And the Oscar
goes to…

Obituaries in the News

The headline for Edward Rothstein’s “Connections” column in The New York Times of Monday, March 26, 2007, was “Texts That Run Rings Around Everyday Linear Logic.”

Continuing yesterday’s lottery meditation, let us examine today’s New York results in the light of Rothstein’s essay.  The literary “ring” structure he describes is not immediately apparent in Friday’s numbers, although the mid-day number, 002– which in the I Ching signifies yin, the feminine, receptive principle– might be interpreted as referring to a ring of sorts.

Illustration from
an entry of
March 2, 2004

For the evening number, 085, see the list of page numbers in last year’s Log24 entry (cited here last night) for today’s date, March 30.  Page 85, in the source cited here a year ago, begins…

“A random selection from Hopkins’s journal shows how the sun acts as a focus….”

See also last night’s picture:

 

Peter Woit’s latest weblog entry links to a discussion of Plato’s cave and the modular group, which in turn suggests a second look at an entry linked to, indirectly, at the end of Saturday’s Log24 entry: Natasha’s Dance.  This leads to the following:

“To me, to worship God means to recognize that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension.”

— Freeman Dyson, “Science & Religion: No Ends in Sight,” The New York Review of Books, issue dated five years ago today– March 28, 2002.

If Dyson’s “recognition” is correct, why should mind and intelligence not be woven into the fabric of the Pennsylvania Lottery?

The practiced reader of Log24 will have little difficulty in constructing a story based on these numbers.  Briefly, the story is… 2/26 and 8/26.  The way the story was written may “surpass our comprehension,” but the story itself need not.

Those more interested in the writing than the story may consult Edward Rothstein’s piece in the March 26 New York Times, “Texts That Run Rings Around Everyday Linear Logic.”  There they will find a brief discussion of, appropriately, the Bible’s Book of Numbers.

“‘It is a very difficult philosophical question, the question of what “random” is,’ he said. He plucked the rubber band with his thumb, boink, boink.”

— Herbert Robbins in Richard Preston’s “The Mountains of Pi” (The New Yorker, March 2, 1992)

Queen's Gambit

That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon silence.

— W. B. Yeats, "Long-Legged Fly"

This is the epigraph to
the Walter Tevis novel
The Queen's Gambit.
 

x

x

Comfort and Joy
 Notes on a Hollywood ending
in memory of
Stanley Kubrick,
chessplayer and film director,
who died on this date in 1999

Assassin Joubert (Max von Sydow) is talking with intelligence agency target Turner (Robert Redford), sought by CIA deputy director Higgins (Cliff Robertson) in “Three Days of the Condor“–

Joubert: Can I drop you?

Turner: [Sigh] I’d like to go back to New York.

Joubert: You have not much future there. It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift.

Turner: You seem to understand it all so well. What would you suggest?

Joubert: Personally, I prefer Europe.

Turner: Europe?

Joubert: Yes. Well, the fact is, what I do is not a bad occupation. Someone is always willing to pay.

Turner: I would find it… tiring.

Joubert: Oh, no– it’s quite restful. It’s… almost peaceful. No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause. There’s only yourself. The belief is in your own precision.

Turner: I was born in the United States, Joubert. I miss it when I’m away too long.

Joubert: A pity.

Turner: I don’t think so. Is it any trouble to drop me at the Union Station?

Joubert: Oh, no. It would be my pleasure.

[Joubert pauses, then holds out a gun to Turner]

Joubert: For that day.

EXT. WEST 43RD ST. — DAY

Carolers:

Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all
from Satan’s power
When we are gone astray.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

Turner: Higgins!

Carolers:

Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy!

Higgins: Why’d you call so late? We were worried about you.

Turner: Likewise. The car for me?

Higgins: It’s all right. It’s safe. You’ll have a few hours of debriefiing.

Turner: Hey, Higgins?

Higgins: Yeah?

Turner: Let’s say, for the purposes of argument, I had a .45 in one of my pockets and I wanted you to walk with me. You’d do it, right?

Higgins: Which way?

Turner: West. And slowly.

TRACKING TURNER AND HIGGINS

The sound of singing grows louder.

(Dialogue reconstructed from Script-o-rama, Wikiquote, and the more detailed script (pdf) at AwesomeFilm.com.)

23 Skidoo

For the philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who died yesterday, a Xanga footprint:

Related material:

The late writer Robert A. Wilson on
the number 23,
mathematician Robert A. Wilson on
the action of the Baby Monster (pdf)
on cosets of the Fischer Group Fi₂₃,
the recent film “The Number 23,”
and, for North Carolina on
the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola,
The Footprints of God.