Log24

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Wednesday October 31, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:28 pm
On Time


Anthony Hopkins on time:

"For me time is God, God is time…. I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time. The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time." —Cinema Blend

"For me time is God, God is time. It's an equation, like an Einstein equation." —Washington Square News

A Marxist on time:

"God demands scrutiny beyond his menacingly comic aspects. Primarily, the [Saramago] Gospel 's God is time, and not truth, the other attribute he asserts. Saramago, a Marxist (an eccentric one), and not a Christian, subverts St. Augustine on the theodicy of time. If time is God, then God can be forgiven nothing, and who would desire to forgive him anyway?"

Harold Bloom on José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ  (1991). Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998.

Related material:

Augustine's Theodicy
and Joyce's Aesthetics,

Today's Sinner
(St. Augustine's Day, 2006),

Happy Halloween.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Monday October 29, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:20 am
Home from Home

On Anthony Hopkins’s new film:

“At one point during ‘Slipstream,’ Hopkins’s character stumbles upon a Dolly Parton impersonator while Parton’s wonderful song, ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ plays on the soundtrack.  I told Hopkins that I thought he used the tune– which is about a multi-hued coat that little Dolly’s grandmother made for her out of random pieces of cloth when the future superstar’s family was dirt poor– as a sort of commentary on the patchwork structure of ‘Slipstream’ itself.  Hopkins smiled broadly and his eyes lit up.  Yes, he said, that’s exactly what he was doing.  He said he even tried to get Parton to appear in the movie, but she was booked and couldn’t do it.”

—  Paul Tatara, Oct. 22, 2007

Anthony Hopkins:

“Our existence is beyond understanding.  Nobody has an answer.  I sense that life is such a mystery.  To me, God is time.”

Related material:

“Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn’t seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you’ve had hints of the Change War…

Spider and Snake on cover of Fritz Leiber's novel Big Time

It’s been going on for a billion years and it will last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides– ‘Spiders’ and ‘Snakes’– battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memories, are their battleground. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and r-&-r for tired time warriors.”

— Publisher’s description of Fritz Leiber’s Big Time.

Dialogue from “Slipstream”

“My God, this place must be
a million years old!”

Anthony Hopkins at Dolly's Little Diner in Slipstream

“Dolly’s Little Diner–
Home from Home”

Meanwhile…

Country Star
Porter Wagoner, 80, Dies

Wallace Stevens,
“Country Words”–

“What is it that my feeling seeks?
I know from all the things it touched
And left beside and left behind.
It wants the diamond pivot bright.”

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Sunday October 28, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:59 am
Slip-Slidin’ Away

“Do not let me hear          
 Of the wisdom of old men,
   but rather of their folly”
 
Four Quartets   

http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/071028-Slipstream.jpg

Anthony Hopkins
in the new film
Slipstream

    Anthony Hopkins   
   in the film “Proof“–

Goddamnit, open 
the goddamn book!
 Read me the lines!

Related material:

Mathematical Narrative
(Sept. 27, 2005)

Anthony Hopkins Writes
Screenplay About God,
Life, and Death

(Feb. 15, 2006)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thursday October 25, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:19 am

Something Anonymous

From this date–
Picasso's birthday–
five years ago:
 
"A work of art has an author
and yet,
when it is perfect,
it has something
which is
essentially anonymous about it."

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace   

 
Michelangelo's birthday, 2003

4x4 square grid

Yesterday:

The color-analogy figures of Descartes

Nineteenth-century quilt design:

Tents of Armageddon quilt design

Related material:

Battlefield Geometry
 

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Wednesday October 24, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:11 pm
Descartes’s Twelfth Step

An earlier entry today (“Hollywood Midrash continued“) on a father and son suggests we might look for an appropriate holy ghost. In that context…

Descartes

A search for further background on Emmanuel Levinas, a favorite philosopher of the late R. B. Kitaj (previous two entries), led (somewhat indirectly) to the following figures of Descartes:

The color-analogy figures of Descartes
This trinity of figures is taken from Descartes’ Rule Twelve in Rules for the Direction of the Mind. It seems to be meant to suggest an analogy between superposition of colors and superposition of shapes.Note that the first figure is made up of vertical lines, the second of vertical and horizontal lines, and the third of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. Leon R. Kass recently suggested that the Descartes figures might be replaced by a more modern concept– colors as wavelengths. (Commentary, April 2007). This in turn suggests an analogy to Fourier series decomposition of a waveform in harmonic analysis. See the Kass essay for a discussion of the Descartes figures in the context of (pdf) Science, Religion, and the Human Future (not to be confused with Life, the Universe, and Everything).

Compare and contrast:

The harmonic-analysis analogy suggests a review of an earlier entry’s
link today to 4/30–  Structure and Logic— as well as
re-examination of Symmetry and a Trinity


(Dec. 4, 2002).

See also —

A Four-Color Theorem,
The Diamond Theorem, and
The Most Violent Poem,

Emma Thompson in 'Wit'

from Mike Nichols’s birthday, 2003.

Wednesday October 24, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:01 am
This morning's online
New York Times

R. B. Kitaj, Painter of Moody Human Dramas, Dies at 74

Ileana Sonnabend, Art World Figure, Dies at 92

Ileana Sonnabend's eye, shrewdness and lasting alliance with her first husband, Leo Castelli, made her one of the most formidable contemporary art dealers of her time.

Wednesday October 24, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:26 am
Adieu:
A Story for Dobbs

Internet Movie Database on screenwriter Lem Dobbs:

"Trivia:
Son of painter R.B. (Ron) Kitaj.

Took his pseudonym from the character Humphrey Bogart played
in 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.'"

Bogart and Robert Blake in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Click for details.

NY Lottery Oct. 21, 2007: Mid-day 512, Evening 430

October 21 was the day
that R. B. Kitaj died.
For what Kitaj called
"midrashic glosses"
on the numbers and
the lucky sums, see
4/30, 5/12, and
Eight is a Gate.

Screenwriter Joan Didion:

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live….

We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition but one I found troubling."

David Cohen on R. B. Kitaj:

"He has come to be fascinated… by the kabbalah, finding in it parallels to the world of art and ideas. Every morning, after a long walk, he winds up at a Westwood café surrounded by pretty UCLA students where he studies the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, before working for an hour on his memoirs."

Levinas Adieu:

Levinas, and Derrida, on the Adieu

Click for source.

"There is no teacher
but the enemy.
"

— Orson Scott Card,  
Ender's Game

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Sunday October 21, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am
Halloween
Meditations

continued from
October 31, 2005


The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/Gameplayers12.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


From The Gameplayers of Zan:

“The Game in the Ship cannot be approached as a job, a vocation, a career, or a recreation. To the contrary, it is Life and Death itself at work there. In the Inner Game, we call the Game Dhum Welur, the Mind of God. And that Mind is a terrible mind, that one may not face directly and remain whole. Some of the forerunners guessed it long ago– first the Hebrews far back in time, others along the way, and they wisely left it alone, left the Arcana alone.”

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Thursday October 18, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:14 pm

“During the war, she read children’s stories on BBC radio. She made movies, too, among them ‘Penn of Pennsylvania‘….”

— Richard Severo, this afternoon’s online New York Times

Related material: Penn and Pennsylvania, and Something Wonderful.

Thursday October 18, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am
Fighting Chance

“Give faith a fighting chance.”
Song lyric

From the film “The Thin Red Line”–

Detail of poster for The Thin Red Line

WELSH (Sean Penn)
In this world a man himself is nothing. And there ain’t no world but this one.

WITT (James Caviezel)
You’re wrong there, Top. I seen another world. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination.

WELSH
(smiles)
Well, then you’ve seen things I never will.

From Log24, Sept. 13, 2007:

The De Niro numbers below
may be regarded as naming
the Feast of St. Michael
and All Angels and the
Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola.

Log24, Sept. 13, 2007 - De Niro and Penn

Yesterday’s numbers,
for the Dalai Lama:

PA Lottery, Oct. 17, 2007: Mid-day 408, Evening 731

Related material:
4/08 and 7/31.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Wednesday October 17, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am
China Protests Dalai Lama Honor

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Tuesday October 16, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am
In memory of
Harish-Chandra,
who died at 60
on this date in 1983

  The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/071016-Harish-Chandra.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Harish-Chandra in 1981
(Photo by Herman Landshof)

Recent Log24 entries have parodied the use of the phrase “deep beauty” as the title of the Oct. 3-4 physics symposium of that name, which was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University.
Such parody was in part suggested by the symposium’s sources of financial and academic support. This support had, in the view of some, the effect of linking the symposium’s topic, the mathematics of quantum theory, with both religion (the Templeton Foundation) and philosophy (a field sometimes associated in popular thought– though not at Princeton— with quantum mysticism.)

As a corrective to the previous parodies here, the following material on the mathematician Harish-Chandra may help to establish that there is, in fact, such a thing as “deep beauty”– if not in physics, religion, or philosophy, at least in pure mathematics.

MacTutor History of Mathematics:

“Harish-Chandra worked at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton from 1963. He was appointed IBM-von Neumann Professor in 1968.”

R. P. Langlands (pdf, undated, apparently from a 1983 memorial talk):

“Almost immediately upon his arrival in Princeton he began working at a ferocious pace, setting standards that the rest of us may emulate but never achieve. For us there is a welter of semi-simple groups: orthogonal groups, symplectic groups, unitary groups, exceptional groups; and in our frailty we are often forced to treat them separately. For him, or so it appeared because his methods were always completely general, there was a single group. This was one of the sources of beauty of the subject in his hands, and I once asked him how he achieved it. He replied, honestly I believe, that he could think no other way. It is certainly true that he was driven back upon the simplifying properties of special examples only in desperate need and always temporarily.”

“It is difficult to communicate the grandeur of Harish-Chandra’s achievements and I have not tried to do so. The theory he created still stands– if I may be excused a clumsy simile– like a Gothic cathedral, heavily buttressed below but, in spite of its great weight, light and soaring in its upper reaches, coming as close to heaven as mathematics can. Harish, who was of a spiritual, even religious, cast and who liked to express himself in metaphors, vivid and compelling, did see, I believe, mathematics as mediating between man and what one can only call God. Occasionally, on a stroll after a seminar, usually towards evening, he would express his feelings, his fine hands slightly upraised, his eyes intent on the distant sky; but he saw as his task not to bring men closer to God but God closer to men. For those who can understand his work and who accept that God has a mathematical side, he accomplished it.”

For deeper views of his work, see

  1. Rebecca A. Herb, “Harish-Chandra and His Work” (pdf), Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, July 1991, and
  2. R. P. Langlands, “Harish-Chandra, 1923-1983” (pdf, 28 pp., Royal Society memoir, 1985)

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Sunday October 14, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 am
The Dipolar God

Steven H. Cullinane, 'The Line'

"Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis,
Incipit and a form to speak the word
And every latent double in the word…."

— Wallace Stevens,
   "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"

Yesterday's meditation ("Simon's Shema") on the interpenetration of opposites continues:

Part I: The Jewel in the Lotus

"The fundamental conception of Tantric Buddhist metaphysics, namely, yuganaddha, signifies the coincidence of opposites.  It is symbolized by the conjugal embrace (maithuna or kama-kala) of a god and goddess or a Buddha and his consort (signifying karuna and sunyata or upaya and prajna, respectively), also commonly depicted in Tantric Buddhist iconography as the union of vajra (diamond sceptre) and padme (lotus flower).  Thus, yuganaddha essentially means the interpenetration of opposites or dipolar fusion, and is a fundamental restatement of Hua-yen theoretic structures."

— p. 148 in "Part II: A Whiteheadian Process Critique of Hua-yen Buddhism," in Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration (SUNY Series in Systematic Philosophy), by Steve Odin, State University of New York Press, 1982

Part II: The Dipolar God

And on p. 163 of Odin, op. cit., in "Part III: Theology of the Deep Unconscious: A Reconstruction of Process Theology," in the section titled "Whitehead's Dipolar God as the Collective Unconscious"–

"An effort is made to transpose Whitehead's theory of the dipolar God into the terms of the collective unconscious, so that now the dipolar God is to be comprehended not as a transcendent deity, but the deepest dimension and highest potentiality of one's own psyche."

Part III: Piled High and Deep

Odin obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook in 1980. (See curriculum vitae (pdf).)

For an academic review of Odin's book, see David Applebaum, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 34 (1984), pp. 107-108.

It is perhaps worth noting, in light of the final footnote of Mark D. Brimblecombe's Ph.D. thesis "Dipolarity and God" quoted yesterday, that "tantra" is said to mean "loom." For some less-academic background on the Tantric iconography Odin describes, see the webpage "Love and Passion in Tantric Buddhist Art." For a fiction combining love and passion with the word "loom" in a religious context, see Clive Barker's Weaveworld.  This fiction– which is, if not "supreme" in the Wallace Stevens sense, at least entertaining– may correspond to some aspects of the deep Jungian psychological reality discussed by Odin.

Happy Birthday,
Hannah Arendt

(Oct. 14, 1906-
Dec. 4, 1975)

OPPOSITES:

Hannah (Arendt) and Martin (Heidegger) as portrayed in a play of that name

Actors portraying
Arendt and Heidegger

Click on image for details.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Saturday October 13, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:22 am

Simon’s Shema

“When times are mysterious
Serious numbers will always be heard
And after all is said and done
And the numbers all come home
The four rolls into three
The three turns into two
And the two becomes a
One”

Paul Simon, 1983


Related material:

Simon’s theology here, though radically reductive, is at least consistent with traditional Jewish thought. It may help counteract the thoughtless drift to the left of academic writing in recent decades. Another weapon against leftist nonsense appears, surprisingly, on the op-ed page of today’s New York Times:

“There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about ‘concrete steps,’ ‘contradictions,’ ‘the interpenetration of opposites,’ and the rest.”

— Doris Lessing, winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature

The Times offers Lessing’s essay to counter Harold Bloom’s remark that this year’s award of a Nobel Prize to Lessing is “pure political correctness.” The following may serve as a further antidote to Bloom.

The Communist use of “interpenetration,” a term long used to describe the Holy Trinity, suggests– along with Simon’s hymn to the Unity, and the rhetorical advice of Norman Mailer quoted here yesterday—  a search for the full phrase “interpenetration of opposites” in the context* of theology.  Such a search yields a rhetorical gem from New Zealand:

“Dipolarity and God”
by Mark D. Brimblecombe,
Ph.D. thesis,
University of Auckland, 1999
.

* See the final footnote on the final page (249) of Brimblecombe’s thesis:

3 The Latin word contexo means to interweave, join, or braid together.

A check of the Online Eymology Dictionary supports this assertion:

context 1432, from L. contextus “a joining together,” orig. pp. of contexere “to weave together,” from com “together” + textere “to weave” (see texture).

See also Wittgenstein on “theology as grammar” and “context-sensitive” grammars as (unlike Simon’s reductive process) “noncontracting”– Log24, April 16, 2007: Happy Birthday, Benedict XVI.

Friday, October 12, 2007

Friday October 12, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:10 am
From
A Harvard Education
in a Sentence:

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

Norman Mailer,
Harvard ’43

Illustration from
today’s Crimson:

Nobel Laureate Morrison
Reads at Opening Event

Friday, October 12, 2007 3:17 AM

From the reserved elegance of Memorial Church to the sweeping grandeur of Sanders Theatre, the Harvard community honored 28th University President Drew G. Faust with two festive events on the eve of her inauguration.

Friday October 12, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
H is for Hogwarts

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/071012-Coop.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Shop thecoop.com for your
favorite Hogwarts merchandise.

Ceremonies marking the installation of Drew Gilpin Faust as the President of Hogwarts will begin in Hogwarts Yard at 2 PM ET today.

Faust has actually been Hogwarts’s president since July 1. Last month she welcomed the Class of 2011:

Faust “encouraged the incoming class to explore [the school’s] many opportunities. ‘Think of it as a treasure room of hidden objects Harry discovers at Hogwarts,’ Faust said.”

The Hogwarts Crimson, Sept. 10, 2007 

From Faust’s website today:

“As a historian, I am proud to lead an institution with such a rich and storied past. Hogwarts began in colonial days with a handful of students, little property and limited power and prestige, but a determined mission: ‘To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity,’ as a 1643 brochure put it.  That bold vision has guided Hogwarts for the past four centuries….”

The rest of the story —

From The Hogwarts Guide:

“An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College’s existence: ‘To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches.'”

Related material:

The Crimson Passion,
Midnight Drums for Larry,
and Primitive Roots.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Thursday October 11, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:26 pm
Words and Music
suggested by the recent
Princeton symposium
"Deep Beauty"

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/071011-vonNeumann.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

1. From my childhood:

"You remind me of a man."
"What man?"
"The man with the power."
"What power?"
"The power of hoodoo."
"Hoodoo?"
"You do."
"Do what?
"Remind me of a man…."

— Dialogue from
"The Bachelor and the
Bobby-Soxer" (1947)

2.  From later years:

"When I was a little boy,
(when I was just a boy)
and the Devil would
call my name
(when I was just a boy)
I'd say 'now who do,
who do you think
you're fooling?'"

Paul Simon, 1973 

"At times, bullshit can
only be countered
with superior bullshit."
— Norman Mailer

(See A Harvard Education
in a Sentence.)

From Plato's Cave:

A description of caveman life
translated from German

John von
 Neumann

"Soon Freud, soon mourning,
Soon Fried, soon fight.
Nevertheless who know this language?"

(Language courtesy of
Google's translation software)

Picture of von Neumann courtesy of
Princeton University Library

More from Rhymin' Simon–

"one funny mofo"–

"Oh, my mama loves,
she loves me,
she get down on her knees
and hug me
like she loves me
like a rock.
She rocks me
like the rock of ages"

Related material:

The previous Log24 entries
of Oct. 7-11, 2007, and
the five Log24 entries
ending with "Toy Soldiers"
(Valentine's Day, 2003).

See also

"Taking Christ to the Movies,"
by Anna Megill, Princeton '06
.

Thursday October 11, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 pm

Comments today on Peter Woit’s weblog entry “Deep Beauty“–

  1. chris says:

    once we reach the point at which the templeton foundation – or any other private sponsor for that matter – is the main source of funding in a certain area of science it would be time for society to react. react by outdoing the private source and thus claiming the research topic in question firmly back into the public domain.

    if society chooses to be oblivious – well – then so be it. research in that area will then not be driven by public interest but by private interest. ultimately it is just a reflection of the value commonly assigned to a specific field.

    what i hope this will ultimately achieve is to ring the alarm bell in society that no private organization should take over research funding and direction.

    if this will not happen – well – then we are kind of lost anyways. and funding no matter what agenda behind is still better than no funding, since i firmly believe that ultimately the truth (i.e. true statements about reproducible empirical relations) will ultimately prevail and nothing else.

  2. Steven H. Cullinane says:

    Chris says the truth consists of “true statements about reproducible empirical relations.” He should read William Golding’s Nobel lecture: “When I consider a universe which the scientist constructs by a set of rules which stipulate that this construct must be repeatable and identical, then I am a pessimist and bow down before the great god Entropy. I am optimistic when I consider the spiritual dimension which the scientist’s discipline forces him to ignore.”

Thursday October 11, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm
The Nobel Prize
in Literature

this year goes to the author
of The Golden Notebook
and The Cleft.

Related material:
The Golden Obituary
and Cleavage —
Log24, Oct. 9, 2007

Art History, 1955: Scenes from Bad Day at Black Rock

Background from 1947:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/071011-Cleavage.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Further details:

WheelThe image “http://www.log24.com/log/images/asterisk8.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Quoted by physics writer
Heinz Pagels at the end of
The Cosmic Code
:

“For the essence and the end
Of his labor is beauty… one beauty,
the rhythm of that Wheel….”

— Robinson Jeffers

From Holy Saturday, 2004:

The Ferris wheel came into view again, just the top, silently burning high on the hill, almost directly in front of him, then the trees rose up over it.  The road, which was terrible and full of potholes, went steeply downhill here; he was approaching the little bridge over the barranca, the deep ravine.  Halfway across the bridge he stopped; he lit a new cigarette from the one he’d been smoking, and leaned over the parapet, looking down.  It was too dark to see the bottom, but: here was finality indeed, and cleavage!  Quauhnahuac was like the times in this respect, wherever you turned the abyss was waiting for you round the corner. Dormitory for vultures and city of Moloch! When Christ was being crucified, so ran the sea-borne, hieratic legend, the earth had opened all through this country…”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano, 1947. (Harper & Row reissue, 1984, p. 15)

Comment by Stephen Spender:

“There is a suggestion of Christ descending into the abyss for the harrowing of Hell.  But it is the Consul whom we think of here, rather than of Christ.  The Consul is hurled into this abyss at the end of the novel.”

— Introduction to Under the Volcano


 Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXI

Gibbon, discussing the theology of the Trinity, defines perichoresis as

“… the internal connection and spiritual penetration which indissolubly unites the divine persons59 ….

59 … The perichoresis  or ‘circumincessio,’ is perhaps the deepest and darkest corner of the whole theological abyss.”


 “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, section 146, translated by Walter Kaufmann


William Golding:

 “Simon’s head was tilted slightly up.  His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him. 

‘What are you doing out here all alone?  Aren’t you afraid of me?’

Simon shook.

‘There isn’t anyone to help you.  Only me.  And I’m the Beast.’

Simon’s mouth labored, brought forth audible words.

‘Pig’s head on a stick.’

‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head.  For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter.  ‘You knew, didn’t you?  I’m part of you?  Close, close, close!’ “


“Thought of the day:
You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar… if you’re into catchin’ flies.”

Alice Woodrome, Good Friday, 2004

Anne Francis,
also known as
Honey West:

“Here was finality indeed,
and cleavage!”

Under the Volcano

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/images/asterisk8.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors. For further details of
the wheel metaphor, see

Rock of Ages

(St. Cecilia’s Day, 2006).

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Tuesday October 9, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:09 am
William T. Golden, Financier and
Key Science Adviser, Is Dead at 97

“William T. Golden, an investment banker, a philanthropist and a main architect of American science policy in the 20th century who had the idea for a presidential science adviser, died on Sunday [Oct. 7, 2007] in Manhattan. He was 97….

His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was announced by the American Museum of Natural History, where he was chairman for five years and most recently chairman emeritus. Mr. Golden had helped found the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

For more than 50 years, Mr. Golden was at the nexus of science and society as a man who knew almost everybody in science and government.

His willingness to ‘buy the first tank of gas,’ as he put it, for worthy projects led him to serve as a trustee or officer or board member of nearly 100 organizations, universities and government agencies….

In 1989, when he bought from Harvard the Black Rock Forest in the Hudson Highlands, which was threatened by development, Mr. Golden explored its nearly 4,000 acres by horseback. He later turned over the forest to a consortium to preserve it.”

Dennis Overbye, The New York Times, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007

Art History, 1955: Scenes from Bad Day at Black Rock
 
Click for details.

See also the following art,
suggested by the Golden obituary’s
Mount Sinai, Black Rock, and
forest themes, as well as by
the “Deep Beauty” entry from
the date of Golden’s death:

Death scene with Black Rock, from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Click for details.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Sunday October 7, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:07 pm
Deep Beauty

was the title of a symposium on quantum theory at Princeton last week dedicated to the late John von Neumann. The title was left undefined. In honor of von Neumann, here is some material that may help those searching for the title’s meaning:

 The 45 citations
at Arxiv Structure

of a paper titled
“Quantum Theory From
Five Reasonable Axioms.”

The school of thought represented in these citations has recently become surprisingly popular– it appears in a TV commercial featuring the phrase “a more intelligent model.”

Those who wisely object that popularity should not be a test of beauty may consult a little-known (at least in the West) Sino-Japanese definition of “deep beauty.” This definition– although from philosophy, not physics– may appeal to those who, like Peter Woit, are troubled by a Christian foundation’s sponsorship of last week’s scientific symposium.

“Deep beauty”
is yuugen.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Friday October 5, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am
The Sign of
the Hat
 
Rachel Cobb photo of a man lifting his hat as he returns a crucifix to a Huichol village chapel

A man returns a crucifix
to a Huichol village chapel.

Photo by Rachel Cobb
for National Geographic

Panofsky on the iconology of hat-lifting (page 144, Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, 1995)

Google Book Search

 (Schweidewege should be  
    Scheidewege, “crossroads.”)

Related material:
 
Advanced Study,
Varnedoe’s Crown,
and Log24 entries of
September 29-30, 2007.
 
Those for whom entertainment,
as Frank Rich has noted,
is God, may also consult
Raiders of the Lost Stone.
 

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Wednesday October 3, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 3:09 pm
Janitor Monitor

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/070803-Trees.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Will Hunting may be
interested in the following
vacant editorships at
The Open Directory:

Graph Theory
and
Combinatorics.

Related material:

The Long Hello and
On the Holy Trinity

"Hey, Carrie-Anne, what's
your game now….?
"

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/071003-Magdalene.GIF” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Picture sources:
azstarnet.com,
vibrationdata.com.

Personally, I prefer
Carol Ann:

From Criticism,  Fall, 2001,
by Carol Ann Johnston

"Drawing upon Platonic thought, Augustine argues that ideas are actually God's objective pattern and as such exist in God's mind. These ideas appear in the mirror of the soul. (35)."

(35.) In Augustine, De Trinitate, trans., Stephen McKenna (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1970). See A. B. Acton, "Idealism," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed., Paul Edwards. Vol. 4 (New York: Macmillan, 1967): 110-118; Robert McRae, "`Idea' as a Philosophical Term in the Seventeenth Century," JHI 26 (1965): 175-190, and Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art History, trans., Joseph J. S. Peake (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1968) for explications of this term.

 

See also
Art Wars: Geometry as Conceptual Art
and Ideas and Art: Notes on Iconology.

 

For more on Augustine and geometry,
see Today's Sinner (Aug. 28, 2006).

 

 

Monday, October 1, 2007

Monday October 1, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:20 am
Bright as Magnesium

"Definitive"

— The New York Times,  
Sept. 30, 2007, on
Blade Runner:
The Final Cut

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.

"The art historian Kirk Varnedoe died on August 14, 2003, after a long and valiant battle with cancer. He was 57. He was a faculty member in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Historical Studies, where he was the fourth art historian to hold this prestigious position, first held by the German Renaissance scholar Erwin Panofsky in the 1930s."

Hal Crowther

"His final lecture was an eloquent, prophetic flight of free association….

Varnedoe chose to introduce his final lecture with the less-quoted last words of the android Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner: 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe– attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, bright as magnesium; I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.'"


Related material: 
tears in the rain–

Game Over
(Nov. 5, 2003):
 

The film "The Matrix," illustrated

Coordinates for generating the Miracle Octad Generator

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