Log24

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Saturday March 31, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 pm

And the Oscar
goes to…

Obituaries in the News

Filed at 7:24 a.m. ET

Maria Julia Hernandez

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Renowned human rights activist Maria Julia Hernandez, who aided victims of El Salvador’s civil war, died Friday [March 30, 2007]. She was 68.

Hernandez died of a heart attack, friends and colleagues said.

She was best known as director of the Roman Catholic Church-sponsored group Legal Protection, which aids impoverished victims of El Salvador’s 12-year civil war, and she had worked alongside the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.

Hernandez had been hospitalized since March 9 for heart problems, and suffered a heart attack Wednesday night in addition to the fatal one on Friday.

She worked with Romero on some of the conflict’s first rights cases, said Jose Roberto Lazo, a lawyer for Legal Protection. Romero was assassinated in 1980 after he urged the military to halt the death squads that killed thousands of suspected guerrillas and leftist opponents of the government.

Born to Salvadoran parents in the Honduran town of San Francisco Morazan in 1939, Hernandez and her family moved to El Salvador days later. She dedicated her life to social work in the church and never married.

Source:
The New York Times,
Saturday,
March 31, 2007

Friday, March 30, 2007

Friday March 30, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:48 pm
Rings

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

— Bernard Holland in
   The New York Times
  
Monday, May 20, 1996

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.”

Here is such a text.

The New York Lottery,
Friday, March 30, 2007:

Mid-day 002
Evening 085


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:

Trigram Sun: Wind, Wood
 

Last night’s reference to last
year’s entry on this date provides,
like the last and first pages of
Finnegans Wake, an example
of literary “ring” structure.

Today’s New York evening number,
85, reinforces this “ring” reference.

For related material, see
an entry for Reba McEntire’s
birthday four years ago
.

Friday March 30, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:07 am
A Year of
Magical Thinking

12:07:57 AM ET
March 30, 2007

Trigram Sun: Wind, Wood

See also this date
last year.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Wednesday March 28, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:10 pm
Plato, God, Stories

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?

PA Lottery March 28, 2007: Mid-day 226, Evening 826

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.

Wednesday March 28, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm
Logical Songs

Reba McEntire, Saturday Evening Post, Mar/Apr 1995

Logical Song I
(Supertramp)

“When I was young, it seemed that
Life was so wonderful, a miracle,
Oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees,
Well they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me”

Logical Song II
(Sinatra)

“You make me feel so young,
You make me feel like
Spring has sprung
And every time I see you grin
I’m such a happy in-
dividual….

You and I are
Just like a couple of tots
Running across the meadow
Picking up lots
Of forget-me-nots

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Saturday March 24, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:09 pm
Gambit

Chess game in The Thomas Crown Affair

For Steve McQueen’s
birthday, three chess links:

A Game of Chess,

Queen’s Gambit,

Starflight.

Saturday March 24, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:12 am
Today’s New York Times:
 

Herman Stein, 91,
Composer of Moody
Horror and Science-
Fiction Scores, Dies

The image “Herman Stein, film composer

Stein died on March 15.
It is not known whether he
  wrote the musical theme
for Log24 on that day,
Boink, Boink.”

Saturday March 24, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:09 am
Savage Scrutiny

“They sang desiring an object that was near,
In face of which desire no longer moved,
Nor made of itself that which it could not find…
Three times the concentred self takes hold, three times
The thrice concentred self, having possessed

The object, grips it in savage scrutiny,
Once to make captive, once to subjugate
Or yield to subjugation, once to proclaim
The meaning of the capture, this hard prize,
Fully made, fully apparent, fully found.”

— “Credences of Summer,” VII,
    by Wallace Stevens, from
    Transport to Summer (1947)

Clifford Geertz on Levi-Strauss, from The Cerebral Savage:

“Savage logic works like a kaleidoscope whose chips can fall into a variety of patterns…. “

Related material:

The kaleidoscope puzzle and “Claude Levi-Strauss and the Aesthetic Object,” a videotaped interview with Dr. Boris Wiseman.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Thursday March 22, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Chess Letter:
x

Queen sacrifice

Click on a picture
for the meaning of
the chess notation.
 
“Shakespeare, Rilke, Joyce,
Beckett and Levi-Strauss are
instances of authors for whom
chiasmus and chiastic thinking
are of central importance,
for whom chiasmus is a
generator of meaning,
tool of discovery and
  philosophical template.”
 
— Chiasmus in the Drama of Life

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Wednesday March 21, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:29 pm
Art Appreciation

A rectangle in memory of
Harvard mathematician
George Mackey:

The five Log24 entries ending at
7:00 PM on March 14, 2006,
the last day of Mackey's life:


A rectangle in memory of
artist Mark Rothko:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070321-Rothko.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Sotheby's

  Rothko Painting
Is Up for Auction

 By CAROL VOGEL of
THE NEW YORK TIMES,
March 21, 5:35 PM ET

"David Rockefeller plans to sell
a seminal painting by Mark Rothko
for what Sotheby's hopes will be
more than $40 million. Above,
a detail from the painting."

From the story:

"Mr. Rockefeller has owned the
painting since 1960, when he
bought it for less than $10,000….
He said that in November, during a
periodic appraisal of his art collection,
he noticed to his surprise that of all
his paintings, the Rothko had
appreciated in value the most.
'That got me thinking,' he said."

Art appreciation:

When Crayolas worked, I dreamed an angel,
a bar of light, your messenger,
beckoning from a wallpaper corner,
blushing in the porcelain gas glow.

When Crayolas worked and chariots swung low,
and America was beautiful and time was slow.

Then all that died in life's longer year.
Autumn came, colors turned sere.
Brittle Crayolas crumbled when touched.
The friends of life were cold and hushed.

Still you were there, shining and warm
behind snow clouds, safe from our harm.
The seed I am again burst out,
drank your heat, suckled your light

in another fair spring to live again
on billowing oceans of bottomless green.

— Excerpt from C. K. Latham's
   When Crayolas Worked,
   from Shiva Dancing:
   The Rothko Chapel Songs,
   1972-1997

Wednesday March 21, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 3:18 pm
Finite Relativity
continued

This afternoon I added a paragraph to The Geometry of Logic that makes it, in a way, a sequel to the webpage Finite Relativity:

"As noted previously, in Figure 2 viewed as a lattice the 16 digital labels 0000, 0001, etc., may be interpreted as naming the 16 subsets of a 4-set; in this case the partial ordering in the lattice is the structure preserved by the lattice's group of 24 automorphisms– the same automorphism group as that of the 16 Boolean connectives.  If, however, these 16 digital labels are interpreted as naming the 16 functions from a 4-set to a 2-set  (of two truth values, of two colors, of two finite-field elements, and so forth), it is not obvious that the notion of partial order is relevant.  For such a set of 16 functions, the relevant group of automorphisms may be the affine group of A mentioned above.  One might argue that each Venn diagram in Fig. 3 constitutes such a function– specifically, a mapping of four nonoverlapping regions within a rectangle to a set of two colors– and that the diagrams, considered simply as a set of two-color mappings, have an automorphism group of order larger than 24… in fact, of order 322,560.  Whether such a group can be regarded as forming part of a 'geometry of logic' is open to debate."

The epigraph to "Finite Relativity" is:

"This is the relativity problem: to fix objectively a class of equivalent coordinatizations and to ascertain the group of transformations S mediating between them."

— Hermann Weyl, The Classical Groups, Princeton University Press, 1946, p. 16

The added paragraph seems to fit this description.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Monday March 19, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 am
The Naked Brain

The cover (pdf) of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society for April 2007 (Mathematics Awareness Month) features a naked disembodied brain (Log24, March 16), courtesy of researchers at the Catholic University of Louvain.
 

Related material:

 

Log24, Jan. 26

"… at last she realized
what the Thing on the dais was.
IT was a brain.
A disembodied brain…."
 
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle
"There could not be an objective test
that distinguished a clever robot
from a really conscious person."
 
— Daniel Dennett in TIME magazine,
Daniel Dennett in his office

Daniel Dennett, Professor of Philosophy
and Director of the
Center for Cognitive Studies
at Tufts University,
in his office on campus.
(Boston Globe, Jan. 29, 2006.
Photo © Rick Friedman.)

 

Related recommended
reading and viewing:

Tom Wolfe's essay
"Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,"
and a video of an interview
 with Wolfe.
 

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Sunday March 18, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:20 pm

Update to
The Geometry of Logic:

A detailed description of a group of 16 “logical automorphisms” of the 16 binary connectives has been given in the paper “Simetria y Logica: La notacion de Peirce para los 16 conectivos binarios,” by Mireya Garcia, Jhon Fredy Gomez, and Arnold Oostra. (Published in the Memorias del XII Encuentro de Geometria y sus Aplicaciones, Universidad Pedagogica Nacional, Bogota, June 2001; on the Web at http://www.unav.es/gep/Articulos/SimetriaYLogica.pdf.) The authors do not identify this group as a subgroup of the affine group of A (the finite affine geometry of four dimensions over the two-element field); this can serve as an exercise.  Another exercise: determining whether the authors’ order-16 group includes all transformations that might reasonably be called “logical automorphisms” of the 16 binary connectives.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Saturday March 17, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:48 am
The Comparison of the
Catholic Church and the
Kingdom of Fairies

by Thomas Hobbes

“One of the best examples
philosophy has to offer of
so-bad-it’s-good.
Brilliantly funny,
but Very, Very, Wrong.”

m14m.net

See also yesterday’s
Log24 entry on Hobbes.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Friday March 16, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:48 am
"Geometry,
 Theology,
 and Politics:

 
Context and Consequences of 

the Hobbes-Wallis Dispute"
(pdf)

 

by Douglas M. Jesseph
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
North Carolina State University

Excerpt:

"We are left to conclude that there was something significant in Hobbes's philosophy that motivated Wallis to engage in the lengthy and vitriolic denunciation of all things Hobbesian.

In point of fact, Wallis made no great secret of his motivations for attacking Hobbes's geometry, and the presence of theological and political motives is well attested in a 1659 letter to Huygens. He wrote:

But regarding the very harsh diatribe against Hobbes, the necessity of the case, and not my manners, led to it. For you see, as I believe, from other of my writings how peacefully I can differ with others and bear those with whom I differ. But this was provoked by our Leviathan (as can be easily gathered fro his other writings, principally those in English), when he attacks with all his might and destroys our universities (and not only ours, but all, both old and new), and especially the clergy and all institutions and all religion. As if the Christian world knew nothing sound or nothing that was not ridiculous in philosophy or religion; and as if it has not understood religion because it does not understand philosophy, nor philosophy because it does not understand mathematics. And so it seemed necessary that now some mathematician, proceeding in the opposite direction, should show how little he understand this mathematics (from which he takes his courage). Nor should we be deterred from this by his arrogance, which we know will vomit poison and filth against us. (Wallis to Huygens, 11 January, 1659; Huygens 1888-1950,* 2: 296-7)

The threats that Hobbes supposedly posed to the universities, the clergy, and all religion are a consequence of his political and theological doctrines. Hobbes's political theory requires that the power of the civil sovereign be absolute and undivided. As a consequence, such institutions as universities and the clergy must submit to the dictates of the sovereign in all matters. This extends, ironically enough, to geometry, since Hobbes notoriously claimed that the sovereign could ban the teaching of the subject and order 'the burning of all books of Geometry' if he should judge geometric principles 'a thing contrary to [his] right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion' (Leviathan (1651) 1.11, 50; English Works** 3: 91). In the area of church government, Hobbes's doctrines are a decisive rejection of the claims of Presbyterianism, which holds that questions of theological doctrine is [sic] to be decided by the elders of the church– the presbytery– without reference to the claims of the sovereign. As a Presbyterian minister, a doctor of divinity, and professor of geometry at Oxford, Wallis found abundant reason to reject this political theory."

* Huygens, Christiaan. 1888-1950. Les oeuvres complètes de Chrisiaan Huygens. Ed. La Société Hollandaise des Sciences. 22 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

** Hobbes, Thomas. [1839-45] 1966. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, now First Collected and Edited by Sir William Molesworth. Edited by William Molesworth. 11 vols. Reprint. Aalen, Germany: Scientia Verlag.

 

Related material:

"But what is it?"
Calvin demanded.
"We know that it's evil,
but what is it?"

"Yyouu hhave ssaidd itt!"
Mrs. Which's voice rang out.
"Itt iss Eevill. Itt iss thee
Ppowers of Ddarrkknesss!"

A Wrinkle in Time

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070316-AMScover.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"After A Wrinkle in Time was finally published, it was pointed out to me that the villain, a naked disembodied brain, was called 'It' because It stands for Intellectual truth as opposed to a truth which involves the whole of us, heart as well as mind.  That acronym had never occurred to me.  I chose the name It intuitively, because an IT does not have a heart or soul.  And I did not understand consciously at the time of writing that the intellect, when it is not informed by the heart, is evil."

 

See also
"Darkness Visible"
in ART WARS.
 

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Thursday March 15, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:07 pm
Boink, Boink

From the April Notices of the
American Mathematical Society
:

Mathematics and Philosophy, AMS Notices, April 2007

From Log24
on March 15 last year,
the annual pie-eating
contest of the Harvard
Mathematics Department
on Pi Day:

Etiquette at Harvard

From Log24 yesterday:

Quotation for Pi Day: Boink, Boink

Click on the above sections
for further details.
 

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Wednesday March 14, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 am

“‘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)

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Saturday March 10, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 am

The Logic of Dreams

From A Beautiful Mind–

“How could you,” began Mackey, “how could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof…how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world? How could you…?”

Nash looked up at last and fixed Mackey with an unblinking stare as cool and dispassionate as that of any bird or snake. “Because,” Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, as if talking to himself, “the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.”

Ideas:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070309-NYlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070309-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

These numbers may, in the mad way so well portrayed by Sylvia Nasar in the above book, be regarded as telling a story… a story that should, of course, not be taken too seriously.

Friday’s New York numbers (midday 214, evening 711) suggest the dates 2/14 and 7/11.  Clicking on these dates will lead the reader to Log24 entries featuring, among others, T. S. Eliot and Stephen King– two authors not unacquainted with the bizarre logic of dreams.

A link in the 7/11 entry leads to a remark of Noel Gray on Plato’s Meno and “graphic austerity as the tool to bring to the surface, literally and figuratively, the inherent presence of geometry in the mind of the slave.”

Also Friday: an example of graphic austerity– indeed, Gray graphic austerity– in Log24:

Chessboard (Detail)

This illustration refers to chess rather than to geometry, and to the mind of an addict rather than to that of a slave, but chess and geometry, like addiction and slavery, are not unrelated.


Friday’s Pennsylvania numbers, midday 429 and evening 038, suggest that the story includes, appropriately enough in view of the above Beautiful Mind excerpt, Mackey himself.  The midday number suggests the date 4/29, which at Log24 leads to an entry in memory of Mackey.

(Related material: the Harvard Gazette of April 6, 2006, “Mathematician George W. Mackey, 90: Obituary“–  “A memorial service will be held at Harvard’s Memorial Church on April 29 at 2 p.m.“)

Friday’s Pennsylvania evening number 038 tells two other parts of the story involving Mackey…

As Mackey himself might hope, the number may be regarded as a reference to the 38 impressive pages of Varadarajan’s “Mackey Memorial Lecture” (pdf).

More in the spirit of Nash, 38 may also be taken as a reference to Harvard’s old postal address, Cambridge 38, and to the year, 1938, that Mackey entered graduate study at Harvard, having completed his undergraduate studies at what is now Rice University.

Returning to the concept of graphic austerity, we may further simplify the already abstract chessboard figure above to obtain an illustration that has been called both “the field of reason” and “the Garden of Apollo” by an architect, John Outram, discussing his work at Mackey’s undergraduate alma mater:

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/grid3x3.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Let us hope that Mackey,
a devotee of reason,
is now enjoying the company
of Apollo rather than that of
Tom O’Bedlam:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05A/050613-Crowe.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For John Nash on his birthday:

I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.

Tom O’Bedlam’s Song

Saturday March 10, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:00 am
Tesseract

A new page at finitegeometry.org,
The Geometry of Logic,
includes the following figure:

The 16 binary connectives arranged in a tesseract

There is such a thing
as a tesseract.

— Madeleine L’Engle
 

Friday, March 9, 2007

Friday March 9, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

Queen's Gambit

Chessboard (Detail)

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.
 

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Thursday March 8, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:13 pm
Introduction to Logic
for International Women's Day

"The logic behind such utterances is the logic
of binary opposition, the principle of non-contra-
diction, often thought of as the very essence of
Logic as such….

Now, my understanding of what is most radical
in deconstruction is precisely that it questions
this basic logic of binary opposition….

Instead of a simple 'either/or' structure,
deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse
that says neither "either/or", nor "both/and"
nor even "neither/nor", while at the same time
not totally abandoning these logics either."

Harvard professor Barbara Johnson
in "Nothing Fails Like Success."
(See the previous entry, Day Without Logic.)

The 16 Binary Connectives, with Venn Diagrams

Click to enlarge.

Those who value literary theory
more than they value truth
may prefer, on this
International Women's Day,
the "mandorla" interpretation
of the above diagrams.

For this interpretation, see
Death and the Spirit III,
Burning Bright,
and
The Agony and the Ya-Ya.

Thursday March 8, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 1:00 pm
Day Without
Logic

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060804-DWA2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Symbol of the Dec. 1
Day Without Art

This resembles the following symbol,
due to logician Charles Sanders Peirce,
of the logic of binary opposition:

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

(For futher details on the role
of this symbol in logic, see
Chinese Jar Revisited.)

On this, International Women’s Day,
we might also consider the
widely quoted thoughts on logic of
Harvard professor Barbara Johnson:

Nothing Fails Like Success, by Barbara Johnson

Detail:

Barbara Johnson, Nothing Fails Like Success, detail

“Instead of a simple ‘either/or’ structure,
deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse
that says neither “either/or”, nor “both/and”
nor even “neither/nor”, while at the same time
not totally abandoning these logics either.”

It may also be of interest on
International Women’s Day
that in the “box style” I Ching
(suggested by a remark of
Jungian analyst
Marie-Louise von Franz)
the symbol

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/PeirceBox.bmp” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
denotes
Hexagram 2,
The Receptive.

Thursday March 8, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 am
Dia de la
Mujer Trabajadora

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070308-Aldecoa.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Yo es que nací un 8 de marzo,
Día de la Mujer Trabajadora,
y no he hecho más que
trabajar toda mi vida.”

Josefina Aldecoa

For background on Aldecoa,
see a paper (pdf) by
Sara Brenneis:

“Josefina Aldecoa intertwines
history, collective memory
and individual testimony in her
historical memory trilogy…”

HISTORICAL MEMORY–

History:

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died in the fire or jumped to their deaths.

Propaganda, March 1977:

“On March 8, 1908, after the death of 128 women trapped in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, 15,000 women workers from the garment and textile industry marched echoing the demands of their sisters 50 years earlier…”

Propaganda, March 2006:

“First of all, on March 8th, 1857, a large number of factory workers in the United States took to the streets to demand their economic and political rights. The owners called the police who arrived immediately and opened fire, engaging in blind repression… Later on, in 1908, the same date of March 8th was once again a memorable date of struggle. On this day, capitalist bosses in Chicago set fire to a textile factory where over a thousand women worked. A very large number was terribly burnt. 120 died!”

Propaganda disguised as news, March 2007:

From today’s top story in 24 HoursTM, a commuter daily in Vancouver published by Sun Media Corporation:

Fight still on for equality

By Robyn Stubbs and Carly Krug

“International Women’s Day commemorates a march by female garment workers protesting low wages, 12-hour workdays and bad working conditions in New York City on March 8, 1857.

Then in 1908, after 128 women were trapped and killed in a fire at a New York City garment and textile factory, 15,000 women workers again took their protests to the street.”

Related historical fiction:

A version of the
I Ching’s Hexagram 19:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051202-Hex19.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Log24 12/3/05:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051202-Axe.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Katherine Neville, The Eight

    “What does this have to do with why we’re here?”
    “I saw it in a chess book Mordecai showed me.  The most ancient chess service ever discovered was found at the palace of King Minos on Crete– the place where the famous Labyrinth was built, named after this sacred axe.  The chess service dates to 2000 B.C.  It was made of gold and silver and jewels…. And in the center was carved a labrys.”
… “But I thought chess wasn’t even invented until six or seven hundred A.D.,” I added.  “They always say it came from Persia or India.  How could this Minoan chess service be so old?”
    “Mordecai’s written a lot himself on the history of chess,” said Lily…. “He thinks that chess set in Crete was designed by the same guy who built the Labyrinth– the sculptor Daedalus….”
    Now things were beginning to click into place….
    “Why was this axe carved on the chessboard?” I asked Lily, knowing the answer in my heart before she spoke.  “What did Mordecai say was the connection?”….
    “That’s what it’s all about,” she said quietly.  “To kill the King.”
 
     The sacred axe was used to kill the King.  The ritual had been the same since the beginning of time. The game of chess was merely a reenactment.  Why hadn’t I recognized it before?

Perhaps at the center of
Aldecoa’s labyrinth lurk the
  capitalist bosses from Chicago
who, some say, set fire
to a textile factory
on this date in 1908.

For a Freudian perspective
on the above passage,
see yesterday’s entry
In the Labyrinth of Time,
with its link to
John Irwin‘s essay

The False Artaxerxes:
Borges and the
Dream of Chess
.”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070307-Symbols.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Symbols
S. H. Cullinane
March 7, 2007

Today, by the way, is the
feast of a chess saint.

Thursday March 8, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 am

x

Thursday March 8, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:59 am

x

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Wednesday March 7, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm
Comfort and Joy
 Notes on a Hollywood ending
in memory of
Stanley Kubrick,
chessplayer and film director,
who died on this date in 1999

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070307-Joubert.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

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.)

Wednesday March 7, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:35 am
Footprints for
Baudrillard

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070307-Baudrillard.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"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,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973,
conclusion of Chapter Three,
"The Man in the Night"

 

"Oh, Euclid, I suppose."

— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time,
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962,
conclusion of Chapter Five,
"The Tesseract"

In memory of the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, who died yesterday, Tuesday, March 6, 2007. 

The following Xanga footprints may be regarded as illustrating Log24 remarks of Dec. 10, 2006 on the Library of Congress, geometry, and bullshit, as well as remarks of Aug. 28, 2006 on the temporal, the eternal, and St. Augustine.

From the District of Columbia–
Xanga footprints in reverse
chronological order from
the noon hour on Tuesday,
March 6, 2007, the date
of Baudrillard's death:

District of Columbia
/499111929/item.html
Beijing String
3/6/2007
12:04 PM
District of Columbia
/497993036/item.html
Spellbound
3/6/2007
12:03 PM
District of Columbia
/443606342/item.html
About God, Life, Death
3/6/2007
12:03 PM
District of Columbia
/494421586/item.html
A Library of Congress Reading
3/6/2007
12:03 PM
District of Columbia
/500434851/item.html
Binary Geometry
3/6/2007
12:03 PM
District of Columbia
/404038913/item.html
Prequel on St. Cecelia's Day
3/6/2007
12:03 PM

Wednesday March 7, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:24 am
In the Labyrinth
of Time:


8:24:48
AM EST


Related material–


Symbols:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070307-Symbols.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

and

The False Artaxerxes:
Borges and the
Dream of Chess

This entry was inspired by
Xanga footprints yesterday
from Virginia:

 
1. Virginia
Weblog
ART WARS:
Time and the Grid
3/6/2007
9:48 AM
2. Virginia
Weblog
Sequel
3/6/2007
11:38 AM
3. Virginia
Weblog
Games and Truth
3/6/2007
1:25 PM
4. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
The Transcendent Signified
3/6/2007
5:15 PM
5. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
Zen and Language Games
3/6/2007
5:16 PM
6. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
Balanchine’s Birthday
3/6/2007
6:12 PM
7. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
The Agony and the Ya-Ya
3/6/2007
6:12 PM
8. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
Directions Out
3/6/2007
6:13 PM
9. Virginia
/item.aspx?user=m759&ta…
The Four Last Things
3/6/2007
6:13 PM

Wednesday March 7, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:23 am

23 Skidoo

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

North Carolina
Weblog
The Prime Cut Gospel
(Mental Health Month, Day 23)
3/6/2007
5:01 PM

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.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Sunday March 4, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am
Megillah

(A Sunday Sermon
Consisting of Xanga Footprints–

Delivered at 11 AM EST on
March Fourth (Purim), 2007)

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Saturday March 3, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 am
The Shadow
of the Owl

                             ” … an alphabet
By which to spell out holy doom and end,
A bee for the remembering of happiness.”

— Wallace Stevens,
“The Owl in the Sarcophagus”

(See Log24, Tuesday, Feb. 27.
For an alphabet and a bee,
see yesterday’s entries.)

In memory of
Myer Feldman,
presidential adviser
and theatrical producer,
who died two days ago,
on Thursday, March 1:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070303-Feldman.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

See also Seymour Hersh,
The Samson Option:
Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and
American Foreign Policy
.
  Random House, 1991,
page 100.

Friday, March 2, 2007

Friday March 2, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:00 pm
"I was reading Durant's section on Plato, struggling to understand his theory of the ideal Forms that lay in inviolable perfection out beyond the phantasmagoria. (That was the first, and I think the last, time that I encountered that word.)"

Part I: Phantasmagoria
 

Enlarge this image
Father and daughter in Bee Season
Photo by Phil Bray

Transcendence through spelling:
Richard Gere and Flora Cross
as father and daughter
in the film of Bee Season.

"Every aspect of the alef's
construction has been
Divinely designed
to teach us something."

Alef– The Difference Between
Exile And Redemption,
by Rabbi Aaron L. Raskin

Related material–

Art Theory for Yom Kippur
and
Log24 entries, Nov. 2005.


Part II: Hunt for the Real

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess:
The Conflict Between Word and Image
.

See also the references
to Zelazny's Eye of Cat
in the Nov. 2005 entries
as well as
today's previous entry
with the Norton Simon motto
"Hunt for the best"– and…

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070302-EyeOfCat.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Click for details.

"Photography has always involved waiting…. the photographer is understood to be waiting for the right convergence of subject, lighting and frame before clicking the shutter– waiting for what a master of the genre, Henri Cartier-Bresson, famously called 'the decisive moment.' Lee Friedlander, another great street photographer, compared this anticipatory state to the hunting alertness of a 'one-eyed cat.' The metaphor of the hunt has seeped into the essential language of photography."

Arthur Lubow in The New York Times, Feb. 25, 2007

Friday March 2, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 am
Today's birthdays:

Jennifer Jones,
film star and arts patron;

Tom Wolfe, author of
The Painted Word.

"Hunt for the best."
Norton Simon 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/angel_angel_down_we_go2A.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Cover detail,
soundtrack recording
of the Jennifer Jones film
"Angel, Angel, Down We Go"

The girl's left eye in the above
portrait illustrates a remark
  in yesterday's New York Times
on a figure in a painting:

"His head recedes into shadow, so you barely see his face. But a tiny fleck of white in his eye, a light that kindles his reawakening, brings him to life. It’s what Roland Barthes, the French critic, liked to call a punctum, the spot, marking time, that burns an image into memory."

 (This remark, by Michael Kimmelman,
comes with a headline–

Lights! Darks! Action! Cut!  
Maestro of Mise-en-Scène
  

— that seems to have been inspired
by Tom Wolfe's prose style.)

For further details, see
Barthes's Punctum,
by Michael Fried.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Thursday March 1, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am
A stich in time
 saves…


A 3x3 grid

Click on picture
for further details.

Thursday March 1, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 6:29 am

Senior Honors

Notes in Memory of
a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost

From the obituary in today's New York Times of historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.–

"Mr. Schlesinger, partly through his appreciation of history, fully realized his good fortune. 'I have lived through interesting times and had the luck of knowing some interesting people,' he wrote.

A huge part of his luck was his father, who guided much of his early research, and even suggested the topic for his [Harvard] senior honors: Orestes A. Brownson, a 19th-century journalist, novelist and theologian. It was published by Little, Brown in 1938 as 'Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim's Progress.'"

Douglas Martin

From The Catholic Encyclopedia:

"It is sufficient for true knowledge that it affirm as real that which is truly real."

Article on Ontologism

From The Diamond Theory of Truth:

"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, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973, conclusion of Chapter Three, "The Man in the Night"

"Oh, Euclid, I suppose."

— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1962, conclusion of Chapter Five, "The Tesseract"

Related material: Yesterday's first annual "Tell Your Story Day" at Harvard and yesterday's entry on Euclid.

Powered by WordPress