Log24

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Saturday May 31, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm
A short story
for the conclusion of
Mental Health Month, 2008:

752, 753, 286.

(Numbers courtesy of the
Pennsylvania Lottery,
evening of May 30-
evening of May 31)

Commentary on the
meaning of this
short story:

Countdown

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Thursday May 29, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:14 am
The Diadem
of Death

Washington Post Death Notices:

Dead on
St. Sarah’s Day,
May 24 —

Sophie B. Altman

Star of David in Washington Post death notice of Sophie B. Altman

Sophie B. Altman at Christmas 2006 dinner at DeCarlo's

Mother-in-law of
Wonder Woman
Lynda Carter
and founder and
producer of TV’s
It’s Academic

In Memoriam:

LOS TRES REYES MAGOS
Rubén Darío

—Yo soy Gaspar. Aquí traigo el incienso.
Vengo a decir: La vida es pura y bella.
Existe Dios. El amor es inmenso.
¡Todo lo sé por la divina Estrella!

—Yo soy Melchor. Mi mirra aroma todo.
Existe Dios. El es la luz del día.
¡La blanca flor tiene sus pies en lodo
y en el placer hay la melancolía!

—Soy Baltasar. Traigo el oro. Aseguro
que existe Dios. El es el grande y fuerte.
Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte.

—Gaspar, Melchor y Baltasar, callaos.
Triunfa el amor, ya su fiesta os convida.
¡Cristo resurge, hace la luz del caos
y tiene la corona de la Vida!

THE THREE KINGS

I am Caspar. I bring with me the myrrh,
And have this to say: Life is pure and beautiful.
There is a God. His love is immense.
I can see all by the divine Star!

I am Melchior. My frankincense perfumes the air.
There is a God. He is the light of day.
The whitest flower has its stem in the mire
And in joy is also found sorrow!

I am Balthasar. I bring the gold. And I
Assure you: There is a God, great and mighty.
And I know this from the pure light
That radiates from the Diadem of Death.

Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar — say no more.
Love is triumphant, and beckons you to His feast:
Christ is born! The Chaos He has turned to light,
And he wears the crown of Life!

Midrash:

Wonder Woman and the Secret of the Magic Tiara

Wonder Woman and the Secret of the Magic Tiara-- The End

Thursday May 29, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:12 am

x

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Wednesday May 28, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Tequila
Mockingbird

(November 5, 2002):

CelebritySexNews.com
on Kylie Minogue:

“Turns out she’s a party girl
who loves Tequila:
‘Time disappears with Tequila.
It goes elastic, then vanishes.'”

From a web page on
Malcolm Lowry’s classic novel
Under the Volcano

The day begins with Yvonne’s arrival at the Bella Vista bar in Quauhnahuac. From outside she hears Geoffrey’s familiar voice shouting a drunken lecture this time on the topic of the rule of the Mexican railway that requires that  “A corpse will be transported by express!” (Lowry, Volcano, p. 43).

Kylie Minogue
Kylie

Film 'Under the Volcano'
Finney

 
Well if you want to ride
you gotta ride it like you find it.
Get your ticket at the station
of the Rock Island Line.
— Lonnie Donegan (d. Nov. 3) 
and others
 
Station of the Rock Island Line
 
The Rock Island Line’s namesake depot 
in Rock Island, Illinois


Related material:

Twenty-First Century Fox
(10/6/02)

Back to You, Kylie
(11/5/02)

Time, Eternity, and Grace
(11/22/02)

That Old Devil Moon
(1/1/03) and
The Shanghai Gesture
(1/3/03)

Whirligig
(1/5/03)

Harrowing
(4/19/03)

Temptation
(4/22/03)

Temptation
(4/9/04)

Tribute
,
Train of Thought,
Drunk Bird, and
From Here to Eternity
(8/17/04-8/18/04)

Heaven and Earth
(9/2/04)

Habeas Corpus

(11/24/04)

X, continued
(12/4/04)

Birth and Death
(5/28/05)

Time Travel
(5/28/06)

Timeagain and
Two-Bar Hook
(8/9/06)

Echoes
(8/11/06)

Phantasmagoria
and Tequila!
(9/23/06)

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Tuesday May 27, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm
From the
Cartoon Graveyard

Page from 'The Paradise of Childhood,' 1906 edition

The above is from
The Paradise of Childhood
,
a work first published in 1869.

For the late Thelma Keane,
wife of “Family Circus
cartoonist Bil Keane of
Paradise Valley, Arizona:

I need a photo-opportunity,

Thelma Keane, real-life 'Family Circus' mother
I want a shot at redemption.*
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon
*                         
St. Barnabas on the Desert, Paradise Valley, Arizona

Mrs. Keane died May 23
(St. Sarah’s Eve)
according to
The Washington Post.
Related material:
Log24 on May 23,
Saints in Australia.

Tuesday May 27, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 pm
For Sydney Pollack
(See last night’s entry.)

“Now, gentlemen,
I give you
our latest acquisition
from the enemy.”

Paths of Glory   

Final scene from 'Paths of Glory'

Note the number, 701,
on the colonel’s collar.

Adapted from Log24,
February 19-22, 2008:

“‘This is the last call for Jaunt-701,’
 the pleasant female voice echoed
 through the Blue Concourse
of 
New York’s
     Port Authority Terminal….

Images of time and eternity in memory of Michelangelo
See 2/22/08,
 4/19/08,
and 5/22/08.

….’What happened?’
one of the scientists shouted….

‘It’s eternity in there,’ he said,
and dropped dead….”


— Stephen King, “The Jaunt

Die Liebe nahm kein Ende mehr.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Monday May 26, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 pm
Sydney Pollack dies-- NY Times online front page

From Bloomberg.com:

Great Directors

“After his return to acting in ‘Tootsie,’ Pollack took movie roles under directors Robert Altman in ‘The Player’ (1992), Woody Allen in ‘Husbands and Wives’ (1992) and Stanley Kubrick in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999). He said he chose roles in part to study other great directors.”
 

Monday May 26, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:07 am
Crystal Vision

Stevie Nicks
 is 60 today.

Poster for the film 'The Craft'

On the author discussed
here yesterday,
Siri Hustvedt:

“… she explores
the nature of identity
in a structure* of
crystalline complexity.”

Janet Burroway,   
quoted in  
ART WARS  

Olivier as Dr. Christian Szell

The icosahedron (a source of duads and synthemes)

“Is it safe?”

Annals of Art Education:
 Geometry and Death

* Related material:
the life and work of
Felix Christian Klein
and
Report to the Joint
Mathematics Meetings

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Sunday May 25, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:30 pm
Today’s Sermon

continued from 9 AM

Pennsylvania Lottery today:
Mid-day 105,
Evening 304

Related material:
1/05, 2003,
3/04, 2004

Bill laid bare the arbitrary
roots of meaning itself….”
— Siri Hustvedt,
quoted here
this morning

“A poem should not mean
But be”

Archibald MacLeish,
  quoted here May 23

Sunday May 25, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 6:30 pm
Hall of Mirrors

Epigraph to
Deploying the Glass Bead Game, Part II,”
by Robert de Marrais:

“For a complete logical argument,”
Arthur began
with admirable solemnity,
“we need two prim Misses –”
“Of course!” she interrupted.
“I remember that word now.
And they produce — ?”
“A Delusion,” said Arthur.

— Lewis Carroll,
Sylvie and Bruno

Prim Miss 1:

Erin O’Connor’s weblog
“Critical Mass” on May 24:

Roger Rosenblatt’s Beet [Ecco hardcover, Jan. 29, 2008] is the latest addition to the noble sub-genre of campus fiction….

Curricular questions and the behavior of committees are at once dry as dust subjects and areas ripe for sarcastic send-up– not least because, as dull as they are, they are really both quite vital to the credibility and viability of higher education.

Here’s an excerpt from the first meeting, in which committee members propose their personal plans for a new, improved curriculum:

“… Once the students really got into playing with toy soldiers, they would understand history with hands-on excitement.”

To demonstrate his idea, he’d brought along a shoe box full of toy doughboys and grenadiers, and was about to reenact the Battle of Verdun on the committee table when Heilbrun stayed his hand. “We get it,” he said.

“That’s quite interesting, Molton,” said Booth [a chemist]. “But is it rigorous enough?”

At the mention of the word, everyone, save Peace, sat up straight.

“Rigor is so important,” said Kettlegorf.

“We must have rigor,” said Booth.

“You may be sure,” said the offended Kramer. “I never would propose anything lacking rigor.”

Smythe inhaled and looked at the ceiling. “I think I may have something of interest,” he said, as if he were at a poker game and was about to disclose a royal flush. “My proposal is called ‘Icons of Taste.’ It would consist of a galaxy of courses affixed to several departments consisting of lectures on examples of music, art, architecture, literature, and other cultural areas a student needed to indicate that he or she was sophisticated.”

“Why would a student want to do that?” asked Booth.

“Perhaps sophistication is not a problem for chemists,” said Smythe. Lipman tittered.

“What’s the subject matter?” asked Heilbrun. “Would it have rigor?”

“Of course it would have rigor. Yet it would also attract those additional students Bollovate is talking about.” Smythe inhaled again. “The material would be carefully selected,” he said. “One would need to pick out cultural icons the students were likely to bring up in conversation for the rest of their lives, so that when they spoke, others would recognize their taste as being exquisite yet eclectic and unpredictable.”

“You mean Rembrandt?” said Kramer.

Smythe smiled with weary contempt. “No, I do not mean Rembrandt. I don’t mean Beethoven or Shakespeare, either, unless something iconic has emerged about them to justify their more general appeal.”

“You mean, if they appeared on posters,” said Lipman.

“That’s it, precisely.”

Lipman blushed with pride.

“The subject matter would be fairly easy to amass,” Smythe said. “We could all make up a list off the top of our heads. Einstein–who does have a poster.” He nodded to the ecstatic Lipman. “Auden, for the same reason. Students would need to be able to quote ‘September 1939[ or at least the last lines. And it would be good to teach ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’ as well, which is off the beaten path, but not garishly. Mahler certainly. But Cole Porter too. And Sondheim, I think. Goya. Warhol, it goes without saying, Stephen Hawking, Kurosawa, Bergman, Bette Davis. They’d have to come up with some lines from Dark Victory, or better still, Jezebel. La Dolce Vita. Casablanca. King of Hearts. And Orson, naturally. Citizen Kane, I suppose, though personally I prefer F for Fake.”

“Judy!” cried Heilbrun.

“Yes, Judy too. But not ‘Over the Rainbow.’ It would be more impressive for them to do ‘The Trolley Song,’ don’t you think?” Kettlegorf hummed the intro.

Guernica,” said Kramer. “Robert Capa.” Eight-limbed asterisk

“Edward R. Murrow,” said Lipman.

“No! Don’t be ridiculous!” said Smythe, ending Lipman’s brief foray into the world of respectable thought.

“Marilyn Monroe!” said Kettlegorf.

“Absolutely!” said Smythe, clapping to indicate his approval.

“And the Brooklyn Bridge,” said Booth, catching on. “And the Chrysler Building.”

“Maybe,” said Smythe. “But I wonder if the Chrysler Building isn’t becoming something of a cliche.”

Peace had had enough. “And you want students to nail this stuff so they’ll do well at cocktail parties?”

Smythe sniffed criticism, always a tetchy moment for him. “You make it sound so superficial,” he said.

Prim Miss 2:

Siri Hustvedt speaks at Adelaide Writers’ Week– a story dated March 24, 2008

“I have come to think of my books as echo chambers or halls of mirrors in which themes, ideas, associations continually reflect and reverberate inside a text. There is always point and counterpoint, to use a musical illustration. There is always repetition with difference.”

A Delusion:

Exercise — Identify in the following article the sentence that one might (by unfairly taking it out of context) argue is a delusion.

(Hint: See Reflection Groups in Finite Geometry.)

A. V. Borovik, 'Maroids and Coxeter Groups'

Why Borovik’s Figure 4
is included above:

Euclid, Peirce, L’Engle:
No Royal Roads.

For more on Prim Miss 2
and deploying
the Glass Bead Game,
see the previous entry.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/images/asterisk8.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors. And now, perhaps, his brother Cornell Capa, who died Friday.

 Related material: Log24 on March 24– Death and the Apple Tree— with an excerpt from
George MacDonald, and an essay by David L. Neuhouser mentioning the influence of MacDonald on Lewis Carroll– Lewis Carroll: Author, Mathematician, and Christian (pdf).

Sunday May 25, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:28 pm

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Sunday May 25, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 9:00 am
 
Wechsler Cubes
"Confusion is nothing new."
— Song lyric, Cyndi Lauper
 
Part I:
Magister Ludi

Hermann Hesse's 1943 The Glass Bead Game (Picador paperback, Dec. 6, 2002, pp. 139-140)–

"For the present, the Master showed him a bulky memorandum, a proposal he had received from an organist– one of the innumerable proposals which the directorate of the Game regularly had to examine. Usually these were suggestions for the admission of new material to the Archives. One man, for example, had made a meticulous study of the history of the madrigal and discovered in the development of the style a curved that he had expressed both musically and mathematically, so that it could be included in the vocabulary of the Game. Another had examined the rhythmic structure of Julius Caesar's Latin and discovered the most striking congruences with the results of well-known studies of the intervals in Byzantine hymns. Or again some fanatic had once more unearthed some new cabala hidden in the musical notation of the fifteenth century. Then there were the tempestuous letters from abstruse experimenters who could arrive at the most astounding conclusions from, say, a comparison of the horoscopes of Goethe and Spinoza; such letters often included pretty and seemingly enlightening geometric drawings in several colors."

Part II:
A Bulky Memorandum

From Siri Hustvedt, author of Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting (Princeton Architectural Press, 2005)– What I Loved: A Novel (Picador paperback, March 1, 2004, page 168)–

A description of the work of Bill Wechsler, a fictional artist:

"Bill worked long hours on a series of autonomous pieces about numbers. Like O's Journey, the works took place inside glass cubes, but these were twice as large– about two feet square. He drew his inspiration from sources as varied as the Cabbala, physics, baseball box scores, and stock market reports. He painted, cut, sculpted, distorted, and broke the numerical signs in each work until they became unrecognizable. He included figures, objects, books, windows, and always the written word for the number. It was rambunctious art, thick with allusion– to voids, blanks, holes, to monotheism and the individual, the the dialectic and yin-yang, to the Trinity, the three fates, and three wishes, to the golden rectangle, to seven heavens, the seven lower orders of the sephiroth, the nine Muses, the nine circles of Hell, the nine worlds of Norse mythology, but also to popular references like A Better Marriage in Five Easy Lessons and Thinner Thighs in Seven Days. Twelve-step programs were referred to in both cube one and cube two. A miniature copy of a book called The Six Mistakes Parents Make Most Often lay at the bottom of cube six. Puns appeared, usually well disguised– one, won; two, too, and Tuesday; four, for, forth; ate, eight. Bill was partial to rhymes as well, both in images and words. In cube nine, the geometric figure for a line had been painted on one glass wall. In cube three, a tiny man wearing the black-and-white prison garb of cartoons and dragging a leg iron has

— End of page 168 —

opened the door to his cell. The hidden rhyme is "free." Looking closely through the walls of the cube, one can see the parallel rhyme in another language: the German word drei is scratched into one glass wall. Lying at the bottom of the same box is a tiny black-and-white photograph cut from a book that shows the entrance to Auschwitz: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. With every number, the arbitrary dance of associations worked togethere to create a tiny mental landscape that ranged in tone from wish-fulfillment dream to nightmare. Although dense, the effect of the cubes wasn't visually disorienting. Each object, painting, drawing, bit of text, or sculpted figure found its rightful place under the glass according to the necessary, if mad, logic of numerical, pictorial, and verbal connection– and the colors of each were startling. Every number had been given a thematic hue. Bill had been interested in Goethe's color wheel and in Alfred Jensen's use of it in his thick, hallucinatory paintings of numbers. He had assigned each number a color. Like Goethe, he included black and white, although he didn't bother with the poet's meanings. Zero and one were white. Two was blue. Three was red, four was yellow, and he mixed colors: pale blue for five, purples in six, oranges in seven, greens in eight, and blacks and grays in nine. Although other colors and omnipresent newsprint always intruded on the basic scheme, the myriad shades of a single color dominated each cube.

The number pieces were the work of a man at the top of his form. An organic extension of everything Bill had done before, these knots of symbols had an explosive effect. The longer I looked at them, the more the miniature constructions seemed on the brink of bursting from internal pressure. They were tightly orchestrated semantic bombs through which Bill laid bare the arbitrary roots of meaning itself– that peculiar social contract generated by little squiggles, dashes, lines, and loops on a page."

Part III:
Wechsler Cubes
(named not for
Bill Wechsler, the
fictional artist above,
but for the non-fictional
David Wechsler) –

 

From 2002:

 

Above: Dr. Harrison Pope, Harvard professor of psychiatry, demonstrates the use of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale "block design" subtest.

 
Part IV:
A Magic Gallery
Log24, March 4, 2004
 

ZZ
WW

Figures from the
Kaleidoscope Puzzle
of Steven H. Cullinane:


Poem by Eugen Jost:
Zahlen und Zeichen,
Wörter und Worte

Mit Zeichen und Zahlen
vermessen wir Himmel und Erde
schwarz
auf weiss
schaffen wir neue Welten
oder gar Universen

 Numbers and Names,
Wording and Words

With numbers and names
we measure heaven and earth
black
on white
we create new worlds
and universes

English translation
by Catherine Schelbert

A related poem:

Alphabets
by Hermann Hesse

From time to time
we take our pen in hand
and scribble symbols
on a blank white sheet
Their meaning is
at everyone's command;
it is a game whose rules
are nice and neat.

But if a savage
or a moon-man came
and found a page,
a furrowed runic field,
and curiously studied
lines and frame:
How strange would be
the world that they revealed.
a magic gallery of oddities.
He would see A and B
as man and beast,
as moving tongues or
arms or legs or eyes,
now slow, now rushing,
all constraint released,
like prints of ravens'
feet upon the snow.
He'd hop about with them,
fly to and fro,
and see a thousand worlds
of might-have-been
hidden within the black
and frozen symbols,
beneath the ornate strokes,
the thick and thin.
He'd see the way love burns
and anguish trembles,
He'd wonder, laugh,
shake with fear and weep
because beyond this cipher's
cross-barred keep
he'd see the world
in all its aimless passion,
diminished, dwarfed, and
spellbound in the symbols,
and rigorously marching
prisoner-fashion.
He'd think: each sign
all others so resembles
that love of life and death,
or lust and anguish,
are simply twins whom
no one can distinguish…
until at last the savage
with a sound
of mortal terror
lights and stirs a fire,
chants and beats his brow
against the ground
and consecrates the writing
to his pyre.
Perhaps before his
consciousness is drowned
in slumber there will come
to him some sense
of how this world
of magic fraudulence,
this horror utterly
behind endurance,
has vanished as if
it had never been.
He'll sigh, and smile,
and feel all right again.

— Hermann Hesse (1943),
"Buchstaben," from
Das Glasperlenspiel,
translated by
Richard and Clara Winston

Sunday May 25, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:56 am

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Sunday May 25, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:28 am
"Caught up 
    in circles…"

— Song lyric,  
Cyndi Lauper

http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080525-Alethiometer.jpg

Alethiometer from
"The Golden Compass"

 

The 64 hexagrams of the I Ching in a circular arrangement suggested by a Singer 63-cycle

The I Ching
as Alethiometer

Update:

See also this morning's
later entry, illustrating
the next line of Cyndi
Lauper's classic lyric
"Time After Time" —

"… Confusion is    
  nothing new."

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Saturday May 24, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:48 am
Time After Time

From the five entries ending
on St. Bridget's Day, 2008:

Dana R. Wright on James Edwin Loder, Jr.

"At his memorial service his daughter Tami told the story of 'little Jimmy,' whose kindergarten teacher recognized a special quality of mind that set him apart. 'Every day we read a story, and after the story is over, Jimmy gets up and wants to tell us what the story means.'"

"I confess I do not believe in time."
Nabokov, Speak, Memory

From May 20:
"Welcome to the
Garden Club, Pilgrim."


Related material:
 
Primitive Roots
and a video from
Perth, Australia:

Video remix of Alice in Wonderland from Perth, Australia

"The drum beats out of time"
— Song lyric, Cyndi Lauper  

Friday, May 23, 2008

Friday May 23, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 pm

Happy St. Sarah‘s Day
(May 24)

“…something I once heard
Charles M. Schulz say,
‘Don’t worry about the world
coming to an end today.
  It’s already tomorrow
in Australia.'”

— William F. House, 
quoted here on Australia’s
St. Bridget’s Day, 2003

'Strictly Ballroom' video

Click on image to view video.

Friday May 23, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:28 am
The Idea
of Identity

“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 

Linked to on
Monday, May 19
:

Conclusion of the film 'Analyze That'

Conclusion of “Analyze That” —

“There’s a place for us….”

New York Times
on Friday, May 23:

“A poem should not mean
But be”

Archibald MacLeish,
quoted in a Friday comment
on a Thursday night column
by Rosanne Cash

Thursday evening photo
by Josh Haner for Friday’s
online New York Times:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080522-Bridge2.jpg

Brooklyn Bridge Turns 125

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:07 pm
For Indiana Jones
on Skull Day

Cover of Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes

841: Dublin founded by
        Danish [?] Vikings

9/04: In a Nutshell: The Seed

(See also Hamlet’s Transformation.)

Hagar the Horrible and NY Lottery for Thursday, May 22, 2008: Midday 841, Evening 904

The moral of this story,
 it’s simple but it’s true:
Hey, the stars might lie,
 but the numbers never do.

Mary Chapin Carpenter  

Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:41 am

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Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:39 am

x

Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:09 am

x

Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:04 am

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Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:01 am

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Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:00 am
The Undertaking:
An Exercise in
Conceptual Art

I Ching hexagram 54: The Marrying Maiden

Hexagram 54:
THE JUDGMENT

Undertakings bring misfortune.
Nothing that would further.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080522-Irelandslide1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Brian O’Doherty, an Irish-born artist,
before the [Tuesday, May 20] wake
of his alter ego* ‘Patrick Ireland’
on the grounds of the
Irish Museum of Modern Art.”
New York Times, May 22, 2008    

THE IMAGE

Thus the superior man
understands the transitory
in the light of
the eternity of the end.

Another version of
the image:

Images of time and eternity in memory of Michelangelo
See 2/22/08
and  4/19/08.


Related material:

Michael Kimmelman in today’s New York Times

“An essay from the ’70s by Mr. O’Doherty, ‘Inside the White Cube,’ became famous in art circles for describing how modern art interacted with the gallery spaces in which it was shown.”

Brian O’Doherty, “Inside the White Cube,” 1976 Artforum essays on the gallery space and 20th-century art:

“The history of modernism is intimately framed by that space. Or rather the history of modern art can be correlated with changes in that space and in the way we see it. We have now reached a point where we see not the art but the space first…. An image comes to mind of a white, ideal space that, more than any single picture, may be the archetypal image of 20th-century art.”

An archetypal image

THE SPACE:

The Eightfold Cube: The Beauty of Klein's Simple Group

A non-archetypal image

THE ART:

Jack in the Box, by Natasha Wescoat

Natasha Wescoat, 2004
See also Epiphany 2008:

How the eightfold cube works

“Nothing that would further.”
— Hexagram 54

Lear’s fool:

 …. Now thou art an 0
without a figure. I am better
than thou art, now. I am a fool;
thou art nothing….

“…. in the last mystery of all the single figure of what is called the World goes joyously dancing in a state beyond moon and sun, and the number of the Trumps is done.  Save only for that which has no number and is called the Fool, because mankind finds it folly till it is known.  It is sovereign or it is nothing, and if it is nothing then man was born dead.”

The Greater Trumps,
by Charles Williams, Ch. 14

* For a different, Jungian, alter ego, see Irish Fourplay (Jan. 31, 2003) and “Outside the Box,” a New York Times review of O’Doherty’s art (featuring a St. Bridget’s Cross) by Bridget L. Goodbody dated April 25, 2007. See also Log24 on that date.

Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

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Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:59 am

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Thursday May 22, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:58 am

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Tuesday May 20, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 pm

The China Candidate

In honor of the 100th birthday of actor James Stewart,
Turner Classic Movies is now showing
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In light of an ABC News story tonight,
Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators,
the following film seems more relevant:

Welcome to the Garden Club, Pilgrim

http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080520-GardenClub2.jpg

Related material:

The Dictatorship of Talent, by David Brooks
in The New York Times of December 4, 2007—

"When you talk to Americans, you find that they have all these weird notions about Chinese communism. You try to tell them that China isn’t a communist country anymore. It’s got a different system: meritocratic paternalism. You joke: Imagine the Ivy League taking over the shell of the Communist Party and deciding not to change the name. Imagine the Harvard Alumni Association with an army."

— and Harvard mathematician

Professor Yau of Harvard

See also Sylvia Nasar's 2006 New Yorker article on Yau
and the screenplay of The Manchurian Candidate:

A long pause.
Finally, Yen Lo laughs.

YEN LO With humor, my dear Zilkov.
Always with a little humor.

Tuesday May 20, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:06 pm
The Unembarrassed Peddler

(For readers of
the previous entry
who would like to
know more about
purchasing the
Brooklyn Bridge)


From yesterday’s New York Times, in an obituary of a teacher of reporters:

“He was a stickler for spelling, insisting that students accurately compose dictated sentences, like this one: ‘Outside a cemetery sat a harassed cobbler and an embarrassed peddler, gnawing on a desiccated potato and gazing on the symmetry of a lady’s ankle with unparalleled ecstasy.'”

Spelling Your Way
To Success

Chapter I:
“gnawing on a  
  desiccated potato”

From the website
Blue Star Traders:
How the ancient crystal skull Synergy came to the Western World…

This skull first came to light when it was acquired about two and a half decades ago by a European businessman and avid hiker, as he traveled around Central and South America.  He acquired the skull from a very old native man, in a tiny village in the Andes, near the borders of Peru, Bolivia and Chile. He was just passing through, and had come upon the small settlement while looking for a place to stay for the night.  He wandered into the village and was greeted with smiles and an invitation to share a meal.

This gentleman, George, speaks several languages, and he usually has at least a few words in common with most of the people he meets in his travels– enough to get by, anyway.  Although he didn’t speak the same language as most of the people in this isolated village, there was an instant connection between them, and they managed with the smattering of Spanish and Portuguese that a few of them knew. In need of shelter for the night, George was offered a spot for his sleeping bag, near the fire, in the dwelling of an elderly man.

After a peaceful evening in the old man’s company, George gratefully accepted a simple breakfast and got ready to take his leave.  As he thanked the man for his generous hospitality, the elder led George to an old chest. Opening the crumbling wooden lid, he took out the crystal skull, touched it reverently, and handed it to George.  Awed by an artifact of such obvious antiquity, beauty and value, yet uncertain what he was expected to do with it, George tried to hand it back.  But the old man urged it upon him, making it clear that he was to take it with him. 

Curious about the history of such a thing, George tried to find out what the villagers knew about it. One young fellow explained in halting Spanish that  the skull had come into the possession of a much loved Catholic nun, in Peru.  She was quite old when she died in the early 1800’s, and she had given it to the old man’s “Grandfather” when he was just a boy.  (Note: It’s hard to say if this was really the man’s grandfather, or just the honorary title that many natives use to designate an ancestor or revered relative.)  The nun told the boy and his father that the skull was “an inheritance from a lost civilization” and, like the Christian cross, it was a symbol of the transcendence of Soul over death.  She said that it carried the message of immortal life and the illumination that we may discover when we lose our fear of death.  She gave it to the boy and his father, asking them to safeguard it until the “right” person came to get it– and share its message with the world.  It had been brought to that land from “somewhere else” and needed to wait until the right person could help it to continue its journey. “Your heart will know the person,” she said. 

“What a strange story,” thought George.

From elespectador.com:

“… ‘Supercholita’  tiene sobre todo una clara vocación divulgadora de la cultura andina. No en vano Valdez recibió su primer premio por explicar mediante este personaje cómo se cocina el ‘chuño,’ una típica patata deshidratada muy consumida en el altiplano boliviano.”

Chapter II:
“gazing on the symmetry
 of a lady’s ankle”

From “Sinatra: A Man
and His Music, Part II”
(reshown. prior to
“It Happened in Brooklyn,”
by Turner Classic Movies
on Sunday, May 11, 2008):

“Luck, be a lady tonight.”

From wordinfo.info:

astragalo-, astragal-
(Greek: anklebone, talus ball of ankle joint; dice, die [the Greeks made these from ankle bones])

astragalomancy, astragyromancy
Divination with dice, knuckle bones, stones, small pieces of wood, or ankle bones which were marked with letters, symbols, or dots. Using dice for divination is a form of astragalomancy.

Chapter III:
“unparalleled ecstasy”


Bright Star —

Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte

— Rubén Darío  

Bright Star and Crystal Skull

Image adapted from
Blue Star Traders


Related material:

The New York Lottery
  mid-day number yesterday–
719– and 7/19.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Monday May 19, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:49 am
Special to The Brooklyn Eagle

The Cobbler, the Peddler,
and the Cemetery

Today’s New York Times, in an obituary of a teacher of reporters:

“He was a stickler for spelling, insisting that students accurately compose dictated sentences, like this one: ‘Outside a cemetery sat a harassed cobbler and an embarrassed peddler, gnawing on a desiccated potato and gazing on the symmetry of a lady’s ankle with unparalleled ecstasy.'”

Related Material:

Don Ameche and Joe Mantegna in 'Things Change'

and

There’s a place for us.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Sunday May 18, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

x

Sunday May 18, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:48 pm
Happy May 18, Reba

For the host of tonight’s
Academy of Country Music Awards:

Map of Appalachia

“Well now what can I say
at the end of the day?”
Country song lyric 

Und was für
ein Bild des Christentums 
ist dabei herausgekommen?

_______________________________

“How’d yuh know deh was
such a place,” I says, “if yuh neveh
been deh befoeh?”
    “Oh,” he says, “I got a map.”
    “A map?” I says.
    “Sure,” he says, “I got a map
dat tells me about all dese places.
I take it wit me every time
I come out heah,” he says.
    And Jesus! Wit dat, he pulls it out
of his pocket, an’ so help me,
 but he’s got it– he’s tellin’
 duh troot–  a big map of
     duh whole f_____ place….”

Thomas Wolfe of
 Asheville, North Carolina

Sunday May 18, 2008

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

From the Grave

DENNIS OVERBYE

in yesterday's New York Times:

"From the grave, Albert Einstein
poured gasoline on the culture wars
between science and religion this week…."

An announcement of a
colloquium at Princeton:

Cartoon of Coxedter exhuming Geometry

Above: a cartoon,
"Coxeter exhuming Geometry,"
with the latter's tombstone inscribed

"GEOMETRY

  600 B.C. —
1900 A.D.
R.I.P."

Page from 'The Paradise of Childhood,' 1906 edition

The above is from
The Paradise of Childhood,
a work first published in 1869.

"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."

— Paul Simon

Einstein on TIME cover as 'Man of the Century'

Albert Einstein,
1879-1955:

"It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the 'merely-personal,' from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings.  Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.  The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation…."

Autobiographical Notes, 1949

Related material:

A commentary on Tom Wolfe's
"Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died"–

"The Neural Buddhists," by David Brooks,
 in the May 13 New York Times:

"The mind seems to have
the ability to transcend itself
and merge with a larger
presence that feels more real."

A New Yorker commentary on
a new translation of the Psalms:

"Suddenly, in a world without
Heaven, Hell, the soul, and
eternal salvation or redemption,
the theological stakes seem
more local and temporal:
'So teach us to number our days.'"

and a May 13 Log24 commentary
on Thomas Wolfe's
"Only the Dead Know Brooklyn"–

"… all good things — trout as well as
eternal salvation — come by grace
and grace comes by art
and art does not come easy."

A River Runs Through It

"Art isn't easy."
— Stephen Sondheim,
quoted in
Solomon's Cube.

For further religious remarks,
consult Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
and The Librarian:
Return to King Solomon's Mines.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Friday May 16, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:22 pm

“From the grave, Albert Einstein poured gasoline on the culture wars between science and religion this week.

A letter the physicist wrote in 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, in which he described the Bible as ‘pretty childish’ and scoffed at the notion that the Jews could be a ‘chosen people,’ sold for $404,000 at an auction in London. That was 25 times the presale estimate.”

A less controversial Einstein-related remark:

The relativity problem is one of central significance throughout geometry and algebra and has been recognized as such by the mathematicians at an early time.”

— Hermann Weyl, “Relativity Theory as a Stimulus in Mathematical Research,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 93, No. 7, Theory of Relativity in Contemporary Science: Papers Read at the Celebration of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor Albert Einstein in Princeton, March 19, 1949 (Dec. 30, 1949), pp. 535-541

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Tuesday May 13, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am
Only the Dead
Know Brooklyn

(continued from April 2004)

David Brooks in
today’s New York Times:

“The mind seems to have
the ability to transcend itself
and merge with a larger
presence that feels more real.”

Sometimes in rather strange ways… An example–

Sunday morning’s entry Annals of Poetry was linked, via the word “tesseract,” to an entry of May 12, 2006, which in turn had a link to the Log24 entries of February 1-15, 2003. From those entries:

Monday, Feb. 10, 2003

Singing-Masters

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
— William Butler Yeats

Jimmy Durante

Durante

Shari Lewis on cover of 'Party in Shariland'

Shari Lewis

Last Sunday night (May 11),
Turner Classic Movies
showed a film featuring
Jimmy Durante as a
singing-master of
Frank Sinatra:

Movie poster for 'It Happened in Brooklyn'

From earlier this month,
an entry featuring Sinatra and a
different singing-master — not from
Brooklyn but from Tidioute —

Sunday, May 4, 2008

A Diploma for Frank from…

The Old School
Sinatra on cover of USA Weekend, Sunday, May 4, 2008

 
The Old School
at Tidioute:

The old Tidioute High School, now Tidioute Community Charter School

A product of
the old school
:

Tidioute girl

These little town blues…

“… all good things — trout as well as
  eternal salvation — come by grace
and grace comes by art
  and art does not come easy.”

A River Runs Through It

Monday, May 12, 2008

Monday May 12, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
Sunday’s New York
lottery numbers:

NY Lottery Sunday, May 11, 2008: mid-day and evening numbers were both 313.

See also 3/13, 2006.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Sunday May 11, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am
May and Zan

May Swenson, left, and Zan Knudson, right

May Swenson (left)
and Zan Knudson (right)

In memory of poet May Swenson and sports novelist Rozanne Ruth “Zan” Knudson:

Maureen Dowd in today’s New York Times:

“It’s a similar syndrome to the one Katharine Hepburn’s star athlete and her supercilious fiancé have in ‘Pat and Mike.’

The fiancé is always belittling Hepburn, so whenever he’s in the stands, her tennis and golf go kerflooey. Finally, her manager, played by Spencer Tracy, asks the fiancé to stay away from big matches, explaining, ‘You are the wrong jockey for this chick.’

‘You know, except when you’re around, we got a very valuable piece of property here,’ he says, later adding, ‘When you’re around, she’s no good, she’s dead, see?'”

Girl in tesseract on cover of  'The Gameplayers of Zan'

Summary of M. A. Foster’s
The Gameplayers of Zan:

“Then she has a vision of herself,
enclosed by an unfolded hypercube,
and then an immense screen
behind it covered by complex,
     ever-shifting patterns….”

“Christ! What are
 patterns for?”
Amy Lowell   

Does the word ‘tesseract’
mean anything to you?

— Robert A. Heinlein

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Saturday May 10, 2008

MoMA Goes to
Kindergarten

"… the startling thesis of Mr. Brosterman's new book, 'Inventing Kindergarten' (Harry N. Abrams, $39.95): that everything the giants of modern art and architecture knew about abstraction they learned in kindergarten, thanks to building blocks and other educational toys designed by Friedrich Froebel, a German educator, who coined the term 'kindergarten' in the 1830's."

— "Was Modernism Born
     in Toddler Toolboxes?"
     by Trip Gabriel, New York Times,
     April 10, 1997
 

RELATED MATERIAL

Figure 1 —
Concept from 1819:

Cubic crystal system
(Footnotes 1 and 2)

Figure 2 —
The Third Gift, 1837:

Froebel's third gift

Froebel's Third Gift

Froebel, the inventor of
kindergarten, worked as
an assistant to the
crystallographer Weiss
mentioned in Fig. 1.

(Footnote 3)

Figure 3 —
The Third Gift, 1906:

Seven partitions of the eightfold cube in 'Paradise of Childhood,' 1906

Figure 4 —
Solomon's Cube,
1981 and 1983:

Solomon's Cube - A 1981 design by Steven H. Cullinane

Figure 5 —
Design Cube, 2006:

Design Cube 4x4x4 by Steven H. Cullinane

The above screenshot shows a
moveable JavaScript display
of a space of six dimensions
(over the two-element field).

(To see how the display works,
try the Kaleidoscope Puzzle first.)

For some mathematical background, see

Footnotes:
 
1. Image said to be after Holden and Morrison, Crystals and Crystal Growing, 1982
2. Curtis Schuh, "The Library: Biobibliography of Mineralogy," article on Mohs
3. Bart Kahr, "Crystal Engineering in Kindergarten" (pdf), Crystal Growth & Design, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2004, 3-9

Saturday May 10, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:33 am

x

Friday, May 9, 2008

Friday May 9, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 am
Cubist Language Game

"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 

Monday:

From Log24 on
August 19, 2003
and on
Ash Wednesday, 2004:
a reviewer on
An Instance of the Fingerpost::

"Perhaps we are meant to
 see the story as a cubist
 retelling of the crucifixion."

Related material
for today's anniversay
of the birth of philosopher
Jose Ortega y Gasset:

Cubism as Multispeech
and
Halloween Meditations
(illustrated below)

Cover of 'The Gameplayers of Zan,' by M.A. Foster

"Modern art…
will always have
the masses against it."
Ortega y Gasset, 1925    

Friday May 9, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am
Kernel of Eternity
continued from April 29

 
The Klein Group: The four elements in four colors, with black points representing the identity


Wikipedia on the Klein group (denoted V, for Vierergruppe):

In this representation, V is a normal subgroup of the alternating group A4 (and also the symmetric group S4) on 4 letters. In fact, it is the kernel of a surjective map from S4 to S3. According to Galois theory, the existence of the Klein four-group (and in particular, this representation of it) explains the existence of the formula for calculating the roots of quartic equations in terms of radicals.

For radicals of another sort, see A Logocentric Meditation, A Mass for Lucero, and Steven Erlanger in The New York Times— "France Still Divided Over Lessons of 1968 Unrest."

The Klein Group as Kernel
of a Map from S4 to S3:

Portrait of O:  The Klein Group as Kernel in  the Symmetric Group of Degree Four

Click to enlarge.

For those who prefer Galois's
politics to his mathematics,
there is
MAY 68: STREET POSTERS
FROM THE PARIS REBELLION

at London's Southbank Centre
 (May 1 – June 1, 2008).

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Thursday May 8, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:48 pm
Synchronicity,
Part Deux

Footprints at Log24 on the afternoon of May 8, 2008, including two from France

From
“On the Holy Trinity,”
the entry in the 3:20 PM
French footprint:

“…while the scientist sees
everything that happens
in one point of space,
the poet feels
everything that happens
in one point of time…
all forming an
instantaneous and transparent
organism of events….”

Vladimir Nabokov

From
“Angel in the Details,”
 the entry in the 3:59 PM
French footprint:

“I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose”

Emily Dickinson

These, along with this afternoon’s
earlier entry, suggest a review
of a third Log24 item, Windmills,
with an actress from France as…

Changing Woman:

“Kaleidoscope turning…

Juliette Binoche in 'Blue'  The 24 2x2 Cullinane Kaleidoscope animated images

Shifting pattern
within unalterable structure…”
— Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat  

“When life itself seems lunatic,
who knows where madness lies?”

— For the source, see 
Joyce’s Nightmare Continues.

Thursday May 8, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm
Synchronicity

Today is the feast of
Saint Robert A. Heinlein.

Time of the above: 1:00 PM.
Update of 2:07 PM —

On the local Charlie Rose broadcast today at about 1:48 PM, Paola Antonelli, the organizer of an exhibit at MoMA, "Design and the Elastic Mind," talked about science fiction's influence (or non-influence) on the exhibit. She used the metaphor "the day after tomorrow." As I had just written a link relating design, science fiction, and May 10 (the date of the literal day after tomorrow– click on "feast" above), I found her remarks of interest. Here is a related passage from a web page.
 

Paola Antonelli, curator of 'Design and the Elastic Mind' at MoMA
Paola Antonelli

Photo Credit: Andrea Ciotti

Antonelli on scientists as designers who do not call themselves designers:

"So they all try to reach out. They have that in common. Then what they have in common is this attempt to… propose something for the real future. I don't really like science fiction, but I like to think of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow."

Amen.

Thursday May 8, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Star Wars
continued from
May 25, 2003

Israel turns 60

Wed., May 7, 2008
2:23 PM EDT

By Dan Williams

“JERUSALEM, May 7 (Reuters) –
 Fireworks and military fanfare
 launched Israel’s 60th anniversary
 celebrations on Wednesday…”

Related material
from Tuesday:

Mailer's 'The Time of Our Time' May 5, 1998, cover with fireworks starburst

“… someone was down sixty,
   someone was up….”

Play It As It Lays   

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Wednesday May 7, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:36 pm

"It seems to me that we are headed straight towards what C. L. Siegel called 'the theory of the empty set.'"

Wednesday May 7, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 7:00 am
Forms of the Rock

“point A / In a perspective
that begins again / At B”

— Wallace Stevens,
The Rock

See also

August 2, 2002

January 20, 2003

April 8, 2003

December 5, 2004

December 10, 2004

January 11, 2006

April 30, 2006

August 25, 2006

August 26, 2006

February 6, 2007

July 23, 2007

July 24, 2007

September 30, 2007

April 14, 2008

Christmas Eve, 1981

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Tuesday May 6, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:07 am
In the Dreamtime
the Point Was Ten

From Play It As It Lays,
the paperback edition of 1990
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) —

Page 170:                                             “… In her half sleep
the point was ten, the jackpot was on eighteen, the
only man that could ever reach her was the son of a
preacher man
, someone was down sixty, someone was
up, Daddy wants a popper and she rode a painted
pony let the spinning wheel spin
.

By the end of a week she was thinking constantly
about where her body stopped and the air began,
about the exact point in space and time that was the
difference between Maria and other. She had the sense
that if she could get that in her mind and hold it for

170


even one micro-second she would have what she had
come to get.”

 
For further details
see yesterday’s entries.”In her half sleep
the point was ten….”
Play It As It Lays

The Random House

Random House logo (color-reversed image)

signed first edition
of Norman Mailer’s
The Time of Our Time
(4 pounds, 1286 pages)
was published
ten years ago yesterday —

May 5, 1998:
Fireworks starburst
on the cover of
The Time of Our Time


Mailer's 'The Time of Our Time' May 5, 1998, cover with fireworks starburst

Also from May 5, 1998:
  File Photo in Mailer’s obituary —

(Photo by Bebeto Matthews
with Mailer obituary in

Toronto Globe and Mail)

with excerpt from the obituary,
by Richard Pyle

(Associated Press
Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007
at 8:20 AM EDT)

Norman Mailer, May 5, 1998 (with notes)

Related material:

Yesterday’s entries and
the time of this entry:
11:07:51 AM ET

CHANGE WE MAY BELIEVE IN sign, adapted from a current political campaign

I Ching hexagram 51: The Arousing (Shock, Thunder)

51

THE JUDGMENT

SHOCK brings success.   
Shock comes - oh, oh!    
Laughing words - ha, ha!

in light of…

 
A:  Mailer’s fireworks starburst
   on his book cover from
      ten years ago yesterday

B:  A real starburst in a story
from ten years ago today.

 

Monday, May 5, 2008

Monday May 5, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:07 pm
Time and the River

“At the edge of the meadow
flowed the river.

Nick was glad
to get to the river.

He walked upstream
through the meadow.”

Ernest Hemingway

Pennsylvania Lottery
May 5, 2008:

PA Lottery May 5, 2008: mid-day 216, evening 725

Related material:

2/167/25

“In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any further today.”

— Ernest Hemingway,
Big Two-Hearted River

Monday May 5, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 pm
"All our words from loose using
have lost their edge."
 — Ernest Hemingway    

Look Homeward, Norman

New York Lottery
May 5, 2008:

NY Lottery May 5, 2008: mid-day 098, evening 411

The evening number,
411, may be interpreted
as 4/11. From Log24
on that date:

NYT obituaries, morning of Friday, April 11, 2008-- Carousel designer and family tribute to Norman Mailer

Click on image for further details.

Ride a painted pony
let the spinning
wheel spin.


As for the mid-day number
098, a Google search
(with the aid of, in retrospect,
the above family tribute)
 on "98 'Norman Mailer'"
yields

Amazon.com:
The Time of Our Time
(Modern Library Paperbacks …

With The Time of Our Time (1998) Norman Mailer has archetypalized himself and in the seven years since publication, within which films Fear and Loathing in

 

From an unattributed
"editorial review" of
  The Time of Our Time
at Amazon.com:

"Surely this sense of himself
as the republic's recording angel
accounts for the structure
of Mailer's anthology…."

Related material:

From Play It As It Lays,
the paperback edition of 1990
  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) —

Page 170:

                                             "… In her half sleep
the point was ten, the jackpot was on eighteen, the
only man that could ever reach her was the son of a
preacher man
, someone was down sixty, someone was
up, Daddy wants a popper and she rode a painted
pony let the spinning wheel spin
.

By the end of a week she was thinking constantly
about where her body stopped and the air began,
about the exact point in space and time that was the
difference between Maria and other. She had the sense
that if she could get that in her mind and hold it for

170    

even one micro-second she would have what she had
come to get."


The number 411 from
this evening's New York Lottery
may thus be regarded as naming the
"exact point in space and time"
sought in the above passage.

For a related midrash
 on the meaning of the
passage's page number,
see the previous entry.

For a more plausible
recording angel,
see Sinatra's birthday,
December 12, 2002.

Monday May 5, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:07 am
Lottery Sermon

"And take upon's
the mystery of things
 as if we were God's spies"
King Lear  

PA Lottery Sunday, May 4, 2008: mid-day 170, evening 144

From Log24 on Aug. 19, 2003
and on Ash Wednesday, 2004:
a reviewer on
An Instance of the Fingerpost::

"Perhaps we are meant to
see the story as a cubist
   retelling of the crucifixion."

From Log24 on
Michaelmas 2007:

Kate Beckinsale (in 'Pearl Harbor') pointing to an instance of the number 144

Google searches suggested by
Sunday's PA lottery numbers
(mid-day 170, evening 144)
and by the above
figure of Kate Beckinsale
pointing to an instance of
the number 144 —

Click to enlarge:

Search for the meaning of 170 and 144, the PA lottery numbers of Sunday, May 4, 2008

Related material:

Beckinsale in another film
(See At the Crossroads,
Log24, Dec. 8, 2006):

"For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross."
Gravity's Rainbow  
 
Kate Beckinsale in Underworld: Evolution

 

Kate Beckinsale, adapted from
poster for Underworld: Evolution
(DVD release date 6/6/6)
 
There is such a thing
as a tesseract.

"It was only in retrospect
that the silliness
became profound."

— Review of  
Faust in Copenhagen

From the conclusion of
Joan Didion's 1970 novel
  Play It As It Lays

Cover of 'Play It As It Lays'

"I know what 'nothing' means,
and keep on playing."

From Play It As It Lays,
the paperback edition of 1990
  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) —

Page 170:

"By the end of a week she was thinking constantly
about where her body stopped and the air began,
about the exact point in space and time that was the
difference between Maria and other. She had the sense
that if she could get that in her mind and hold it for

170  

even one micro-second she would have what she had
come to get."

"The page numbers
are generally reliable."

Michaelmas 2007   

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Sunday May 4, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:12 am
The Old School
Sinatra on cover of USA Weekend, Sunday, May 4, 2008

 
The Old School
at Tidioute:

The old Tidioute High School, now Tidioute Community Charter School

A product of
the old school
:

Tidioute girl

These little town blues…

“… all good things — trout as well as
  eternal salvation — come by grace
and grace comes by art
  and art does not come easy.”

A River Runs Through It

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Saturday May 3, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 pm
“Teach us to
 number our days.”

Psalm 90, verse 12 

The New Yorker,
issue dated Oct. 1, 2007 —

James Wood on Robert Alter’s new translation of the Psalms:

“At any time, God can cancel a life. ‘So teach us to number our days,’ as the King James Version has it, ‘that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’….

The ancient Hebrew word for the shadowy underworld where the dead go, Sheol, was Christianized as ‘Hell,’ even though there is no such concept in the Hebrew Bible. Alter prefers the words ‘victory’ and ‘rescue’ as translations of yeshu’ah, and eschews the Christian version, which is the heavily loaded ‘salvation.’ And so on. Stripping his English of these artificial cleansers, Alter takes us back to the essence of the meaning. Suddenly, in a world without Heaven, Hell, the soul, and eternal salvation or redemption, the theological stakes seem more local and temporal: ‘So teach us to number our days.'”

Today’s numbers from the
Pennsylvania Lottery:

PA Lottery Saturday, May 3, 2008: Mid-day 510, Evening 724

which, being interpreted,
is 5/10 and 7/24.

Selah.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Friday May 2, 2008

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

A Balliol Star

In memory of
mathematician
Graham Higman of
 Balliol College and
Magdalen College,
Oxford,
  Jan. 19, 1917 –
April 8, 2008

From a biography of an earlier Balliol student,
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889):

"In 1867 he won First-Class degrees in Classics
and 'Greats' (a rare 'double-first') and was
considered by Jowett to be the star of Balliol."

Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1888

Hopkins, a poet who coined the term "inscape," was a member of the Society of Jesus.

According to a biography, Higman was the founder of Oxford's Invariant Society.

From a publication of that society, The Invariant, Issue 15– undated but (according to Issue 16, of 2005) from 1996 (pdf):

Taking the square root
  of a function

 by Ian Collier

"David Singmaster once gave a talk at the Invariants and afterwards asked this question:

What is the square root of the exponential function? In other words, can you define a function such that for all xf  2(x) — that is, f (f (x)) — is equal to e  x ? He did not give the answer straight away so I attempted it…."

Another approach to the expression f(f(x)), by myself in 1982:

Inscapes II by Steven H. Cullinane: f(f(x)) and power sets

For further details,
see Inscapes.

For more about Higman, see an interview in the September 2001 newsletter of the European Mathematical Society (pdf).

"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 
 

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Thursday May 1, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Back from
the Shadows

C. G. Jung on cover of 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections'

 

                        "I sat upon the shore  
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me"

The Waste Land, lines 423-424

Eliot's note on line 424 —

"V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance;
chapter on the Fisher King."

 

From Ritual to Romance,
by Jessie L. Weston,
Cambridge University Press, 1920,
 Chapter IX, "The Fisher King"–

"So far as the present state of our knowledge goes we can affirm with certainty that the Fish is a Life symbol of immemorial antiquity, and the title of Fisher has, from the earliest ages, been associated with Deities who were held to be specially connected with the origin and preservation of Life."

Weston quotes a writer she does not name* who says that "the Fish was sacred to those deities who were supposed to lead men back from the shadows of death to life."

* The Open Court, June and July 1911, p. 168

 

Today's Doonesbury
   (a flashback) —

Doonesbury of May 1, 2008: Flashback to Uncle Duke on the leader of Berzerkistan

"Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and work up onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake."
 

— Ernest Hemingway,
 A Moveable Feast

Hemingway on the cover of LIFE magazine, 1961


Selah.
 

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