Log24

Monday, July 31, 2006

Monday July 31, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:17 pm
In memory of Kurt Kreuger
(see previous entry)

The Reluctant Dragon

in today’s Hagar the Horrible:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060731-Dragon.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Those who prefer higher culture
may consult

The Dragon in the Gate:
Studies in the Poetry
of G. M. Hopkins
,
by
Elisabeth Wintersteen Schneider.

Schneider’s title comes from a
description of Hopkins’s poem
The Wreck of the Deutschland.”

“This epic poem was described by perhaps his closest friend, Poet Laureate Robert Bridges, as, ‘the dragon folded at the gate to forbid all entrance’ to the appreciation of his other works. More favorable is the opinion of the most thorough of Hopkins’s critics, W. H. Gardner, who described it as a great symphony or overture, introducing his other works and not forbidding them.”

— “Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Priest and Poet,”
     by Bro. Anthony Joseph

Related material:
Log24 entries of May 3, 2006.

Monday July 31, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 am

For the feast of
St. Ignatius Loyola…

Final Arrangements,
continued:

 

“Now you has jazz.”
High Society, 1956 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060731-Deaths.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

— Today’s online New York Times

Also from today’s
New York Times
:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060731-Kreuger.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Kurt Kreuger
in the 1945 film
“Paris Underground.”
 
Kurt Kreuger,
a German-born actor
who reluctantly played
Nazi soldiers
in many films
about World War II,
died July 12 in
Beverly Hills, Calif.
He was 89.

Log24, Wednesday,
July 12, 2006
:

Band Numbers

“Some friends
 of mine
 are in
 this band…”

— David
   Auburn,
   Proof

Seven is Heaven
,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.

The Prime Powers

Related material:

A Log24 entry commemorating
the murder of six Jesuits
in El Salvador.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Sunday July 30, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 pm
Highway 61
Revisited


God say,
“You can do what you want
Abe, but the next time you
see me comin’ you better run.”

Today’s online New York Times:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060730-Deaths.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“On Highway 61 outside of
Natchez, Mississippi, stands

     Mammy’s Cupboard….”
American Heritage   
 
Flashback to July 2004:

Campaign Song

“All things return to the One.
 What does the One return to?”

— Zen koan, epigraph to
   The Footprints of God,
by Greg Iles of
Natchez, Mississippi

“Literature begins with geography.”

— attributed to Robert Frost

The aim
 was song

— Robert Frost

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04A/040712-Mammys.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Mammy’s Cupboard,
Natchez, Miss.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04A/040712-Jolson.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Kerry-Edwards
Campaign Song

Sunday July 30, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 am

History

From “Today in History,” by The Associated Press–

On this date (July 30):

In 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces tried to take Petersburg, Va., by exploding a mine under Confederate defense lines; the attack failed.”

“A nightmare” — Ulysses

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail.
Han Shan

See also July 3, 2005.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Saturday July 29, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:01 pm

Dark Fields
of the Republic

Today’s birthday: Ken Burns

Charley Reese on the republic:

“The republic died at Appomattox, and it’s been empire ever since.”

Charley Reese on Lincoln:

“Washington and Jefferson created the republic; Lincoln destroyed it.”

In closing…

A link in memory of Donald G. Higman, dead on Feb. 13, 2006, the day after Lincoln’s birthday:

On the Graphs of Hoffman-Singleton and Higman-Sims (pdf)

His truth is marching on.

Saturday July 29, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 2:02 pm

Big Rock

Thanks to Ars Mathematicaa link to everything2.com:

“In mathematics, a big rock is a result which is vastly more powerful than is needed to solve the problem being considered. Often it has a difficult, technical proof whose methods are not related to those of the field in which it is applied. You say ‘I’m going to hit this problem with a big rock.’ Sard’s theorem is a good example of a big rock.”

Another example:

Properties of the Monster Group of R. L. Griess, Jr., may be investigated with the aid of the Miracle Octad Generator, or MOG, of R. T. Curtis.  See the MOG on the cover of a book by Griess about some of the 20 sporadic groups involved in the Monster:

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

The MOG, in turn, illustrates (via Abstract 79T-A37, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, February 1979) the fact that the group of automorphisms of the affine space of four dimensions over the two-element field is also the natural group of automorphisms of an arbitrary 4×4 array.

This affine group, of order 322,560, is also the natural group of automorphisms of a family of graphic designs similar to those on traditional American quilts.  (See the diamond theorem.)

This top-down approach to the diamond theorem may serve as an illustration of the “big rock” in mathematics.

For a somewhat simpler, bottom-up, approach to the theorem, see Theme and Variations.

For related literary material, see Mathematics and Narrative and The Diamond as Big as the Monster.

“The rock cannot be broken.
It is the truth.”

Wallace Stevens,
“Credences of Summer”

 

Saturday July 29, 2006

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

Adapted from this morning’s
New York Times online:

Louise Bennett, storyteller

For a spider figure of
an (apparently) different sort,
 see Log24 on the morning
after the demise of
Hunter S. Thompson,
and the links given there.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Thursday July 27, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:11 pm

11:11

Thursday July 27, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:29 pm
Real Numbers:


720,
513
 
(NY Lottery today)

“Was there really a cherubim
waiting at the star-watching rock…?
Was he real?
What is real?”

— Madeleine L’Engle,
A Wind in the Door,
quoted at math16.com

7/20:
Real

5/13:
A Fold in Time

 

Thursday July 27, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:09 pm

Number Sense

The NY lottery numbers for yesterday, 7/26, Jung's birthday, were 726 (mid-day) and 970 (evening).

We may view these numbers as representing the Jungian "sheep" and Freudian "goats" of yesterday's entry Partitions.

For the Jungian coincidence of 726 with 7/26, recall the NY lottery number 911 that was drawn on 9/11 exactly a year after the destruction of the World Trade Center. For more on this coincidence, see For Hemingway's Birthday: Mathematics and Narrative Continued (July 21, 2006).

For 970, Google reveals a strictly skeptical (i.e., like Freud, not Jung) meaning: 970 is the first page of the article "Sources of Mathematical Thinking," in Science, 7 May 1999: Vol. 284. no. 5416, pp. 970 – 974.

That article has been extensively cited in the scholarly literature on the psychology of mathematics.  Its lead author, Stanislas Dehaene, has written a book, The Number Sense.

What sense, if any, is made by 726 and 970?

The mid-day number again (see Hemingway's birthday) illustrates the saying

"Time and chance happeneth to them all."

The evening number again illustrates the saying

"Though truth may be very hard to find in the pages of most books, the page numbers are generally reliable."

— Steven H. Cullinane,
   Zen and Language Games

These sayings may suit the religious outlook of Susan Blackmore, source (along with Matthew 25:31-46) of the sheep/goats partition in yesterday's entry on that topic.  She herself, apparently a former sheep, is now a goat practicing Zen.

Update of later the same evening–

On Space, Time, Life, the Universe, and Everything:

Note that the "sheep" number 726 has a natural interpretation as a date– i.e., in terms of time, while the "goat" number 970 has an interpretation as a page number– i.e., in terms of space.  Rooting, like Jesus and St. Matthew, for the sheep, we may interpret both of today's NY lottery results as dates, as in the next entry, Real Numbers.  That entry may (or may not) pose (and/or answer) The Ultimate Question. Selah.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 7:20 pm

Venus at St. Anne’s
(Title of the closing chapter
of That Hideous Strength)

Star and Diamond

Symbol of Venus
and
Symbol of Plato

“What do they
teach them
   at these schools?”
— C. S. Lewis

Today is the
feast of St. Anne.

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:44 pm
Partitions,
continued

"Mistakes are inevitable and may be either in missing a true signal or in thinking there is a signal when there is not. I am suggesting that believers in the paranormal (called 'sheep' in psychological parlance) are more likely to make the latter kind of error than are disbelievers (called 'goats')."

— "Psychic Experiences:
     Psychic Illusions,"
     by Susan Blackmore,
     Skeptical Inquirer, 1992

For Harvard mathematician
Frederick Mosteller,
dead on Sunday, July 23, 2006:
 
"… a drama built out of nothing
but numbers and imagination"

— Freeman Dyson, quoted in Log24
on the day Mosteller died

From Log24 on
Mosteller's last birthday,
December 24, 2005:

The Club Dumas

by Arturo Perez-Reverte

One by one, he tore the engravings from the book, until he had all nine.  He looked at them closely.  "It's a pity you can't follow me where I'm going.  As the fourth engraving states, fate is not the same for all."

"Where do you believe you're going?"

Borja dropped the mutilated book on the floor with the others. He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle, checking strange correspondences between them.

"To meet someone" was his enigmatic answer. "To search for the stone that the Great Architect rejected, the philosopher's stone, the basis of the philosophical work. The stone of power. The devil likes metamorphoses, Corso."

"Only gradually did I discover
what the mandala really is:
'Formation, Transformation,
Eternal Mind's eternal recreation'"
(Faust, Part Two)

Carl Gustav Jung,   
born on this date

Today's other birthday:
Mick Jagger

"Pleased to meet you,
hope you guess my name."

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 5:00 am

Jung’s Birthday, 5 AM:

Inscape

Inscape2.gif

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 am

Jung’s Birthday, 4 AM:

Jung on the Trinity
and Quaternity

Wednesday July 26, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 am

Jung’s Birthday, 3 AM:

The Shape of God:
Deepening the Mystery
of the Trinity

Monday, July 24, 2006

Monday July 24, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:17 pm
Shine on, you…

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060724-Theatre2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Tom Stoppard and an ad for a concert
in Pribor, Czech Republic,
birthplace of Sigmund Freud

Related material:

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

and the five Log24 entries
ending on this date last year.

Chapter 24

By Syd Barrett,
Dead Poet:

A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset.

— From the 1967 album
   “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Monday July 24, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

Discourse Analysis

Edward Rothstein in today’s New York Times, reviewing Evil Incarnate (Princeton University Press):

“… the most decisive aspect of the myth is that it is, literally, a myth. Every single example of evil he gives turns out to be evil imagined: there is, he says, no evidence for any of it. Evil, he argues, is not something real, it is a ‘discourse,’ a ‘way of representing things and shaping our experience, not some force in itself.'”

Related material:

A review (pdf) by Steven G. Krantz of Charles Wells’s A Handbook of Mathematical Discourse (Notices of the American Mathematical Society, September 2004):

“Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a remarkable and compelling piece of writing because of its searing wit and sardonic take on life. Bierce does not define any new words. He instead gives deadly interpretations of very familiar words. Wells’s book does not fit into the same category of literary effort.”

For literary efforts perhaps more closely related to Bierce’s, see Mathematics and Narrative and the five Log24 entries ending on this date last year.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Sunday July 23, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:56 pm

Dance of the Numbers, continued:

Partitions

Freeman Dyson on the role of the “crank” in the theory of partitions:

“‘Each step in the story is a work of art,’ Dyson says, ‘and the story as a whole is a sequence of episodes of rare beauty, a drama built out of nothing but numbers and imagination.'”

Erica Klarreich in
    Science News Online, week of
    June 18, 2005, quoted in
   “In Honor of Freeman Dyson’s Birthday:
    Dance of the Numbers
    (Log24, Dec. 15, 2005)

Paraphrase of Freeman Dyson’s remarks in The New York Review of Books, issue dated May 28, 1998:

“Theology is about words; science is about things.

“What is 256 about?”
Reply to Freeman Dyson,
    (May 15, 1998)

A partial answer to that rhetorical question: 256 is the cardinality of the power set of an 8-set.

For the role played by 8-sets and by 23 (today’s date) in partitions of a different sort, see Geometry of the 4×4 Square.

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Saturday July 22, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm
Today’s Saint as
The Dark Lady:

Mary Magdalene
(Portrait by Nikos Kazantzakis
and Martin Scorsese):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060722-Hershey1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Magdalene lay on her back, stark naked, drenched in sweat, her raven-black hair spread out over the pillow and her arms entwined beneath her head.  Her face was turned toward the wall and she was yawning.  Wrestling with men on this bed since dawn had tired her out.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis,
   The Last Temptation of Christ

Related material:

Time and Chance

   (See yesterday’s entry.) 

Time:
NY lottery mid-day today:
606
(See morning of 6/6.)

Chance:
NY lottery this evening:
017
(See Art Wars: Just Seventeen.)

Friday, July 21, 2006

Friday July 21, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

For Hemingway’s birthday:

Mathematics and Narrative, continued

“We know many little things about the relation between mathematics and narrative, but lack one big comprehensive insight.”

— John Allen Paulos (pdf)

“On Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2002– 9/11/02– the New York State lottery numbers were 911, an eerie coincidence that set many people to thinking or, perhaps more accurately, to not thinking.”

—  John Allen Paulos

“Time and chance happeneth to them all.”

— Ecclesiastes 9:11

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Thursday July 20, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 2:00 am

Bead Game

Those who clicked on Rieff’s concept in the previous entry will know about the book that Rieff titled Sacred Order/Social Order: My Life among the Deathworks.

That entry, from Tuesday, July 18, was titled “Sacred Order,” and gave as an example the following figure:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060604-Roots.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
(Based on Weyl’s Symmetry)

For the use of this same figure to represent a theatrical concept–

“It’s like stringing beads on a necklace. By the time the play ends, you have the whole necklace.”

— see Ursprache Revisited (June 9, 2006).

Of course, the figure also includes a cross– or “deathwork”– of sorts.  These incidental social properties of the figure (which is purely mathematical in origin) make it a suitable memorial for a theatre critic who died on the date of the previous entry– July 18– and for whom the American Theatre Wing’s design awards, the Henry Hewes Awards, are named.

“The annual awards honor designers… recognizing not only the traditional design categories of sets, costumes and lighting, but also ‘Notable Effects,’ which encompasses sound, music, video, puppets and other creative elements.” —BroadwayWorld.com

For more on life among the deathworks, see an excellent review of the Rieff book mentioned above.

 

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Tuesday July 18, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 1:00 pm

Sacred Order

In memory of Philip Rieff, who died on July 1, 2006:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060604-Roots.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

The image ?http://www.log24.com/theory/images/GF64-63cycleA495.gif? cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

and

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

For details, see the
five Log24 entries ending
on the morning of
Midsummer Day, 2006.

Thanks to University Diaries for pointing out the essay on Rieff.
 
That essay says Rieff had "a dense, knotty, ironic style designed to warn off impatient readers. You had to unpack his aphorisms carefully. And this took a while. As a result, his thinking had a time-release effect." Good for him.  For a related essay (time-release effect unknown), see Hitler's Still Point: A Hate Speech for Harvard.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Monday July 17, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:06 pm

Today is the feast of
St. James McNeill Whistler.

“Nature contains the elements of color and form of all pictures– as the keyboard contains the notes of all music– but the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful–  as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos, glorious harmony.”

— Whistler, “The Ten O’Clock

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Sunday July 16, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:17 pm

Mathematics and Narrative
continued…

“Now, at the urging of the UC Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff, liberal America’s guru of the moment, progressive Democrats are practicing to get their own reluctant mouths around some magical new vocabulary, in the hope of surviving and eventually overcoming the age of Bush.”

Marc Cooper in The Atlantic Monthly, April 2005, “Thinking of Jackasses: The Grand Delusions of the Democratic Party”

Cooper’s “now” is apparently still valid. In today’s New York Times, the leftist Stanley Fish reviews Talking Right, by leftist Geoffrey Nunberg:

“… the right’s language is now the default language for everyone.
     On the way to proposing a counterstrategy (it never really arrives), Nunberg pauses to engage in a polite disagreement with his fellow linguist George Lakoff, who has provided a rival account of the conservative ascendancy. Lakoff argues that Republicans have articulated– first for themselves and then for others– a conceptual framework that allows them to unite apparently disparate issues in a single coherent worldview …  woven together not in a philosophically consistent framework but in a narrative ‘that creates an illusion of coherence.’
     Once again, the Republicans have such a narrative– ‘declining patriotism and moral standards, the out-of-touch media and the self-righteous liberal elite … minorities demanding special privileges … disrespect for religious faith, a swollen government’– but ‘Democrats and liberals have not offered compelling narratives that could compete’ with it. Eighty pages later he is still saying the same thing. ‘The Democrats need a compelling narrative of their own.'”

Lakoff is the co-author of a book on the philosophy of mathematics, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being.  From Wikipedia’s article on Lakoff:

“According to Lakoff, even mathematics itself is subjective to the human species and its cultures: thus ‘any question of math’s being inherent in physical reality is moot, since there is no way to know whether or not it is.’ Lakoff and Rafael E. Nunez (2000) argue at length that mathematical and philosophical ideas are best understood in light of the embodied mind. The philosophy of mathematics ought therefore to look to the current scientific understanding of the human body as a foundation ontology, and abandon self-referential attempts to ground the operational components of mathematics in anything other than ‘meat.'”

For a long list of related leftist philosophy, see The Thinking Meat Project.

Democrats seeking narratives may also consult The Carlin Code and The Prime Cut Gospel.
 

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Saturday July 15, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:26 pm
Ein Bild

From 6/6/6:

Und was fur
ein Bild des Christentums 
ist dabei herausgekommen?

From this date last year:

   

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05A/050703-Cold.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Adapted from cover of
German edition of Cold Mountain

Saturday July 15, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

Today’s birthday:
Linda Ronstadt is 60.

“Elegant as a slow blues.”
— Review of a writer
    by Rolling Stone

Just send me black roses
White rhythm and blues
And somebody who cares when you lose
Black roses, white rhythm and blues
Black roses, white rhythm and blues

— Linda Ronstadt song
   by J. D. Souther, from
   Living in the USA, 1978

Friday, July 14, 2006

Friday July 14, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
Assigned Names
and Numbers

“What do you hear when you listen?”
“Like the wind in a thousand wires.”

— “Fee-5,” a character in  
Alfred Bester’s 1975
The Computer Connection

From Robert A. Heinlein’s
1963 Glory Road:

“I have many names.
What would you like
to call me?”

From the Web:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060714-Esther.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(Former Chairman of the Board
of the
Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers)

Happy birthday, Star.

Related material:
Log24, July 14-15, 2004

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Thursday July 13, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm

Chapter 24

By Syd Barrett,
Dead Poet

A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset.

— From the 1967 album
   “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Thursday July 13, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:45 pm

Longest Day’s Journey

BY BOB THOMAS, LOS ANGELES
July 13, 2006 (AP)– Red Buttons, the carrot-topped burlesque comedian who became a top star in early television and then in a dramatic role won the 1957 Oscar as supporting actor in “Sayonara,” died Thursday [July 13, 2006]. He was 87. —San Francisco Chronicle

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060713-Buttons2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sayonara.

Thursday July 13, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 pm
Carpe Diem

From the new MySpace.com
weblog of Michio Kaku:

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Hyperspace and a Theory of Everything

What lies beyond our 4 dimensions?
By Michio Kaku

When I was a child, I used to visit the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco. I would spend hours fascinated by the carp, who lived in a very shallow pond just inches beneath the lily pads, just beneath my fingers, totally oblivious to the universe above them.

I would ask myself a question only a child could ask: what would it be like to be a carp?

 
A child, or Maurits Escher:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060713-ThreeWorlds.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Three Worlds,
1955

Thursday July 13, 2006

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

Today's birthday:
Harrison Ford

"The forest here at the bottom of the canyon is mostly pine, with a few aspen and broad-leafed shrubs. Steep canyon walls rise way above us on both sides. Occasionally the trail opens into a patch of sunlight and grass that edges the canyon stream, but soon it reenters the deep shade of the pines. The earth of the trail is covered with a soft springy duff of pine needles. It is very quiet here.

Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion."– Robert Pirsig

Related material:
"Canyon Breeze" as played at
myspace.com/montanaskies

"… a point of common understanding between the classic and romantic worlds. Quality, the cleavage term between hip and square, seemed to be it. Both worlds used the term. Both knew what it was. It was just that the romantic left it alone and appreciated it for what it was and the classic tried to turn it into a set of intellectual building blocks for other purposes."– Robert Pirsig

 

For such building blocks, see
myspace.com/affine.

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/MySpace.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
The background music there
is the same, by Montana Skies.

Thursday July 13, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

x

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Wednesday July 12, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

Band Numbers

“Some friends of mine
are in this band…”
— David Auburn, Proof

Seven is Heaven
,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.

The Prime Powers

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Tuesday July 11, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:11 pm

Not Crazy Enough?

Some children of the sixties may feel that today's previous two entries, on Syd Barrett, the Crazy Diamond, are not crazy enough.  Let them consult the times of those entries– 2:11 and 8:15– and interpret those times, crazily, as dates: 2/11 and 8/15.

This brings us to Stephen King territory– apparently the natural habitat of Syd Barrett.

See Log24 on a 2/11, Along Came a Dreamcatcher, and Log24 on an 8/15, The Line.

From 8/15, a remark of Plato:

"There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on…"

(Compare with the remarks by Abraham Cowley for Tom Stoppard's recent birthday.)

From 2/11, two links: Halloween Meditations  and We Are the Key.

From Dreamcatcher (the film and the book):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060211-Freeman2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060324-Dreamcatcher.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For Syd Barrett as Duddits,

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060711-Duddits.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

see Terry Kirby on Syd Barrett
(edited– as in Stephen King
and the New Testament
for narrative effect):

"He appeared as the Floyd performed the song 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond.' It contains the words: 'Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond. Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.'

At first, they didn't recognise the man, whose head and eyebrows were shaved….

But this was the 'crazy diamond' himself: Syd Barrett, the subject of the song….

When Roger Waters saw his old friend, he broke down….

Rick Wright, the keyboards player, later told an interviewer:

… 'Roger [Waters] was in tears, I think I was; we were both in tears. It was very shocking… seven years of no contact and then to walk in while we're actually doing that particular track. I don't know – coincidence, karma, fate, who knows? But it was very, very, very powerful.'"

Remarks suitable for Duddits's opponent, Mister Gray, may be found in the 1994 Ph.D. thesis of Noel Gray.

"I refer here to Plato's utilisation in the Meno of graphic austerity as the tool to bring to the surface, literally and figuratively, the inherent presence of geometry in the mind of the slave."

Plato's Diamond

Shine on, gentle Duddits.

Tuesday July 11, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:15 pm
"In Tom Stoppard's new play 'Rock 'n' Roll,' showing in the West End, he [Syd Barrett] is portrayed in the opening scene, and his life and music are a recurring theme."

— Terry Kirby, Syd Barrett: The Crazy Diamond, in The Independent of July 12

Keynote

"Each scene is punctuated with a rock track from such acts as the Velvet Underground, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd. Songs by Floyd's lost founder, Syd Barrett, are the keynote for Stoppard's theme that rock music sounded the death knell for repression but also heralded a freedom filled with its own perils."

— Ray Bennett, today's review of a new play, "Rock 'n' Roll," by Tom Stoppard

Related material:

Dance of the Numbers,
for Tom Stoppard
on his birthday,
July 3, 2006,

and
Knock, Knock, Knockin',
from yesterday.

'Cause I'm a poet
Don't you know it

— Syd Barrett,
Bob Dylan Blues

Tuesday July 11, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:11 pm

Pink Floyd co-founder
Syd Barrett dies

"Pink Floyd's 1975 track 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond,' from the album 'Wish You Were Here,' is widely believed to be a tribute to Barrett."– Reuters

Monday, July 10, 2006

Monday July 10, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:48 am
Knock, Knock, Knockin'

An obituary in this morning's New York Times suggests a flashback. The Times says that Paul Nelson, 69, a music critic once famously ripped off by the young Bobby Zimmerman, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment last Wednesday. Here is a Log24 entry for that date. (The obituary, by Jon Pareles, notes that Nelson "prized hard-boiled detective novels and film noir.")

Wednesday, July 5, 2006  7:35 PM

Dance of the Numbers
continued–

A music review:

"… in the mode of
 a film noir murder mystery"

"For Bach, as Sellars explains,
 death is not an exit but an entrance."

Seven is Heaven,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.

Sunday, July 9, 2006

Sunday July 9, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:00 am

Today’s birthday:
Tom Hanks, star of
“The Da Vinci Code”

Ben Nicholson
and the Holy Grail


Part I:
A Current Exhibit

The image “http://www.log24.com/log06/saved/KufiBlocks1.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Kufi Blocks“*

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060709-Kufi2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

by Ben Nicholson,
Illinois Institute of Technology

Part II:
Some Background

A. Diamond Theory, a 1976 preprint containing, in the original version, the designs on the faces of Nicholson’s “Kufi blocks,” as well as some simpler traditional designs, and
B. Block Designs,” a web page illustrating design blocks based on the 1976 preprint.

Part III:
The Leonardo Connection

 

See Modern-Day Leonardos, part of an account of a Leonardo exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry that includes Ben Nicholson and his “Kufi Blocks.”

Part IV:
Nicholson’s Grail Quest

“I’m interested in locating the holy grail of the minimum means to express the most complex ideas.”

Ben Nicholson in a 2005 interview

Nicholson’s quest has apparently lasted for some time.  Promotional material for a 1996 Nicholson exhibit in Montreal says it “invites visitors of all ages to experience a contemporary architect’s search for order, meaning and logic in a world of art, science and mystery.”  The title of that exhibit was “Uncovering Geometry.”

For web pages to which this same title might apply, see Quilt Geometry, Galois Geometry, and Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube.

* “Square Kufi” calligraphy is used in Islamic architectural ornament.  I do not know what, if anything, is signified by Nicholson’s 6×12 example of “Kufi blocks” shown above.

Saturday, July 8, 2006

Saturday July 8, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm

For Kevin Bacon’s birthday

New Game:
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

Roderick MacLeish, author of the classic Prince Ombra, died at 80 on Saturday, July 1, 2006.  From an obituary:

“‘When I think back over my career, I know that my father was a tremendous inspiration,’ said his son, an attorney who represented abuse victims in a settlement with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.”

Related material:  Log24 entries of May 31 and June 1, 2006, and the remarks of Raymond Chandler on wainscoting in The Big Sleep.  See also the following:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060708-Shadows.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sources: Log24 on 12/31/02 and 10/30/05,
and wainscoting from “Mystic River.”

Friday, July 7, 2006

Friday July 7, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm

ART WARS continued
 

To the “Endgame Art” review
in today’s New York Times,
a magic-realism response:

Now

In memory of
Roderick MacLeish:

Now, we are seven.
— Yul Brynner

Related material:

Log24 for 6/6/6

  and
Plato, Pegasus, and
the Evening Star.

Friday July 7, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am
Born (some say)
on this date:
Yul Brynner

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060707-Brynner1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Mate in 6
(White moves.)

(White: Ke8, Nd7, Be5,
b5, e4, f2. Black: Ke6.
)

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060707-Problem.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sevitov, 1938

(For solution, click here.)

Log24, July 3, 2006:

“… There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn’t solve it, like a lot of my problems. I reached down and moved a knight….
I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights.”

— Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, begun in the summer of 1938

Log24, July 2, 2006:

Is a puzzlement!

Log24, July 5, 2006:

“In this way we are offered a formidable lesson for every Christian community.”

— Pope Benedict XVI on Pentecost, June 4, 2006, St. Peter’s Square.

Thursday, July 6, 2006

Thursday July 6, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:25 pm

State and Church

Today’s birthdays:

George W. Bush and
Sylvester Stallone, born on
the same day 60 years ago.

Two birthday quotations from Kathleen Parker:

“Verily, I say unto you – Whatever.”

“No, wait, how about this: ‘Yo, Christ Buddy!‘”

Orlando Sentinel
   column written for release July 1, 2006

Parker’s column, on recent Presbyterian interpretations of the Holy Trinity, is titled

“I believe in Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe.”


What about Shemp?

Thursday July 6, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

Mexican leftist’s
lead slips
in election recount

“The winner will take over from Fox on December 1, inheriting a divided nation and a fierce war against drug smuggling gangs.”

Muy buena suerte.

Thursday July 6, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:12 am

What Song the Sirens Sang

“Wake you up in the
 middle of the night
 just to hear them say…”

“Suitcases filled with cash had changed hands in the four-star Hotel Hassler in Rome.”

F. Mark Wyatt, recently deceased
   career CIA officer,
   quoted in this morning’s
   New York Times

The New York Times, with its usual lack of clarity about dates, says Wyatt died “on Thursday.”  Presumably this was Thursday a week ago– June 29, 2006, the Feast of Saint Peter.

Related material:

Welcome to the Hotel Hassler
(3/23/06) and
Bright Star.

Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Wednesday July 5, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:07 pm

Solemn Dance
 
Virgil on the Elysian Fields:

  Some wrestle on the sands, and some in play
  And games heroic pass the hours away.
  Those raise the song divine, and these advance
  In measur'd steps to form the solemn dance.

(See also the previous two entries.)
 

Bulletin of the
American
Mathematical Society,
July 2006 (pdf):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060705-Dioph1.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"The cover of this issue of the Bulletin is the frontispiece to a volume of Samuel de Fermat’s 1670 edition of Bachet’s Latin translation of Diophantus’s Arithmetica. This edition includes the marginalia of the editor’s father, Pierre de Fermat.  Among these notes one finds the elder Fermat’s extraordinary comment [c. 1637] in connection with the Pythagorean equation x2 + y2 = z2, the marginal comment that hints at the existence of a proof (a demonstratio sane mirabilis) of what has come to be known as Fermat’s Last Theorem."

— Barry Mazur, Gade University Professor at Harvard

Mazur's concluding remarks are as follows:
 

"But however you classify the branch of mathematics it is concerned with, Diophantus’s Arithmetica can claim the title of founding document, and inspiring muse, to modern number theory. This brings us back to the goddess with her lyre in the frontispiece, which is the cover of this issue. As is only fitting, given the passion of the subject, this goddess is surely Erato, muse of erotic poetry."

Mazur has admitted, at his website, that this conclusion was an error:

"I erroneously identified the figure on the cover as Erato, muse of erotic poetry, but it seems, rather, to be Orpheus."

"Seems"? 

The inscription on the frontispiece, "Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum," is from a description of the Elysian Fields in Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI:

  His demum exactis, perfecto munere divae,
  Devenere locos laetos, & amoena vireta
  Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.
  Largior hic campos aether & lumine vestit
  Purpureo; solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
  Pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris,
  Contendunt ludo, & fulva luctanter arena:
  Pars pedibus plaudunt choreas, & carmina dicunt.
  Necnon Threicius longa cum veste sacerdos
  Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum:
  Jamque eadem digitis, jam pectine pulsat eburno.
PITT:

  These rites compleat, they reach the flow'ry plains,
  The verdant groves, where endless pleasure reigns.
  Here glowing AEther shoots a purple ray,
  And o'er the region pours a double day.
  From sky to sky th'unwearied splendour runs,
  And nobler planets roll round brighter suns.
  Some wrestle on the sands, and some in play
  And games heroic pass the hours away.
  Those raise the song divine, and these advance
  In measur'd steps to form the solemn dance.
  There Orpheus graceful in his long attire,
  In seven divisions strikes the sounding lyre;
  Across the chords the quivering quill he flings,
  Or with his flying fingers sweeps the strings.

DRYDEN:

  These holy rites perform'd, they took their way,
  Where long extended plains of pleasure lay.
  The verdant fields with those of heav'n may vie;
  With AEther veiled, and a purple sky:
  The blissful seats of happy souls below;
  Stars of their own, and their own suns they know.
  Their airy limbs in sports they exercise,
  And on the green contend the wrestlers prize.
  Some in heroic verse divinely sing,
  Others in artful measures lead the ring.
  The Thracian bard surrounded by the rest,
  There stands conspicuous in his flowing vest.
  His flying fingers, and harmonious quill,
  Strike seven distinguish'd notes, and seven at once they fill.

It is perhaps not irrelevant that the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's next role would have been that of Orfeo in Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice."  See today's earlier entries.

The poets among us may like to think of Mazur's own role as that of the lyre:

"You are the words,
I am the tune;
Play me."

Neil Diamond    

Wednesday July 5, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:35 pm

Dance of the Numbers
continued–

A music review:

“… in the mode of a film noir murder mystery

“For Bach, as Sellars explains,
 death is not an exit but an entrance.”

Seven is Heaven
,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.

Wednesday July 5, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:00 pm
Entertainment
from today’s
New York Times

From the obituary of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died at 52 on Monday, July 3, 2006, at her home in Santa Fe:

“If she rarely spoke of her private life, few artists have brought such emotional vulnerability to their work, whether it was her sultry portrayal of Myrtle Wilson, the mistress of wealthy Tom Buchanan in John Harbison’s ‘Great Gatsby,’ the role of her 1999 Metropolitan Opera debut, or her shattering performances several years ago in two Bach cantatas for solo voice and orchestra, staged by the director Peter Sellars, seen in Lincoln Center’s New Visions series, with the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, Craig Smith conducting.

In Cantata No. 82, ‘Ich Habe Genug’ (‘I Have Enough’), Ms. Hunt Lieberson, wearing a flimsy hospital gown and thick woolen socks, her face contorted with pain and yearning, portrayed a terminally ill patient who, no longer able to endure treatments, wants to let go and be comforted by Jesus. During one consoling aria, ‘Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen’ (‘Slumber now, weary eyes’), she yanked tubes from her arms and sang the spiraling melody with an uncanny blend of ennobling grace and unbearable sadness.”

Related Entertainment
from Nov. 6, 2003

Today’s birthday:
director Mike Nichols

Wednesday July 5, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:25 pm

And now, from
the author of Sphere

CUBE

He beomes aware of something else… some other presence.
“Anybody here?” he says.
I am here.
He almost jumps, it is so loud. Or it seems loud. Then he wonders if he has heard anything at all.
“Did you speak?”
No.
How are we communicating? he wonders.
The way everything communicates with everything else.
Which way is that?
Why do you ask if you already know the answer?

Sphere, by Michael Crichton, Harvard ’64

“… when I went to Princeton things were completely different. This chapel, for instance– I remember when it was just a clearing, cordoned off with sharp sticks.  Prayer was compulsory back then, and you couldn’t just fake it by moving your lips; you had to know the words, and really mean them.  I’m dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ.”

Baccalaureate address at Princeton, Pentecost 2006, reprinted in The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick, Princeton ’81

Related figures:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060617-Spellbound.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For further details,
see Solomon’s Cube
and myspace.com/affine.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060705-Cube.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For further details,
see Jews on Buddhism
and
Adventures in Group Theory.

“In this way we are offered
a formidable lesson
for every Christian community.”

Pope Benedict XVI
on Pentecost,
June 4, 2006,
St. Peter’s Square
.

Monday, July 3, 2006

Monday July 3, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 pm

Culture War

The New York Times, August 6, 2003,
on its executive editor Bill Keller:

“‘It is past time for our magnificent coverage of culture and lifestyles, so essential to our present allure and to our future growth, to get the kind of attention we routinely bestow on hard news,’ Mr. Keller wrote in an e-mail message to the staff.”

The New York Times, June 25, 2006,
on art in Mexico:

“At the Hilario Galguera gallery, newly opened in a fortresslike, century-old building, was Damien Hirst’s gory new series ‘The Death of God– Towards a Better Understanding of Life Without God Aboard the Ship of Fools.’  He conceived the work at his part-time home in the Mexican surf town Troncones.”

Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep:

   “I went over to a floor lamp and pulled the switch, went back to put off the ceiling light, and went across the room again to the chessboard on a card table under the lamp. There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover.  I couldn’t solve it, like a lot of my problems.  I reached down and moved a knight, then pulled my hat and coat off and threw them somewhere.  All this time the soft giggling went on from the bed, that sound that made me think of rats behind a wainscoting in an old house.

…………

    I looked down at the chessboard.  The move with the knight was wrong.  I put it back where I had moved it from.  Knights had no meaning in this game.  It wasn’t a game for knights.”

Monday July 3, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:35 pm
Dance of the Numbers
continued

For Tom Stoppard on his birthday:

“For I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother’s parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser’s works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet.”

Abraham Cowley, Essays, 1668

Monday July 3, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:13 am
Requiem for a Clown

For Jan Murray,
who died yesterday–


Into the Sunset, Part I:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060703-Sunset.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Into the Sunset, Part II:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060703-Achelous21.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Requiem for a clown:

“At times, bullshit can only be
countered with superior bullshit.”

Norman Mailer

See also 10/13.

Sunday, July 2, 2006

Sunday July 2, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:00 pm
Review:
 
The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/OnBeauty.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sunday July 2, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:29 pm
Jews on Buddhism:

Is a puzzlement!

Related material:

The obituary of Jaap Penraat
in today’s New York Times

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060702-Jaap.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Hudson Talbott, a longtime friend of Mr. Penraat’s who wrote a children’s book about his experiences (Forging Freedom: A True Story of Heroism During the Holocaust) said his research indicated there was a daredevil aspect to the missions.

‘The feeling I get is that he just loved the idea of putting one over on the Nazis,’ Mr. Talbott said in an interview with The Albany Times Union. ‘It wasn’t a joke, or a game, but clearly there was something about fooling them that was an important aspect of this.'” –Douglas Martin in today’s New York Times

See also:

Log24, Jan. 6-8, 2006,

and

Jaap’s Puzzle Page.

Sunday July 2, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:29 am

The Rock and the Serpent

In a search for a title to express
the contrast between truth and lies,
an analogy between the phrases

Crystal and Dragon” and
Mathematics and Narrative

suggests a similar phrase,

“The Rock and the Serpent.”

A web search for related titles leads to a book by Alice Thomas Ellis:

Serpent on the Rock: A Personal View of Christianity. (See a review.)

(This in turn leads to an article on Ellis’s husband, the late Colin Haycraft, publisher.)

For an earlier discussion of Ellis in this weblog, see Three Eleanors (March 12, 2005).

That entry brings us back to the theme of truth and lies with its link to an article from the Catholic publication Commonweal:

Getting to Truth by Lying.

Christians who wish to lie more effectively may consult a book by the author of the Commonweal article:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050312-Form.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For a more sympathetic view of
suffering stemming from
Christian narrative,
see

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

(Click on cover
for details. See also Log24
entries on Guy Davenport,
who wrote the foreword.)

Saturday, July 1, 2006

Saturday July 1, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:55 am
Zen and the Art
continued:

 Zen and The Art.

Related material:

Open House Day
at Cullinane College

and Log24, June 1-15.

Saturday July 1, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

Hong Kong Day

See Hong Kong July 1 marches,
Thousands March for Democracy in Hong Kong. and
Hong Kong flags, previous and current.

Related material:
the previous two entries.

Powered by WordPress