Log24

Monday, April 30, 2007

Monday April 30, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 6:24 pm
Structure and Logic

The phrase “structural logic” in yesterday’s entry was applied to Bach’s cello suites.  It may equally well be applied to geometry.  In particular:

“The aim of this thesis is to classify certain structures which are, from a certain point of view, as homogeneous as possible, that is which have as many symmetries as possible.”

Alice Devillers, “Classification of Some Homogeneous and Ultrahomogeneous Structures,” Ph.D. thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles, academic year 2001-2002

Related material:

New models of some small finite spaces

In Devillers’s words, the above spaces with 8 and 16 points are among those structures that have “as many symmetries as possible.” For more details on what this means, see Devillers’s thesis and Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube.

 

The above models for the corresponding projective spaces may be regarded as illustrating the phrase “structural logic.”

For a possible application of the 16-point space’s “many symmetries” to logic proper, see The Geometry of Logic.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Sunday April 29, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 am
Rite

Rostropovich at Christ the Savior Cathedral

“The coffin of the cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich seen inside Christ the Savior Cathedral during a farewell ceremony in Moscow, Sunday, April 29, 2007. Hundreds of Russians on Sunday came to bid final farewell to the great cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich who won world fame for his masterly play and his courage in defending human rights. Rostropovich, who fought for the rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall, died Friday at age 80. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel)” —AP News

“His graceful accounts of the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied Cello illuminated the works’ structural logic as well as their inner spirituality.” —Allan Kozinn in Friday’s New York Times

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Saturday April 28, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:07 pm
Cubism

PA Lottery April 28, 2007: Midday 510, Evening 223

See last year’s   
entries for 5/10

My Space

4x4x4 cube

and for 2/23

Cubist Epiphany

4x4x4 cube

“This is a crazy world and
the only way to enjoy it
is to treat it as a joke.”

— Robert A. Heinlein,
The Number of the Beast

Friday, April 27, 2007

Friday April 27, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:48 pm
Production Credits:

Thanks to the
Pennsylvania Lottery for
  today's suggestion of links 
to the dates 9/15 and 6/06–

PA lottery April 27, 2007: Midday 915, Evening 606

— and to
Hermann Weyl
for the illustration
from 6/06 (D-Day)
underlying the
following "gold medal"
from 9/15, 2006:

Medal of 9/15/06
.

Friday April 27, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm
It’s still the
same old story…

From today’s online
New York Times:

Jack Valenti, Confidant of
President and Stars, Dies

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070427-Valenti2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


Photo by Carol T. Powers
for The New York Times

Also in today’s online Times:

“Mstislav Rostropovich, a cellist and conductor who was renowned not only as one of the great instrumentalists of the 20th century, but also as an outspoken champion of artistic freedom in Russia during the final decades of the Cold War, died in Moscow today. He was 80 and lived in Paris, with homes in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London and Lausanne, Switzerland….

Mr. Rostropovich… was widely known by his diminutive, Slava (which means glory in Russian)….”

Related material:

I.Established on 8 November 1943, the Order of Glory (Orden Slavy – Орден Славы) was an Order (decoration) of the Soviet Union…. The Order of Glory… was modelled closely upon the Tsarist Cross of St. George….” —Wikipedia

II. Also on the 8th of November, in 2006 and 2002: Grave Matters and Religious Symbolism at Princeton.

III. “Mr. Rostropovich will be buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery, where on Wednesday his friend, Boris Yeltsin, post-Soviet Russia’s first president, was laid to rest.” —New York Times

IV. “A graveyard smash.” –Bobby (Boris) Pickett, who died Wednesday.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070427-Valentine.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“There is never any
ending to Paris….”
— Ernest Hemingway,  
A Moveable Feast 

 

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Wednesday April 25, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:30 pm
Religion at Harvard
continued from
Devil’s Night, 2006

Harvard Crimson, April 24-25, 2007

Click image to enlarge.

Related material:

I
Yesterday morning’s entry
(on David Halberstam)
with its link to Log24
entries of 2005 on

II
The Way of the Pilgrim
(Nov. 28-29, 2005),
and

III
Orville Schell, dean of Berkeley’s
Graduate School of Journalism,
on a dinner following a lecture
by Halberstam at Berkeley
on Saturday night, April 21:

“No one wanted to leave.
It was kind of like
the Last Supper.”

See also
The Crimson Passion.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Tuesday April 24, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am
Quote

Pilgrim's Progress and David Halberstam

“You’re a persistent cuss, Pilgrim.”
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 

Related material:

Log24, Nov. 28-29, 2005

Monday, April 23, 2007

Monday April 23, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:15 pm
David Halberstam dies in car crash

Halberstam wrote
 
The Best and the Brightest.

Monday April 23, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:45 am
Understanding Media
continued from Nov. 28, 2003

Ben Brantley in this morning's New York Times:

"Television mows down a titan in 'Frost/Nixon,' the briskly entertaining new play by Peter Morgan* about the 1977 face-off between its title characters, the British talk show host (as in David) and the former American president (as in Richard M.)….

Structured as a prize fight between two starkly ambitious men in professional crisis, 'Frost/Nixon' makes it clear that the competitor who controls the camera reaps the spoils."

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070423-Langella.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

Another application of this
"control the camera" philosophy:
the multimedia manifesto of
the Virginia Tech author of
"Richard McBeef"

(a play excerpted above).
 
The New York Times on the author
  (of "Frost/Nixon," not of "Richard McBeef")–
 
"[The author] had a particularly difficult time connecting with his peers… due in large part to the language barrier, which made communication with classmates nearly impossible. Though standing apart from the pack can at times be a deeply troubling experience for a youngster, it provided the imaginative [author] with a unique perspective not afforded to the vast majority of his peers."
 

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Sunday April 22, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 8:31 pm
Built
continued from
March 25, 2006

In honor of Scarlett Johansson's recent London films "Match Point" and "Scoop," here is a link to an entry of Women's History Month, 2006, with a discussion of an exhibition of the works of artist Liza Lou at London's White Cube Gallery.  That entry includes the following illustrations:


The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060325-WhiteCube.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

This work might aptly be
  retitled "Brick Shithouse."

Related material:

The artist's self-portrait

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060325-LizaLouSelfPortrait.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

See also this morning's entry

"She's a brick… house…
The lady's stacked
   and that's a fact,
Ain't holdin' nothin' back."

— and last year's entry
on this date:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060422-Johansson1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"Her wall is filled with pictures,
She gets 'em one by one."

The bricks and "white cube"
above and in this morning's entry
may be contrasted with the
bricks of Diamonds and Whirls
and the cube of On Beauty.

  Poetic allusions such as these
may help provide
entertainment in the afterlife
for Beavis, Butt-Head, and
other inmates of Plato's Cave:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070328-PlatoCave.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"The Garden of Eden is behind us
and there is no road back to innocence;
we can only go forward."

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh,
Earth Shine, p. xii

 

Sunday April 22, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:09 am

Shine On, Hermann Weyl

“Be on the lookout for
Annie Dillard’s sequel to
Teaching a Stone to Talktitled
Teaching a Brick to Sing.”

William Butler Yeats —

“Poets and Wits about him drew;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost.
   ‘What then?’

‘The work is done,’
   grown old he thought,
‘According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage,
   I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought’;
But louder sang that ghost,
   ‘What then?’

Duet

Scarlett Johansson —

“Let’s give ’em somethin’
   to talk about,
A little mystery
   to figure out”

(Saturday Night Live,
 April 21, 2007)

Plato’s ghost —

“The clothes she wears,
   the sexy ways,
Make an old man wish
   for younger days
She knows she’s built
   and knows how to please
Sho ’nuff can knock
   a strong man to his knees

She’s a brick… house…
Mighty mighty,
   just lettin’ it all hang out
She’s a brick… house…
The lady’s stacked
   and that’s a fact,
Ain’t holdin’ nothin’ back.

Shake it down,
   shake it down now”

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Saturday April 21, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:23 pm
 
Shine On—
Epigraphs to
The Shining:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051231-Shining.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Stephen King

Daisy May Erlewine

 

Shine on… shine on…  
There is work to be done
     in the dark before dawn
There is work to be done
    so you've got to shine on

Daisy May Erlewine of
    Big Rapids, Michigan

Related material:

Shine On, Hermann Weyl
and
the five Log24 entries of
Saturday, April 14, 2007

 

Friday, April 20, 2007

Friday April 20, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 pm
Speech

In Grand Rapids today

"… Bush spoke and answered audience questions for nearly 90 minutes inside East Grand Rapids High School in suburban Grand Rapids….

After leaving the school, Bush's motorcade stopped at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in downtown Grand Rapids, where he stood silently for a few moments after placing a bouquet of white roses at Ford's burial site on the museum grounds. The 38th president, who grew up in Grand Rapids, died Dec. 26 at age 93."

Multispeech

Mich. Lottery Apr. 20, 2007: Day 019, Night 001

 

For the meaning of the lottery icons
above, see this morning's entry and
an entry that it links to —
Time's Labyrinth continued
of March 8, 2007.

For the meaning of multispeech,
see the entries of
All Hallows' Eve, 2005:

Tesseract on the cover of The Gameplayers of Zan
 
"There is such a thing
as a tesseract."
A Wrinkle in Time 
 

Friday April 20, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am
Icons

Part I

The Library of Congress
Today in History, April 20:

“American sculptor Daniel Chester French was born in Exeter, New Hampshire on April 20, 1850. His colossal seated figure of Abraham Lincoln presides over the Lincoln Memorial.

Reared in Cambridge and Concord, Massachusetts, he was embraced by members of the Transcendentalist community including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Author and fellow Concord resident Louisa May Alcott encouraged young French to pursue a career as an artist. Louisa’s sister, artist May Alcott, was his early teacher.

French studied in Boston and New York prior to receiving his first commission for the 1875 statue The Minute Man. Standing near the North Bridge in Concord, in the Minute Man National Historical Park, this work commemorates events at the North Bridge, the site of ‘the shot heard ’round the world.’ An American icon, images derivative of The Minute Man statue appeared on defense bonds, stamps, and posters during World War II.”

Part II:

Entertainment Weekly,

November 7, 2003

Keanu Reeves, Entertainment Weekly, Nov. 7, 2003

Part III:

Log24 on the anniversary of
Lincoln’s assassination —

Saturday, April 14, 2007  4:30 AM

The Sun Also Sets, or…

This Way to
the Egress

Continued from April 12:

“I have only come here 
seeking knowledge,
 Things they would not   
       teach me of in college….”
 
— Synchronicity
lyrics

Quoted in Log24,
Time’s Labyrinth continued:

“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?”

— Katherine Neville,
The Eight,

Ballantine reprint, 1990,


“Know the one about
the Demiurge and the
Abridgment of Hope?”

— Robert Stone,
A Flag for Sunrise,
Knopf, 1981,
the final page

Part IV:

Log24 entry of

November 7, 2003

Nixon's the One button

— and a
student play from
Virginia Tech:

Play by Virginia Tech student

Part V:


Symmetry
for Beavis and Butt-Head

and
The Rhetoric of Scientism:

It’s a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought,
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you’ll be taught.

— Oscar Hammerstein,
“Getting to Know You”

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Thursday April 19, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:06 am
Acting Out


From the Library of Congress:

On April 19, 1775, troops under the command of Brigadier General Hugh Percy played "Yankee Doodle" as they marched from Boston to reinforce British soldiers already fighting the Americans at Lexington and Concord. Whether sung or played on that occasion, the tune was martial and intended to deride the colonials:

Yankee Doodle came to town,
For to buy a firelock;
We will tar and feather him
And so we will John Hancock.

 

(CHORUS)
Yankee Doodle, keep it up,
Yankee Doodle Dandy,
Mind the Music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.

There are numerous conflicting accounts of the origin of "Yankee Doodle." Some credit its melody to an English air, others to Irish, Dutch, Hessian, Hungarian and Pyrenean tunes or a New England jig….

"Yankee Doodle" was well known in the New England colonies before Lexington and Concord but only after the skirmishes there did the American militia appropriate it. Tradition holds that the colonials began to sing it as they forced the British back to Boston on April 19, 1775, after the battles of Lexington and Concord. It is documented that the Americans sang the following verse at Bunker Hill:

Father and I went down to camp,
along with Captain Good'in,
And there we see the men and boys
as thick as hasty puddin'. 

 

From 30 Rock:

"Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.''

"It's not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters… I did it for them.''

From Log24:

James Cagney and Herald Square peace march ad

 

Eureka!

Max Bialystock discovers a new playwright

 

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Wednesday April 18, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm
Vigil

Candlelight vigil at Virginia Tech, April 17, 2007

Andrew Russell, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Candlelight vigil at Virginia Tech,
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

VA lottery April 17, 2007: Day 826, Night 102.

Virginia Lottery, Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Candlelight Vigil, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

“I love those Bavarians… so meticulous.”

— “In the Garden of Allah

Click on images to enlarge.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Monday April 16, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:01 pm

The Abridgment of Hope

Part I: Framework

From Log24,
Here’s Your Sign,
Aug. 8, 2002–

“Paz also mentions the Christian concept of eternity as a realm outside time, and discusses what happened to modern thought after it abandoned the concept of eternity.

Naturally, many writers have dealt with the subject of time, but it seems particularly part of the Zeitgeist now, with a new Spielberg film about precognition.  My own small experience, from last night until today, may or may not have been precognitive.  I suspect it’s the sort of thing that many people often experience, a sort of ‘So that’s what that was about’ feeling.  Traditionally, such experience has been expressed in terms of a theological framework.”

Part II: Context

From Ann Copeland,
Faith and Fiction-Making:
The Catholic Context
“–

“Each of us is living out a once-only story which, unlike those mentioned here, has yet to reveal its ending. We live that story largely in the dark. From time to time we may try to plumb its implications, to decipher its latent design, or at least get a glimmer of how parts go together. Occasionally, a backward glance may suddenly reveal implications, an evolving pattern we had not discerned, couldn’t have when we were ‘in’ it. Ah, now I see what I was about, what I was after.”

Part III: Context Sensitivity

From Log24’s
Language Game,
Jan. 14, 2004–

Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations:

373. Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar.)

From Wikipedia

Another definition of context-sensitive grammars defines them as formal grammars where all productions are of the form

a yields b where the length of a is less than or equal to the length of b

Such a grammar is also called a monotonic or noncontracting grammar because none of the rules decreases the size of the string that is being rewritten.

If the possibility of adding the empty string to a language is added to the strings recognized by the noncontracting grammars (which can never include the empty string) then the languages in these two definitions are identical.

 Part IV: Abridgment

“Know the one about the Demiurge and the Abridgment of Hope?”

— Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise, Knopf, 1981, the final page, 439

Also from Stone’s novel, quoted by Ann Copeland in the above essay:

You after all? Inside, outside, round and about. Disappearing stranger, trickster. Christ, she thought, so far. Far from where?

But why always so far?

Por qué?” she asked. There was a guy yelling.

Always so far away. You. Always so hard on the kid here, making me be me right down the line. You old destiny. You of Jacob, you of Isaac, of Esau.

Let it be you after all. Whose after all I am. For whom I was nailed.

So she said to Campos: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” (416)

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sunday April 15, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:18 am
The Sun
Also Rises
 
Ecclesiastes 1:5

Broken Symmetries by Paul Preuss

Hexagram 35
 
THE IMAGE
 
The sun rises over the earth:
The image of PROGRESS.
 
Classic of Change,
Hexagram 35
 
  10:18:35 AM ET
 
Related material:
 
Keillor Meets Thompson:
The Height of Folly
 
and
 
today’s New York Times
obituaries (previous entry)
 

Sunday April 15, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:23 am
From this morning’s
online New York Times:

Don Ho Dies

Mahalo and Selah.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Saturday April 14, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 pm
Entertainment Tonight

“What is the spirit of the bayonet?”

— United States Army
training question, 1964

A partial answer
in two parts:

Part I —

Another question —

“Know the one about
the Demiurge and the
Abridgment of Hope?”

— Robert Stone,
A Flag for Sunrise,
Knopf, 1981,
the final page, 439,
cited by page number
here this morning


Part II —

The image “http://www.log24.com/log07/saved/070414-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Today’s numbers, in
this morning’s context,
strongly suggest
a look at
A Flag for Sunrise,
by Robert Stone,
Knopf, 1981,

page 431,
and at
Hexagram 34,

The Power of the Great,
in the context of a
Log24 entry for
October 8, 2005
.

There is no teacher
but the enemy.

— Orson Scott Card,
Ender’s Game

Related entertainment:
the previous entry
and the Vietnam memoir
Black Virgin Mountain.

Saturday April 14, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:30 pm
Curtain Up,
Light the Lights!

Cafe Society Part I –
Jack Torrance at
the Overlook Hotel:

The Shining

Cafe Society Part II –
Don Imus at The FanHouse,
Friday the 13th:

Don Imus at The FanHouse, Friday the 13th

Cafe Society
Part III –
The Bank Dick at
the Black Pussy Cafe:

The Black Pussy Cafe

“Which way to the egress?”

Saturday April 14, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:12 pm
A Year of Magical…
Broadway Bombs

Related material:

The Log24 entry for
this date last year

(Good Friday and
the opening date of
HARD CANDY
),

and

"Apart from that, Mrs. Imus,
how did you like the play?
"
 

Saturday April 14, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:30 am
This Way to
the Egress

Continued from April 12:

“I have only come here 
seeking knowledge,
 Things they would not   
       teach me of in college….”
 
— Synchronicity
lyrics

Quoted in Log24,
Time’s Labyrinth continued:

“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?”

— Katherine Neville,
The Eight,

Ballantine reprint, 1990,


“Know the one about
the Demiurge and the
Abridgment of Hope?”

— Robert Stone,
A Flag for Sunrise,
Knopf, 1981,
the final page:

page 439

Sunset Boulevard

Related material:

John Bartlett  (1820–1905),
Familiar Quotations,
10th edition, 1919,

page 439

Saturday April 14, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:06 am

“I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart.”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano 

Related material:
The time of this entry,
4:06:26 AM ET, and
Symmetry and Change
in the Dreamtime

Friday, April 13, 2007

Friday April 13, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:23 pm
King Friday XIII
and friend:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070413-FridayXVIII.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

NPR : TV Host Fred Rogers

Mr. ROGERS: And so his birthday, King Friday’s birthday, is always every Friday the 13th. And I hear from people all over the world, you know, it’s a joyous

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1576077

For further details,
click here.

See also
The Presbyterian Exorcist.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Thursday April 12, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:09 am
From this morning’s
online New York Times:

Vonnegut 's Obit

This Way to the Egress.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Wednesday April 11, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
It’s Not Easy
Being Green

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070411-Imus.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Don Imus, 1974 album


Rutgers women’s basketball
coach C. Vivian Stringer:

“It’s about us as people– black, white, purple or green. And as much as I speak about that, it’s not even black and white– the color is green.”

Imus flap about
black, white, and green

David Lieberman, Laura Petrecca and Gary Strauss in USA Today:

“So amid all the uproar over Imus’ remarks and the national discussion over race relations that they ignited, why wasn’t he fired?

Stringer and others think that has less to do with relations between blacks and whites than it does with another color.

‘The color is green– if we can tolerate as a society what’s just taken place,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how anyone could have heard this and not been offended.’

As one of the country’s most popular radio talk show hosts, Imus is the centerpiece of a multimillion-dollar business that would collapse without him.

To get a sense of its size: Advertisers spent $11.3 million last year on his show at just one station, New York’s WFAN, according to Nielsen. That accounted for nearly 24% of all the station’s ad sales.

Sponsors paid MSNBC an additional $8.4 million last year for spots on Imus’ show, according to TNS Media Intelligence.”

Mike Lupica in the
New York Daily News,
April 11, 2007:

“Essence Carson talked about what Imus had said about her and her teammates, and about everything that has happened since.

‘It has stolen a moment of pure grace from us,’ she said.

The moment of pure grace was Essence Carson….”

From ESSENCE.com:

“Essence Communications Inc. (ECI) was founded in 1968. In October 2000, ECI signed an agreement with Time Inc., a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., to form a joint venture known as Essence Communications Partners. ESSENCE was the majority owner of the venture. In March 2005, Time Inc. acquired the portion it did not already own. The company’s name changed back to Essence Communications Inc. The ECI corporate headquarters are in New York City, with offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Detroit.

ESSENCE magazine

ESSENCE magazine

During the past 36 years, the company has grown into a vital business of diverse media properties and communications systems that include ESSENCE, its flagship magazine launched in 1970. Its success is linked to its unique relationship with the readers of ESSENCE magazine and the strong alliances it has forged with America’s leading corporations and financial institutions.”

Monday, April 9, 2007

Monday April 9, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm
Garden Party

“And the fruit is rotten;
 the serpent’s eyes shine
 as he wraps around the vine
in the Garden of Allah.
 
— Don Henley

But not, perhaps,
in the Garden of Apollo:

The Garden of Apollo: The 3x3 Grid

Click on the image
for further details.

Monday April 9, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:20 pm
Symmetry
for Beavis and Butt-Head

7:20 in the Book
(An illustration from
Mathematics and Narrative;
the “Book” is The Gospel
According to St. Matthew
.)

From Ian Stewart’s new book,
Why Beauty is Truth:
A History of Symmetry

Beauty, Truth, Symmetry

Is Beauty Truth and Truth Beauty?,”
a review by famed vulgarizer
Martin Gardner of the new book
by his fellow vulgarizer Ian Stewart
in the April 2007 Scientific American:

“Associated with every kind of symmetry is a ‘group.’ Stewart explains the group concept in a simple way by considering operations on an equilateral triangle. Rotate it 60 degrees in either direction, and it looks the same. Every operation has an ‘inverse,’ that cancels the operation. Imagine the corners of the triangle labeled A, B and C. A 60-degree clockwise rotation alters the corners’ positions. If this is followed by a similar rotation the other way, the original positions are restored. If you do nothing to the triangle, this is called the ‘identity’ operation. The set of all symmetry transformations of the triangle constitutes its group.”

“Is Beauty Truth?”
asked jesting Gardner…

The reasoned reply of
Beavis and Butt-Head:

“Sixty degrees, a hundred
and twenty degrees, who
gives a rat’s ass?”

Monday April 9, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm
Continued from last April:

ART WARS
in Poetry Month

Seven is Heaven...

Related Log24
entries from
last April:

7
8
9

Related Log24
entry from
this April

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Sunday April 8, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:09 pm
Easter Night's online
New York Times,
front page, top center:

Death of Sol LeWitt

Related material:

ART WARS

Sunday April 8, 2007

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

Today's sermon

Samuel Beckett on Dante and Joyce:

"Another point of comparison is the preoccupation with the significance of numbers. The death of Beatrice inspired nothing less than a highly complicated poem dealing with the importance of the number 3 in her life. Dante never ceased to be obsessed by this number. Thus the poem is divided into three Cantiche, each composed of 33 Canti…. Why, Mr. Joyce seems to say, should…. the Armistice be celebrated at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month? He cannot tell you because he is not God Almighty, but in a thousand years he will tell you… He is conscious that things with a common numerical characteristic tend towards a very significant interrelationship. This preoccupation is freely translated in his present work…."

— "Dante… Bruno. Vico.. Joyce," in James Joyce/Finnegans Wake: A Symposium (1929), New Directions paperback, 1972

See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.

Sunday April 8, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
Midnight in the Garden
continued from Sept. 30, 2004

Tonight this journal had two Xanga footprints from Italy….

At 11:34 PM ET a visitor from Italy viewed a page containing an entry from Jan. 8, 2005, Splendor of the Light, which offers the following quotation–

From an essay on Guy Davenport
 

"A disciple of Ezra Pound, he adapts to the short story the ideogrammatic method of The Cantos, where a grammar of images, emblems, and symbols replaces that of logical sequence. This grammar allows for the grafting of particulars into a congeries of implied relation without subordination. In contrast to postmodernists, Davenport does not omit causal connection and linear narrative continuity for the sake of an aleatory play of signification but in order to intimate by combinational logic kinships and correspondences among eras, ideas and forces."

— "When Novelists Become Cubists: The Prose Ideograms of Guy Davenport," by Andre Furlani

The visitor from Italy may, of course, have instead intended to view one of the four earlier entries on the page.  In particular, the visitor may have seen

The Star
of Venus

"He looked at the fading light
in the western sky and saw Mercury,
or perhaps it was Venus,
gleaming at him as the evening star.
Darkness and light,
the old man thought.
It is what every hero legend is about.
The darkness which is more than death,
the light which is love, like our friend
Venus here, or perhaps this star is
Mercury, the messenger of Olympus,
the bringer of hope."

Roderick MacLeish, Prince Ombra.

At 11:38 PM ET, a visitor from Italy (very likely the 11:34 visitor returning) viewed the five Log24 entries ending at 12:06 AM ET on Sept. 30, 2004. 

These entries included Midnight in the Garden and…

A Tune for Michaelmas

Mozart, K 265, midi

The entries on this second visited page also included some remarks on Dante, on time, and on Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano that are relevant to Log24 entries earlier this week on Maundy Thursday and on Holy Saturday.

Here's wishing a happy Easter to Italy, to Francis Ford Coppola and Russell Crowe (see yesterday's entry), and to Steven Spielberg (see the Easter page of April 20, 2003).

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070408-Prayer.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Image courtesy of
Hollywood Jesus:

When you wish
upon a star…

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Saturday April 7, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:25 pm
Today's birthdays:
Francis Ford Coppola
and Russell Crowe

Gift of the Third Kind
 

Background:
Art Wars and
Russell Crowe as
Santa's Helper
.

From Friedrich Froebel,
who invented kindergarten:

Froebel's Third Gift

From Christmas 2005:

The Eightfold Cube

Related material from
Pittsburgh:

Reinventing Froebel's Gifts

… and from Grand Rapids:

Color Cubes

Click on pictures for details.

Related material
for Holy Saturday:

Harrowing,
"Hey, Big Spender,"
and
Santa Versus the Volcano.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Friday April 6, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 pm

x

Friday April 6, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm
 Good Friday,
2:56:38 PM:

Fire Lake

Hexagram 38: Above, Fire; Below, Lake

Hexagram 38

Above, Fire;
Below, Lake

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Thursday April 5, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 pm

Poets.org

The Annual
Maundy Thursday
Dante’s Inferno Reading

“The reading occurs during the Maundy Thursday vigil, the very hours Dante intended the events in the epic poem to take place.”
 
Featured poets:

Rachel Hadas, Wyatt Prunty, Rachel Wetzsteon, Rika Lesser, David Yezzi, Annie Finch, Honor Moore, Lynn Emanuel, Paul Watsky, Kate Light, Phillis Levin, Michael Palma, Charles Martin

Thursday, April 5, 2007, 9 p.m. to midnight, The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue at 112th St., NYC, NY

Related material –

The Eight Revisited:

Dante Alighieri Academy
continues Dante’s Christian
philosophy of education….

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Wednesday April 4, 2007

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

Phrase:

Spy Wednesday

“The Wednesday before Good Friday, when Judas bargained to become the spy of the Jewish Sanhedrim. (Matt. xxvi. 3–5, 14–16.)”

— E. Cobham Brewer, 1810–1897, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898

Fable:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050323-Baugin.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Nature morte à l’échiquier (les cinq sens),
vers 1655, une narration
à valeur symbolique
Huile sur bois, 73 x 55 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris.Related material:
April 4, 2001,
The Black Queen

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Tuesday April 3, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 10:10 pm

Our Judeo-Christian
Heritage –
 
Lottery
Hermeneutics

Part I: Judeo

The Lottery 12/9/06 Mid-day Evening
New York 036

See

The Quest
for the 36

331

See 3/31

“square crystal” and “the symbolism could not have been more perfect.”

Pennsylvania 602

See 6/02

Walter Benjamin
on
“Adamic language.”

111

See 1/11

“Related material:
Jung’s Imago and Solomon’s Cube.”

 

Part II: Christian

The Lottery 4/3/07 Mid-day Evening
New York 115

See 1/15

Inscape

017

See

The image “Primitive roots modulo 17

Pennsylvania 604

See
6/04

Death Valley and the Fisher King

714

See
7/14

Happy Birthday, Esther Dyson

Part III:
Imago Dei

Jung's Four-Diamonds Figure


Click on picture
for details.

 

Related material:

It is perhaps relevant to
this Holy Week that the
date 6/04 (2006) above
refers to both the Christian
holy day of Pentecost and
to the day of the
facetious baccalaureate
of the Class of 2006 in
the University Chapel
at Princeton.

For further context for the
Log24 remarks of that same
date, see June 1-15, 2006.

Tuesday April 3, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:00 am

Mathematics Awareness Month

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

AMS Notices cover, April 2007

“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.

“When all is said and done,
science is about things and
theology is about words.”

— Freeman Dyson,
New York Review of Books,
issue dated May 28, 1998

Does the word ‘tesseract’
mean anything to you?

Monday, April 2, 2007

Monday April 2, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 am
ART WARS
in Poetry Month

The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060407-Heaven.gif� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related Log24
entries from
last April:

7
8
9

Related story:
Yesterday’s
April 1 PA
  numbers —
407, 214.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Sunday April 1, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Doubly Appropriate

From Log24’s Xanga footprints this morning:

France Weblog http://search.ke.voila…. 4/1/2007
8:33 AM

The “Weblog” link is to a Log24 page containing the last five entries dated Sept. 22, 2002, or earlier.

The first impression one has on clicking “Weblog” is that the visitor was interested in George Steiner, C. S. Lewis, and a game of chess with God– appropriate topics for today, Palm Sunday.

This, however, is just the top entry of the five on the page.  A check of the referring link shows the visitor to have been interested in neither chess nor God, but rather in sombreros– an appropriate topic for today, April Fools’ Day.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070401-Sombrero.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
Related material:
A Log24 page from Dec. 10, 2002,
whose entries also deal with
God and hats.

Sunday April 1, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
Stories
and Endings

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”
— Ernest Hemingway,
   Death in the Afternoon

Today is both Palm Sunday and April Fools’ Day.

There is never any ending to Paris….
— Ernest Hemingway,
   A Moveable Feast

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