Log24

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Wednesday May 31, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 am
Clint Eastwood
 is 76.

In honor of his birthday,
a three-part meditation
on quality:

Part I —

From The Quality of Diamond,
Log24 entries from Feb. 2004:

The Quality
with No Name

And what is good, Phaedrus,
and what is not good…
Need we ask anyone
to tell us these things?

— Epigraph to
Zen and the Art of
Motorcyle Maintenance

Part II —

From Log24 on
Dec. 7, 2003:

Eyes on the Prize

Dialogue from “Good Will Hunting” —

Will:   He used to just put a belt,
          a stick, and a wrench
          on the kitchen table
          and say, “Choose.”
Sean:  Gotta go with the belt, there.
Will:    I used to go with the wrench.

 Location, Location, Location

Part III —

From the website of
Noam D. Elkies,
Harvard mathematician:

SLUMMERVILLE

Somerville,
Where the livin’ is sleazy:
Folk are humpin’
And the chillun is high.
Oh yo’ daddy’s rich,
‘Cos yo’ ma is good lookin’
So hush, ugly baby,
Or I’ll make you cry.

[“Parody by Noam D. Elkies;
not the original lyrics,
of course.”]

Related material
from Log24 on
April 10, 2006:

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Noam D. Elkies

The Magic Schmuck

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Tuesday May 30, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 pm
The Mathematical
Association of America
discusses
finite geometry:

 The Fano Plane

by Ed Pegg Jr.,
May 30, 2006:

“One thing in the Fano plane that bothered me for years (for years, I say) is that it had a circle – and it was described as a line. For me, a line was a straight line, and I didn’t trust curved or wriggly lines. This distrust kept me away from understanding projective planes, designs, and finite geometries for a awhile (for years).”

“Against stupidity
 the gods themselves
 fight unvictorious.”

 — Schiller,* quoted as
the epigraph to the
chapter on Galois in
Men of Mathematics,
by E. T. Bell

Related material:
Galois Geometry

* From Die Jungfrau von Orleans
 (The Maid of Orleans)
, Act III, sc. vi.
Today is the feast of that Jungfrau.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060530-Joan-of-Arc-Paris.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Click on picture
for details.

Tuesday May 30, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:19 pm
Keir Dullea
 is 70 today.

“There are some extremely
 odd things about this mission.”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060530-HAL.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

HAL 

Tuesday May 30, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:26 am
Lifetime
Achievement

In honor of
the long and rewarding
life of Henry Bumstead,
Oscar-winning
production designer,
who died last Wednesday
in Pasadena at 91:

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and

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Background for
the above material:

See the Log24 entries of
March 26, 2006

and the Log24 archive
for Dec. 1-15, 2005.

Related material:

From the Log24 entries on
May 24, the date of
St. Henry Bumstead’s death:

Sunrise in Death Valley

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(Click to see the larger original,
a photo by Michael Trezzi)

Why “St.” Henry?
If you need to ask, you
don’t know what saints are.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Monday May 29, 2006

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

For John F. Kennedy's birthday:

The Call Girls
Revisited

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060529-CallGirls.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

See The Shining of May 29
from 2002
and the references to
the marriage theorem
in Dharwadker's Alleged Proof
from 2005.

"By groping toward the light
we are made to realize
how deep the darkness is
around us."

— Arthur Koestler,
The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy,
Random House, 1973, page 118

For related material on
academic darkness, see
Mathematics and Narrative.

Monday May 29, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

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.

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Anne Francis

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Diana Lynn

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Sunday May 28, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:29 pm
Wittgenstein’s
Passion

 

From today’s
London Daily Mail:

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Related
Philosophy:

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6.54  My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

7  Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1922

Related
Art in Our Schools:

  Former President
of Dartmouth Dies

From today’s New York Times:

“In one widely publicized episode, in 1988, he condemned The Dartmouth Review, a conservative student newspaper, for ridiculing blacks, gay men and lesbians, women and Jews.”

Related material:

The Harvard Jesus

 in     

The Crimson Passion

Sunday May 28, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:55 am

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.

Friday, May 26, 2006

Friday May 26, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
For Stevie Nicks,
whose birthday is today

“The quidditas or essence
 of an angel is
the same as its form.”

— William T. Noon, Society of Jesus,
Joyce and Aquinas, Yale, 1957

Related material
from Oct. 27, 2003:

See the picture

in the web page
Poetry’s Bones.

“It does, indeed, look more
like Proginoskes than any of
the pictures on the book jackets.”

— Madeleine L’Engle, letter of
November 28, 1976

Friday May 26, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 am

A Living Church
continued from March 27

"The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast."

— G. K. Chesterton

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Shakespearean
Fool

Related material:


Yesterday's entries

and their link to
The Line

as well as

Galois Geometry

and the remarks
of Oxford professor
Marcus du Sautoy,
who claims that
"the right side of the brain
is responsible for mathematics."

Let us hope that Professor du Sautoy
is more reliable on zeta functions,
his real field of expertise,
than on neurology.

The picture below may help
to clear up his confusion
between left and right.

His confusion about
pseudoscience may not
be so easily remedied.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060526-BrainLR1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
flickr.com/photos/jaycross/3975200/

(Any resemblance to the film
"Hannibal" is purely coincidental.)
 

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Thursday May 25, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:13 pm

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.

Thursday May 25, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:40 pm

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.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Wednesday May 24, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:07 pm
Dark Lady

Today is the feast of St. Sarah,
patron saint of the Gypsies.

 
In her honor, as well as that of
  Bob Dylan and Rosanne Cash,
whose birthdays are today,
here are a picture and
two songs.

Sunrise in Death Valley

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(Click to see the larger original,
a photo by Michael Trezzi)

A song for Rosanne Cash:

Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.

A song for Bob Dylan:

Curtain up, light the lights,
You got nothin’ to hit

but the heights!

(The original cast album
of “Gypsy” was recorded
on St. Sarah’s Day, 1959.)

(The photo was found
during a search
for the phrase
“great gray space.”
See the review
by John Updike
linked to in yesterday’s
Art Wars entry.)

Wednesday May 24, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 pm
May 24
 

Related material:

Canonization,

Trinity and Counterpoint

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Tuesday May 23, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 pm
Evening Star

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Reba Shines in Vegas

Tuesday May 23, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:18 am
ART WARS
continued

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

“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

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

Space Cadet

“They should have
sent a poet.”

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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

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Robert De Niro as the
young Vito Corleone

Monday, May 22, 2006

Monday May 22, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:06 pm
A Kind of Cross

Google Maps image
of the isle of Delos,
birthplace of Apollo:

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“I faced myself that day with
the nonplused apprehension
of someone who has
come across a vampire
and has no crucifix in hand.”

— Joan Didion, “On Self-Respect,”
in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross.”

— Thomas Pynchon,
  Gravity’s Rainbow

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Related material:

Mathematics and Narrative,

Secret Passages

Monday May 22, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:04 am
A Labyrinth
for Penelope

Monday May 22, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am
Story

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Balanchine, Dunham


In memory of
Katherine Dunham,
who died Sunday at 96

“How much story do you want?”
— George Balanchine

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….”

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“It’s still the  
   same old story….”

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Sunday May 21, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:00 pm
“Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.”

(“The Eternal-Feminine
Draws us on.”)

— Conclusion of Goethe’s Faust

At Amazon.com, a search inside
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown,
shows 34 pages with references
to the word “feminine.”

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Draws us, indeed.

Friday, May 19, 2006

Friday May 19, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:07 pm
Women-Only
Meeting at Princeton

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:

8:00- 9:45 a.m. Breakfast (Dining Hall)
9:00- 9:30 a.m. T-shirt Sale, Harry’s Bar – Dining Hall
9:30-10:00 a.m. Depart for Princeton University (talks, lunch, campus and art museum tour, and dinner)

No movie?

From Log24, July 27, 2003:

“…my despair with words as instruments of communion is often near total.”

— Charles Small, Harvard ’64 25th Anniversary Report, 1989 (See 11/21/02).

Perhaps dinner and a movie?
The dinner — 
at Formaggio in Cuernavaca.
The movie —
Michael.

Lucero
(Bright Star),
portrayed by
Megan Follows

 

Hoc est enim
corpus meum…

See also
A Mass for Lucero.


Related material:

Women’s History Month–
Global and Local: One Small Step

Friday May 19, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 am
Peter Viereck

August 5, 1916 – May 13, 2006


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.

Related material:

Five Log24 entries
ending May 13,
 the date of Viereck’s death.

Friday May 19, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 am
Star and Diamond
 
continued

” ‘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

Related material:

The last 3 entries,
as well as
Mathematics and Narrative

“How much story
do you want?”
— George Balanchine  

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Thursday May 18, 2006

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

 Symmetry Framed

Thursday May 18, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am
Space Cadet

“They should have
sent a poet.”

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You’d never know it,
But buddy, I’m a kind of poet…

Starring in tonight’s
New York Times obits:

One for
my baby

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And one more
for the road

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Frankie Thomas,
star of “Tom Corbett,
Space Cadet
,” in 1951

The “Coppertone girl” artist died at 88 on Monday, May 15.  In her memory, here is a an entry from that day on a women-only mathematics program at Princeton that started on Monday.  That entry opens with a quote from Robert A. Heinlein, whose writing inspired the TV series “Space Cadet.”  The star of that series,  Frankie Thomas, died at 85 on Thursday, May 11.  In his honor as a member of the elite Solar Guard, here is a solar entry from Sunday, May 14.  In honor of Jodie Foster, space explorer and Coppertone girl incarnate, here is a link to “Spare Oom.”

See also the
previous entry:
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“My God, it’s
full of stars!”

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Wednesday May 17, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:29 am

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:

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Museum
window

 

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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

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Tuesday May 16, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060516-Kunitz2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 

Monday, May 15, 2006

Monday May 15, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

For the next generation:

“‘Zeta, Zeta, Zeta!‘”

— Robert A. Heinlein,
The Number of the Beast

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

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Sunday May 14, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:00 pm

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

STAR WARS continued:

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

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Saturday May 13, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 pm

ART WARS continued…

A Fold in Time

From May 13, Braque’s birthday, 2003:


Braque


Above: Braque and tesseract

“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:

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

Related material:

Storyline and Time Fold
(both of Oct. 10, 2003),
and the following–

“Time, for L’Engle, is accordion-pleated. She elaborated, ‘When you bring a sheet off the line, you can’t handle it until it’s folded, and in a sense, I think, the universe can’t exist until it’s folded– or it’s a story without a book.'”

Cynthia Zarin on Madeleine L’Engle,
“The Storyteller,” in The New Yorker,
issue dated April 12, 2004

Friday, May 12, 2006

Friday May 12, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 pm
The Carlin Code

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060512-Carlin1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Happy birthday, George:

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Sources:

Tom Hanks’s birthday, 2005

Salute to Anthony Hopkins,
May 3, May 4, May 5

Today’s Wizard of Id

Judeo-Christian Heritage:
The Wiener Kreis

André Weil As I Knew Him,
by Goro Shimura (pdf)

Simone Weil
on George Herbert

Related material:

The Prime Cut Gospel

Harvard Symbology

God Is Red

Quine’s Shema

The Big Red One

Friday May 12, 2006

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

"Does the word 'tesseract'
mean anything to you?"
— Robert A. Heinlein in
The Number of the Beast
(1980)

My reply–

Part I:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/WrinkleInTime1A.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

A Wrinkle in Time, by
Madeleine L'Engle
(first published in 1962)

Part II:

Diamond Theory in 1937
and
Geometry of the 4×4 Square

Part III:

Catholic Schools Sermon

Conclusion:
 

"Wells and trees were dedicated to saints.  But the offerings at many wells and trees were to something other than the saint; had it not been so they would not have been, as we find they often were, forbidden.  Within this double and intertwined life existed those other capacities, of which we know more now, but of which we still know little– clairvoyance, clairaudience, foresight, telepathy."

— Charles Williams, Witchcraft, Faber and Faber, London, 1941

Related material:

A New Yorker profile of Madeleine L'Engle from April 2004, which I found tonight online for the first time.  For a related reflection on truth, stories, and values, see Saint's Day.  For a wider context, see the Log24 entries of February 1-15, 2003 and February 1-15, 2006.
 

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Wednesday May 10, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:29 pm
My Space

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/MySpace.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“… 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.”

— Robert A. Heinlein,
The Number of the Beast

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Screenshot-64cube.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

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.

Wednesday May 10, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 am

My Space
 

Monday, May 8, 2006

Monday May 8, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:24 pm

x

Monday May 8, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:15 pm
Today is the feast of
Saint Robert Heinlein,
who died on this date
in 1988.

Why “saint”?  See his
accurate depiction of evil, the
Eater of Souls” in Glory Road.

Related material:
Steven Cullinane is a Crank
and “Certified Crank.”

Sunday, May 7, 2006

Sunday May 7, 2006

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

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.

Sunday May 7, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

x

Saturday, May 6, 2006

Saturday May 6, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 pm

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

Friday, May 5, 2006

Friday May 5, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:09 pm
Mathematics and
Narrative

continued

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060505-Farewell.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

Anthony Hopkins Writes Screenplay

about God, Life & Death

Thursday, May 4, 2006

Thursday May 4, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:09 pm
First of all…

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060504-Hannibal.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

On this date in 1927, the
Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences was chartered.

Related material:

Dante and Plato,

Plato, Pegasus, and
  the Evening Star
,

Mathematics and Narrative,

The Tiffany Code

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Wednesday May 3, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

x

Wednesday May 3, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm
Ontology Alignment
continued

“Mathematics ushers one into the realm of abstraction and universality, grasped only through pure reason.  Mathematics is the threshold we cross to pass into the ideal, the truly real.”

     — Rebecca Goldstein,
       Mathematics and
       the Character of Tragedy

Pennsylvania Lottery:

The winning numbers
for Tuesday, May 2–
the feast of
St. Athanasius:

Mid-day 703
Evening 462

“You gotta be true to your code”
— Sinatra (see previous entry)

 Dewey Decimal Code:

703 The Arts:
       Dictionaries &
       Encyclopedias
462 Spanish Etymology

Related material:

For the arts, see
the previous entry.
For Spanish etymology,
see the remarks on
a Spanish word in
Plato, Pegasus, and
the Evening Star,
a note linked to in the
April 30 memorial entry
for John Kenneth Galbraith.

The numbers 703 and 462 are, in Goldstein’s phrase, “truly real.”  However, their link to St. Athanasius and to the Spanish language is, as purveyors of fiction* say, “purely coincidental”– as is much of what makes life interesting.

“All persons living and dead are purely coincidental….”– Kurt Vonnegut, epigraph to Bagombo Snuff Box

* For instance,
   David Auburn in Proof,

   The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060503-DrLecter2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

   which also involves
   Dewey decimal numbers

Wednesday May 3, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am
Quarter to Three
continued

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 image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060503-Finis1.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Finis Coronat Opus

“You gotta be true to your code”
— Sinatra  

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