly ritual, see

• the Log24 entry of Easter Monday, April 17: Sub Specie Aeternitatis
• an emblem, Finis Coronat Opus, linked to from that entry’s image
• a poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” that may or may not have been influenced by that emblem.

Finis Coronat Opus