Log24

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Universals Revisited

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:06 pm

"Some philosophical pieces are like symphonies,
  others like quartets."

— Gustav Bergmann, "Frege's Hidden Nominalism,"
    The Philosophical Review
     Vol. 67, No. 4 (Oct., 1958), pp. 437-459

See also Annals of Religion.

Metamorphoses of an Author

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:29 pm

"… I'm never sure why I like Auster books.
They have that appealing shiny-ness,
that makes me go 'oooh'
then put my hands out to touch it
even though I know I shouldn't,
much like someone giving you
a plate of mercury to play with. "

— Review at goodreads.com

See also Auster as a T-1000 Terminator
in yesterday's post Page.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Page

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:06 pm

A followup to this morning's post Stolen Glory— 

Columbia's Butler Library "plays a role in
Paul Auster's 2009 novel Invisible ,
where the novel's main protagonist, Adam Walker,
takes a job as a 'page' in the library's stacks." —Wikipedia

Part I (from Feb. 24)—

IMAGE- 'Wild nights are my glory'- Peter Woit, Mrs. Whatsit, and the tesseract

Part II— (Click to enlarge)

IMAGE- Page quoting Mrs. Whatsit: 'There IS such a thing as a tesseract.'

For the page's source, see Butler Library.

Stolen Glory

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:04 am

From University Diaries  yesterday

"A writer for The Atlantic  applauds Santorum's attack on universities
as secular, amoral indoctrination machines.

What can UD  say to this?…."

Below is a screenshot of the new home page for
Columbia University Department of Mathematics.

The impressive building in the photo is not  the math department.

(Click to enlarge.)

 

The building is actually Columbia's Butler Library.

"Along the front and sides of the library are inscribed the names of
Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Desmosthenes,
Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Saint Augustine, Aquinas, Dante,
Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Voltaire, and Goethe." Wikipedia

The inscribed names outline a defense of liberal education
perhaps more robust than the Feb. 26 effort of Andrew Delbanco,
which University Diaries  calls "tepid." (See the previous Log24 post.)

Monday, February 27, 2012

Reflection

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:29 pm

"But even if the religious note is dissonant to some of us,
 it seems hard to come up with a better formulation
 of what a college should strive to be: an aid to reflection…."

— Andrew Delbanco, Chronicle of Higher Education , Feb. 26, 2012

Another aid to reflection—

The logo of an institution that advertised today in the Chronicle
next to Delbanco's article—

IMAGE- Eight-pointed star logo of Chapman University

Click logo for context.  The institution's original name
was Hesperian  College

For some background, see Evening Star in this journal.

Annals of Religion

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

"Allegorical pictures of contemporary events
 have a way of weaving in and out
 between the symbolic and the semi-psychotic."

 — Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker , issue dated March 5, 2012

See also Venue and Weaveworld .

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Margaret’s Haiku

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Margaret Soltan this morning posted a haiku about a fox in her garden.

Related material— The Ninth Gate* versus The Ninth Configuration.

* For some backstory, see pop physics.

Sermon for Nabokov

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

"In linear algebra, the basis of a vector space
is an alphabet in which all vectors
can be expressed uniquely. The thing to remember
is that there are many such alphabets."

—  "A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel,"
       by Yoon Ha Lee

See also Starflight in this journal.

Garden of Good and Evil

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued from February 10.)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120225-NYTobits-Nabokov-11PM.jpg

Related material— For Ash Wednesday and Semantic Transparency.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

The Rock

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:26 pm

(Continued. See previous post and Red and Gray in this journal.)

“Give faith a fighting chance.” —Country song

From a post of June 3, 2007—

Related illustration relevant to theology—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110625-CubeHypostases.gif

For some background, see Cube Trinity in this journal.

For greater depth, see Levering’s Scripture and Metaphysics:
Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology 
,
Blackwell, 2004, page 150.

Cuber (continued)

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 1:23 pm

Click images for further details.

See also Crimson TideRubik, and Cuber.

For another monochromatic enigma without
guaranteed equality of results, see
Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Spiegel-Spiel

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:23 pm

See also Mirror-Play in this journal.

Wild Night

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:09 am

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Minimalist Whirl

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:29 pm

See St. Bridget's Cross

on the Web and in this journal.

Related material—

(Click images to enlarge.)

From Tablet  magazine on St. Bridget's Day, 2012—

From Tablet  magazine today—

Of greater secular  interest—

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

For Ash Wednesday

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

"And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word."

— T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"

This suggested a search for commentary on
Conrad Aiken's phrase "where whirled and well."

Of the nine (Google) search results, one is not  from
my own journal entries—

[PDF] TIME! TIME! TIME!
https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/id/131009/UBC_1968_A8%20C33.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
by G Cameron – 1968 – Related articles
well where whirled and well where whirled and well—
-3. The stress on words such as "wing" is expanded for use
in Aiken's musical paragraph as follows: … 

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Cuckoos’ Nest

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:30 pm

See …

For Mardi Gras

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

See Dennis Overbye in today's New York Times
and Imago Creationis  in this journal.

Public Space

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

See Wade + "Islamic Art"  in this journal. 

Photo Opportunity

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:29 am

"I need a photo opportunity…" —Paul Simon

Click to enlarge.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Coxeter and the Relativity Problem

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

In the Beginning…

"As is well known, the Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet."
– Borges, "The Aleph" (1945)

From some 1949 remarks of Weyl—

"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

Weyl in 1946—:

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

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

Coxeter in 1950 described the elements of the Galois field GF(9) as powers of a primitive root and as ordered pairs of the field of residue-classes modulo 3—

"… the successive powers of  the primitive root λ or 10 are

λ = 10,  λ2 = 21,  λ3 = 22,  λ4 = 02,
λ5 = 20,  λ6 = 12,  λ7 = 11,  λ8 = 01.

These are the proper coordinate symbols….

(See Fig. 10, where the points are represented in the Euclidean plane as if the coordinate residue 2 were the ordinary number -1. This representation naturally obscures the collinearity of such points as λ4, λ5, λ7.)"

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120220-CoxeterFig10.jpg

Coxeter's Figure 10 yields...

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110107-The1950Aleph-Sm.jpg

The Aleph

The details:

(Click to enlarge)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110107-Aleph-Sm.jpg

Coxeter's phrase "in the Euclidean plane" obscures the noncontinuous nature of the transformations that are automorphisms of the above linear 2-space over GF(3).

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Symmetry

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 7:35 pm

From the current Wikipedia article "Symmetry (physics)"—

"In physics, symmetry includes all features of a physical system that exhibit the property of symmetry—that is, under certain transformations, aspects of these systems are 'unchanged', according to a particular observation. A symmetry of a physical system is a physical or mathematical feature of the system (observed or intrinsic) that is 'preserved' under some change.

A family of particular transformations may be continuous  (such as rotation of a circle) or discrete  (e.g., reflection of a bilaterally symmetric figure, or rotation of a regular polygon). Continuous and discrete transformations give rise to corresponding types of symmetries. Continuous symmetries can be described by Lie groups while discrete symmetries are described by finite groups (see Symmetry group)."….

"A discrete symmetry is a symmetry that describes non-continuous changes in a system. For example, a square possesses discrete rotational symmetry, as only rotations by multiples of right angles will preserve the square's original appearance."

Note the confusion here between continuous (or discontinuous) transformations  and "continuous" (or "discontinuous," i.e. "discrete") groups .

This confusion may impede efforts to think clearly about some pure mathematics related to current physics— in particular, about the geometry of spaces made up of individual units ("points") that are not joined together in a continuous manifold.

For an attempt to forestall such confusion, see Noncontinuous Groups.

For related material, see Erlanger and Galois as well as the opening paragraphs of Diamond Theory

Symmetry is often described as invariance under a group of transformations. An unspoken assumption about symmetry in Euclidean 3-space is that the transformations involved are continuous.

Diamond theory rejects this assumption, and in so doing reveals that Euclidean symmetry may itself  be invariant under rather interesting groups of non-continuous (and a-symmetric) transformations. (These might be called noncontinuous  groups, as opposed to so-called discontinuous  (or discrete ) symmetry groups. See Weyl's Symmetry .)

For example, the affine group A on the 4-space over the 2-element field has a natural noncontinuous and asymmetric but symmetry-preserving action on the elements of a 4×4 array. (Details)

(Version first archived on March 27, 2002)

Update of Sunday, February 19, 2012—

The abuse of language by the anonymous authors
of the above Wikipedia article occurs also in more
reputable sources. For instance—

IMAGE- Brading and Castellani, 'Symmetries in Physics'- Four main sections include 'Continuous Symmetries' and 'Discrete Symmetries.'

Some transformations referred to by Brading and Castellani
and their editees as "discrete symmetries" are, in fact, as
linear transformations of continuous spaces, themselves
continuous  transformations.

This unfortunate abuse of language is at least made explicit
in a 2003 text, Mathematical Perspectives on Theoretical
Physics 
(Nirmala Prakash, Imperial College Press)—

"… associated[*] with any given symmetry there always exists
a continuous or a discrete group of transformations….
A symmetry whose associated group is continuous (discrete)
is called a continuous  (discrete ) symmetry ." — Pp. 235, 236

[* Associated how?]

Logo

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:48 am

Pentagram design agency on the new Windows 8 logo

"… the logo re-imagines the familiar four-color symbol
as a modern geometric shape"—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120218-Windows8Logo.jpg

Sam Moreau, Principal Director of User Experience for Windows,
yesterday—

On Redesigning the Windows Logo

"To see what is in front of one's nose
needs a constant struggle."
George Orwell

That is the feeling we had when Paula Scher
(from the renowned Pentagram design agency)
showed us her sketches for the new Windows logo.

Related material:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120218-SmallSpaces-256w.gif

Friday, February 17, 2012

Pregeometry and Finite Geometry

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:35 pm

Today's previous post, on the Feb. 2012 Scientific American
article "Is Space Digital?", suggested a review of a notion
that the theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler called
pregeometry .

From a paper on that topic—

"… the idea that geometry should constitute
'the magic building material of the universe'
had to collapse on behalf of what Wheeler
has called pregeometry  (see Misner et al. 1973,
pp. 1203-1212; Wheeler 1980), a somewhat
indefinite term which expresses “a combination
of hope and need, of philosophy and physics
and mathematics and logic” (Misner et al. 1973,
p. 1203)."

— Jacques Demaret, Michael Heller, and
Dominique Lambert, "Local and Global Properties
of the World," preprint of paper published in
Foundations of Science  2 (1): 137-176

Misner, C. W., Thorne, K. S. and Wheeler, J. A.
1973, Gravitation , W.H. Freeman and Company:
San Francisco.

Wheeler, J.A. 1980, "Pregeometry: Motivations
and Prospects," in: Quantum Theory and Gravitation ,
ed. A.R. Marlow, Academic Press: New York, pp. 1-11.

Some related material from pure mathematics—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120217-Pregeometry_And_Geometry.jpg

Click image for further details.

Physics vs. Geometry

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:25 pm

Physics

The February 2012 issue of Scientific American 
has a cover article titled "Is Space Digital?".

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120217-IsSpaceDigital.jpg

The article discusses whether physical space
"is made of chunks. Blocks. Bits."

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

Geometry

The word "space" in pure mathematics
(as opposed to physics) applies to
a great variety of structures.

Some are continuous, some are not.

For some purely mathematical structures
that are not  continuous, (i.e., are made of
"chunks, blocks, bits") see finitegeometry.org/sc
in particular, the pages on Finite Geometry and Physical Space
and on Noncontinuous Groups.

The geometry of these structures may or may not eventually
be relevant to the "21st-century physics" discussed
in the February Scientific American.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Truth and Fiction

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 pm

Readings—

Midnight in the Garden

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

(Continued from February 10.)

A passage suggested by the T.S. Eliot epigraphs in
Parallelisms of Compete Designs , by a weblog post
of Peter J. Cameron yesterday, and by this journal's
"Within You Without You" posts—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120215-Campbell-InnerOuter.jpg
— Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space:
     Metaphor as Myth and as Religion ,
New World Library,
     Second Edition, St. Bridget's Day 2002, page 106

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A Job for St. Valentine

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:01 am

Maureen Dowd's NY Times  column today is on exorcism.

Related material— This morning's update at the end of 
yesterday morning's Valentine's Day post Notable Transitions.

See also another post for St. Valentine — The Ninth Configuration.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Ninth Configuration

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:01 pm

The showmanship of Nicki Minaj at Sunday's
Grammy Awards suggested the above title, 
that of a novel by the author of The Exorcist .

The Ninth Configuration 

The ninth* in a list of configurations—

"There is a (2d-1)d  configuration
  known as the Cox configuration."

MathWorld article on "Configuration"

For further details on the Cox 326 configuration's Levi graph,
a model of the 64 vertices of the six-dimensional hypercube γ6  ,
see Coxeter, "Self-Dual Configurations and Regular Graphs,"
Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.  Vol. 56, pages 413-455, 1950.
This contains a discussion of Kummer's 166 as it 
relates to  γ6  , another form of the 4×4×4 Galois cube.

See also Solomon's Cube.

* Or tenth, if the fleeting reference to 113 configurations is counted as the seventh—
  and then the ninth  would be a 153 and some related material would be Inscapes.

Notable Transitions

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:37 am

This morning's New York Times  gives a folklorist's
view of The Great Gatsby

"Daisy Buchanan, he argued in a 1960 article,
is a Jazz Age incarnation of the beautiful,
seductive Fairy Queen of Celtic lore."

— Margalit Fox, obituary of Tristram P. Coffin,
     who died at 89 on January 31st, 2012

See also…

Two screenshots in memory of fashion and fine-art photographer
Lillian Bassman, who died yesterday at 94—

IMAGE- Model Coco Rocha with poster of the film 'Hanna'

Update of 10:10 AM EST Wed., Feb. 15, 2012… 

In memory of Dory Previn, a song for "Hanna" and "Lord of the Rings" star Cate Blanchett.

Previn died yesterday, on Valentine's Day.  Perhaps an inspiration for a lyric by  Leonard Cohen?

Monday, February 13, 2012

Why Now?

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:01 pm

From the 2011 film "Hanna"—

Marissa: Why now, Erik? 
Erik: Kids grow up. 

From the 50th Anniversary Edition
(January 31, 2012) of A Wrinkle in Time

(Click to enlarge.)

IMAGE- Charles Wallace and Calvin O'Keefe discuss sports.

Ms. Lincoln

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:44 pm

Suggested by a USA Today  story on last night's Grammy ratings,
by the showmanship of Nicki Minaj, and by…

IMAGE- NY Times obit for 'Ms. Lincoln'

"Lincoln was one of many singers influenced by Billie Holiday." Wikipedia

Related material—

"Apart from that, Ms. Lincoln…"

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Noon

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

See Cullinane College and The Lovely Bones.

Rhetorical Answer

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:30 am

NOW ENJOY BRILLIANT COLLEGE COURSES
IN YOUR HOME OR CAR!

The sun was burning down….

There was a trembling in the air as the unnamed colors
and landforms took on definition, a clarity of outline and extent….

This is where we sat through his hushed hour, a torchlit sky,
the closeness of hills barely visible at high white noon.

— DeLillo, Don, Point Omega 

Midi là-haut, Midi sans mouvement 
En soi se pense et convient à soi-même… 
Tête complète et parfait diadème, 
Je suis en toi le secret changement.

— Valéry, Paul,  "Le Cimetière Marin"

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

— Darío, Rubén, "Los Tres Reyes Magos"

Rhetorical Question

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

IMAGE- NY Times Sunday Review- 'The Great Courses' ad and 'Who's King Of Pop Now?'

Click for more.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Sports

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:24 pm

"News and Traffic. Sports and Weather. These were his acid terms
for the life he’d left behind, more than two years of living with
the tight minds that made the war. It was all background noise,
he said, waving a hand. He liked to wave a hand in dismissal."

— DeLillo, Don (2010-02-02), Point Omega 

Send in the Clowns.   (Click to enlarge.)

Grids

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:17 pm

See Notes for a Haiku.

Related material—

A novel published on Groundhog Day, 2010—

IMAGE- 'Point Omega' by DeLillo

— as well as Conceptual Art, Josefine Lyche's
"Grids, You Say?" and The Speed of Thought.

Friday, February 10, 2012

24 Hour Psycho

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 pm

From "Kill Bill: Vol. 1"—

The Bride: [Japanese] I need Japanese steel. 

Related material —

Yodogawa, 1982 (see yesterday evening's Psycho) and…

See also this afternoon's 5:01 post.

Pensée

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 5:01 pm
 
Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Politics

 m759 @ 9:16 PM

"Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one?"

 Wislawa Szymborska

See also the two previous posts,
Disturbing Archimedes and Tesseract.

Related material—

See also At the Still Point (a post in memory of film editor Sally Menke).

Garden of Good and Evil

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 pm

(Continued)

Related material: The Thing Itself and Tombstone.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Psycho

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 pm

Psychophysics

See …

  1. The Doors of Perception,
  2. The Diamond Theorem,
  3. Walsh Function Symmetry, and
  4. Yodogawa, 1982.

Related literary material—

Enda's Game  and Tesseract .

ART WARS continued

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 1:06 pm

On the Complexity of Combat—

(Click to enlarge.)

The above article (see original pdf), clearly of more 
theoretical than practical interest, uses the concept
of "symmetropy" developed by some Japanese
researchers.

For some background from finite geometry, see
Symmetry of Walsh Functions. For related posts
in this journal, see Smallest Perfect Universe.

Update of 7:00 PM EST Feb. 9, 2012—

Background on Walsh-function symmetry in 1982—

(Click image to enlarge. See also original pdf.)

Note the somewhat confusing resemblance to
a four-color decomposition theorem
used in the proof of the diamond theorem

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Beach Boy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:59 pm

(Continued from March 28, 2006, and February 6, 2012)

Paris—

Sylvia Beach and James Joyce at Shakespeare and Company

See also Walking into Eternity.

Old Sport

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 pm

From yesterday's Random Walk

IMAGE- Wallace Stevens, Collected Poems, page 474- 'An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,' Canto XIII
Followup—

IMAGE- NY lottery midday Wed., Feb. 8, 2012- 474, 1922

"Oh, hello, old sport."

The Great Gatsby

Lichtung!

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

(Continued from Dec. 5, 2002)

IMAGE- NY Times: 'For Romney, Night Goes from Bad to Worse,' by Ashley Parker and Michael D. Shear

From Bad…

Shear

Braucht´s noch Text?

To Verse—

lichtung

manche meinen
lechts und rinks
kann man nicht
velwechsern.
werch ein illtum!

by Ernst Jandl

Sequel

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

The Eighth  Seal

IMAGE- Regensburg Mass of Pope Benedict XVI

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Zip Enter Get a Quote

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:48 am

IMAGE- Top of NY Times obits page, morning of Feb. 7th, 2012, with ad saying ZIP [ENTER] GET A QUOTE

Okay… http://m759.net/wordpress/?p=16365.

See also last night's  11:48 post and Erin Burnett in "Glad Rags."

Random Walk

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:48 am

New York Lottery, evening of 
Monday, February 6th, 2012:
558 and 0608.

See also posts  558 and 0608.

IMAGE- An Ordinary Evening in New Haven, Canto XIII, by Wallace Stevens

Barcelona

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:31 am

Continued from Saturday, February 4th, 2012.

Click images for further details.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Straight Talk

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:48 pm

Tonight's TV, in brief—

AUDITION:

At 10, Smash. At 11, Erin Burnett OutFront (repeat).

Beach Boy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:18 pm
 
Cached from artnet.com
     
Artist   Daniel Simon
Title   Yves Montand et Catherine Deneuve
dans Le Sauvage, Bahamas
Medium   gelatin silver print
Size   11.8 x 15.7 in. / 30 x 40 cm.
Year   1975 –
Edition   1/10
Misc.   Signed, Stamped
Sale Of   Ader: Monday, October 20, 2008
[Lot 140]
Paris – Célébrités II
Estimate   300 – 400 EUR (USD 403 – 537)
Sold For   *
* Complete data is available for subscribers.

In memory of a dealer in artists' ephemera, 
Steven Leiber, who died on January 28, 2012
a link to a post from the date of Leiber's death—

The Sweet Smell of Avon.

See also Me and My Shadow, a post from
the date the above photo was offered for sale.

Related ephemeral art— a post titled, with irony,
Introduction to Harmonic Analysis.

Related non -ephemeral art—
Mathematical Imagery.

Savage Logic

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

(Continued)

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Quaternion Day

m759 @ 12:00 PM

Brightness at Noon continued

i2 = j2 = k2 = ijk = -1

– Sir William Rowan Hamilton,
   
Oct. 16, 1843

See also this journal on 1/09, 2010.

This post was suggested by the date
of a user comment in Wikipedia.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Cuber

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:15 pm

(Continued from January 11, 2012)

Noon and…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Finality indeed.

Sermon Highlight

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:30 am

From last night—

Kristen Wiig as Kristen Del Rey

"Here was finality indeed,
 and cleavage!" — Malcolm Lowry

Sunday Morning

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 am

CBS Sunday Morning 's piece on
the number pi  today suggested…

Hexagram 20, Contemplation/View,
from the website Rightreading.com

Saturday, February 4, 2012

“X”

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:00 pm
 
   Click to enlarge

See also Theology as Grammar.

Ein Satz

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

 

4 × 5 =  ̲2̲0̲  .

 

Related material—

The link "Ten is a Hen"
in today's 10 AM post, and
Carl Schoettler on Barbara Wilson's
novel Gaudi Afternoon

"She's told a detective story without violence,
murder, mayhem, massacre, or even explicit sex
although there are a couple of sly double entendres.
She pays an homage to Dashiell Hammett
when Cassandra tells the gay saxophonist
 she's Brigid O'Shaughnessy.
Brigid O'Shaughnessy, of course, is the woman
Sam Spade won't play the sap for
in 'The Maltese Falcon.'"

Judy Davis, shown above in
"One Against the Wind," was the star
of the film version of Wilson's novel.

Cock Tale (continued)

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 am

The late Ben Gazzara as Jackie Treehorn
in "The Big Lebowski"—

Jackie Treehorn Presents

Ten is a Hen .

Der Einsatz

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

See the title phrase and Ice 9 in this journal.

Office Visit

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:03 am

From the screenplay of "The Number 23"—

INT. NATHANIEL'S INSTITUTE, STAIRWELL – NIGHT

Agatha climbs a dark staircase. Layers of dust

testify to years of neglect.

INT. 3RD FLOOR CORRIDOR – CONTINUOUS

Agatha finds ROOM 318. A rusting door plaque reads,

"DR. SIRIUS LEARY, M.D. PSYCHIATRY."

For related material, see "Leary + Cuernavaca" and "Prime Cut."

Happy belated 2/3 birthday to Walter Sparrow.

Related material— Two other occurrences of "318" in this journal—
in another horror story, "The Sweet Smell of Avon,"
and in a quote from the Feast of St. Nicholas, 2010

"When Novelists Become Cubists," by Andre Furlani—

"A symbol comes into being when an artist sees that
it is the only way to get all the meaning in.
Genius always proceeds by faith" (312).

The unparaphrasable architectonic text
"differs from other narrative in that the meaning
shapes into a web, or globe, rather than along a line" (318).

[The references are to page numbers in
 Guy Davenport's The Geography of the Imagination .]

Friday, February 3, 2012

Souvenir

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:35 pm

A phrase from today's noon post—

"Le souvenir de ce célèbre orateur"—

a souvenir

— and a song.

Unusual Suspects

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"… 'Mes chers frères, n'oubliez jamais,
  quand vous entendrez vanter le progrès des lumières,
  que la plus belle des ruses du diable
  est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas!'

     Le souvenir de ce célèbre orateur
nous conduisit naturellement vers le sujet des académies,
et mon étrange convive m'affirma qu'il ne dédaignait pas,
en beaucoup de cas, d'inspirer la plume, la parole et la conscience
des pédagogues, et qu'il assistait presque toujours en personne,
quoique invisible, à toutes les séances académiques." 

— Baudelaire, "Le Joueur Généreux"

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Rien de Rien*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:45 pm

Click to enlarge:

In memory of the longtime co-editor of Series A  of the
Journal of Combinatorial Theory , who died on January 12th,
2012, here is a link to a Log24 post of that date.

* For the title, see January 19th.

Die Nichtung

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"It seems that Hilbert had no taste for philosophers….
Hans Rademacher told this reviewer that, after Heidegger
once lectured in Göttingen, Hilbert gleefully repeated
to everyone the phrase "Das Nichts nichtet die Nichtung ."

— Gian-Carlo Rota, Discrete Thoughts , 2nd ed., p. 233

Die Lichtung

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:30 am

See January 4th, 2012.

(This link resulted from an application of Heidegger's
philosophy of "the opening" and "the shining" (Die Lichtung ).)

See also The Shining of May 29.

Update of 12:19 AM Feb. 3, 2012—
The undated (but cached by Google on January 4th, 2012)
unsigned post from a deleted weblog linked to above as
"an application" is also available in a version that is signed
(but still undated).

The Opening

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:33 am

From ShiftLock in this journal—

"Philosophy knows nothing of the opening."
— Heidegger

See also a post of September 25, 2009,
and a film whose opening was on that date.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Politics

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , — m759 @ 9:16 pm

"Should we arbitrate life and death
at a round table or a square one?"

Wislawa Szymborska

See also the two previous posts,
Disturbing Archimedes and Tesseract.

Update—

IMAGE- Nobel-Prize-winning poet dies on St. Bridget's Day, 2012

Disturbing Archimedes

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:01 pm

Princeton University Press on a book it will publish in March—

Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of
Mathematics and Narrative

"… brings together important thinkers in mathematics,
history, and philosophy to explore the relationship
between mathematics and narrative.
  The book's title recalls the last words of the great
Greek mathematician Archimedes before he was
slain by a Roman soldier— 'Don't disturb my circles' …."

Related material—

Archimedes's Vicious Circle

IMAGE- Archimedes's measurement of the area of a circle (by sharply pointed triangles)

IMAGE- The Mouth of Truth in 'Roman Holiday'

Powered by WordPress