Log24

Stella Octangula

In memory of Irvin Kershner,
director of A FIne Madness  and
The Empire Strikes Back

Kershner reportedly died at 87 on Saturday.

and under budget —

The Tiffany Case

See also Sunday morning’s pictures —

The sound of singing grows louder.

Leslie Nielsen Dies at Age 84

Readings that may or may not* be relevant —

Graham Priest, "The Stone" and The Jewel in the Lotus.

* See Priest in Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Fall 1997 and see Block That Metaphor.

A counterbalance to this morning's New York Times  story (see previous post) on a leftist Columbia University seminar might be C.S. Lewis's famous quote "It's all in Plato."  Unfortunately, a search for discussions of this quote yields, as the top result, a typically shoddy Christian polemic.

From a Christian professor at Seattle Pacific University—

"Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) can serve us well as a negative example. Nietzsche's 'new morality' was 'mere innovation,' according to [C.S.] Lewis  [Christian Reflections ]. Nietzsche announced through Zarathustra (and numerous other ways) the relativity of all values and moralities, saying that each people had adhered to a different scheme of values worked out solely in connection with local conditions. 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted,' states Nietzsche, quoting one of Dostoevsky's characters."

No source is given for either the Nietzsche quote or the alleged Dostoevky quote.

This is from a web page titled "In Defense of the Permanent Things." The Christian professor is, according to a far better scholar, permanently wrong. See Note 8 on pages 586-587 of Walter Kaufmann's Basic Writings of Nietzsche  (Random House, November 28, 2000).

One hopes that a more capable scholar, such as Lewis himself* was, might at some point attack the Columbia University leftist nonsense— and Nietzsche— by quoting a more damning passage, such as

" 'Everything is false! Everything is permitted!' "

(from Kaufmann's edition of The Will to Power , Random House, 1968, page 326)

This version of the "Everything is permitted" quote is much more directly related to Nietzsche's relativism, as seen in this image of Kaufmann's edition—

   (Click to enlarge.)

* Or Steven Michels of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT.
  See his "Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Virtue of Nature"— in particular, note 29.
 

The title phrase is from Art Wars and various posts in this journal.

"Go ahead," he said; he handed her three Chinese brass coins
 with holes in the center. "I generally use these."

— The Man in the High Castle , quoted here on Nov. 14, 2003

See also Tangled Tale, Yonda Lies the Castle, and a gathering in Dublin today.

From a post on the morning of November 22 —

Steve Martin on his character Ray Porter in the novella Shopgirl  (published Oct. 11, 2000)—

"He said, 'I wrote a piece of code
 that they just can’t seem to do without.'
 He was a symbolic logician. That was his career…."

From more recent entertainment news — the new Disney film Tangled , and a related image—

This one ain't no shopgirl, Ray.

Related material — This  journal on the date of the above Guardian story.

For Dan Brown fans—

Today's midday New York Lottery number was 438.

See page 438 of Heinlein's The Number of the Beast  (Fawcett paperback, 1980),
on "ultimate total philosophy."

Other philosophy —

Today's evening New York Lottery number was 772.

See Cheap Diamonds , by Norris Church Mailer, and the symbol
coded (on at least some keyboards) by "Alt 772"—

Alt 772 = ♦

See also Wallace Stevens's "Crude Foyer" in this journal on June 24, 2008 —
the day Cheap Diamonds  was published in paperback.

For fans of Ian Watson's The Embedding , a miglior fabbro — C. S. Lewis on Charles Williams.

This is apparently a brief excerpt from an audio book, "C. S. Lewis Speaks His Mind."

A printed version of Lewis's remarks on Williams, "The Novels of Charles Williams," appears on pages 21-27 of On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature  by C. S. Lewis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt paperback, 2002 reprint of a book first published in 1982, edited and with a preface by Walter Hooper).

From the preface—

"'The Novels of Charles Williams' was written at the request of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Lewis read it over the Third Programme of the BBC on the 11th February 1949. It has never been published before and, indeed, had lain undetected in the BBC Written Archives until I came across it quite by accident in 1980."

Excerpts from a book review titled …

"Saul Bellow’s Quest for the Vernacular Sublime"

“We often stopped before a display of children’s shoes. My mother coveted for me a pair of patent-leather sandals with an elegantissimo strap. I finally got them— I rubbed them with butter to preserve the leather. This is when I was 6 or 7 years old, a little older than Rosie is now. Amazing how it all boils down to a pair of patent-leather sandals.” Saul Bellow recorded that ancient memory, stirred to it by play with his little daughter, in a letter on Feb. 19, 2004, when he was 88 years old. It is the last letter in this magnificent book…."

"… Finally he was— may this, too, be said without irony?— a seeker after truth."

— Leon Wieseltier in the November 21 New York Times Sunday Book Review

Without irony is fine, but don't forget the sandals.

Cover art by Giorgio Morandi—
Still Life , 1953,
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

Thanks to A Circle of Quiet  for pointing out this cover.

From the December 2010 American Mathematical Society Notices—

Related material from this  journal—

Mathematics and Narrative and

Consolation Prize (August 19, 2010)