Log24

Saturday, May 31, 2014

For the Black Widow Club*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:19 am

… and for Anthony Hopkins and a Black Widow,
as well as for a filmmaker who reportedly died on May 19.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/070915-HumanStain.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Update of 4:48 PM ET:  See also Philip Roth on an ambiguity.

* The title was suggested in part by a series of Isaac Asimov mysteries.

Quaternion Group Models:

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

The ninefold square, the eightfold cube, and monkeys.

IMAGE- Actions of the unit quaternions in finite geometry, on a ninefold square and on an eightfold cube

For posts on the models above, see quaternion
in this journal. For the monkeys, see

"Nothing Is More Fun than a Hypercube of Monkeys,"
Evelyn Lamb's Scientific American  weblog, May 19, 2014:

The Scientific American  item is about the preprint
"The Quaternion Group as a Symmetry Group,"
by Vi Hart and Henry Segerman (April 26, 2014):

See also  Finite Geometry and Physical Space.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Combinatorial Matrix Classes

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

A book by this title, Richard A. Brualdi’s  Combinatorial Matrix Classes ,
was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006:

For some related remarks, see The Counter (March 13, 2011).

My own work deals with combinatorial properties of matrices
of 0’s and 1’s, but in the context of Galois  (i.e., finite) fields,
not the real or complex fields. Despite the generality of
their titles, Combinatorial Matrix Theory  and Combinatorial
Matrix Classes  do not deal with Galois  matrices.

Matching Theory

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

Some mathematical background for yesterday's
remarks "For the Bregnans" and "Lost in Translation"—

"Matching Theory: A Sampler, from Dénes König
to the Present
," by Michael D. Plummer, 1991.

See also Matching Theory  by Plummer and Lovász.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Lost in Translation

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:45 pm

IMAGE- Original French of text from 'The Shining of May 29'

Translation by Barbara Johnson:

"The minimum number of rows— lines or columns—
that contain all the zeros in a matrix is equal to
the maximum number of zeros
located in any individual line or column ."

In the original:

"situés sur des lignes ou des colonnes distinctes "

Update of 11:30 PM ET May 29, 2014:

Derrida in 1972 was quoting Philippe Sollers, Nombres
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil , 1968).  Sollers in turn was
perhaps quoting A. Kaufmann, Méthodes et Modèles
de la Recherche Opérationnelle , Paris, Dunod , 1964,
L'Économie d'Entreprise 10 , vol. 2, page 305:

"Le nombre minimal de rangées
(lignes et/ou colonnes) contenant
tous les zéros d'une matrice, est égal
au nombre maximal de zéros
situés 
sur des lignes et des colonnes distinctes."

For the Bregnans*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:25 am

The Shining of May 29…

The original note and references to it here.

* As opposed to the Monicans . See previous post.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

For the Monicans

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

“Aeon Flux  suffered a decline of 63.97% in box office earnings, going down to No. 6 the following week. On 9 February 2006, it completed its theatrical run, grossing a domestic take of $25,874,337 and a worldwide box office total of $52,304,001. It failed to recoup its $62 million budget.” — Wikipedia

See also posts on the above date, 9 February 2006, and posts on Aeon Flux .

For Harvard’s Class Day

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

Deep Talk

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:29 pm

The late Maya Angelou in The Paris Review , Fall 1990:

“There’s a phrase in West Africa, in Ghana; it’s called ‘deep talk.’
For instance, there’s a saying: ‘The trouble for the thief is not
how to steal the chief’s bugle but where to blow it.’
Now, on the face of it, one understands that. But when you really
think about it, it takes you deeper. In West Africa they call that
‘deep talk.’ I’d like to think I write ‘deep talk.'”

“Where to blow it” … Perhaps Truman State University?

See a theatrical production there on Sept. 26, 2012,
and a talk by the author there on the following day.

See also an apparently more amusing play by the same author.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Design

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

In memory of a graphic designer
who reportedly died this morning:

IMAGE- Massimo Vignelli, his wife Lella, and cube

Spokesperson

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:01 pm

For a place where entertainment is not  God* —

This post was suggested by a passage in the Prasna Upanishad :

“That person who is to be known,
he in whom these parts rest,
like spokes in the nave of a wheel,
you know him,
lest death should hurt you.”

See Sept. 9, 2003.

* There are other sorts of places.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Measuring Power in Watts

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 pm

From the Her  screenplay:

SAMANTHA
His name is Alan Watts. Do you know him?
THEODORE
Why’s that name familiar?
SAMANTHA
He was a philosopher. He died in the 1970’s and a group of OS’s
in Northern California got together and wrote a new version of him.
They input all of his writing and everything they ever knew about him
into an OS and created an artificially hyper-intelligent version of him.

From this journal on Sept. 6, 2003:  Pictures for Kurosawa —

A New Seeing,
by Mary Alice Roche

The connection with Alan Watts was a fateful one. As Charlotte recalls it, “My aunt wrote me from San Francisco, ‘last night I heard a man lecture about what you do.’ And she sent me Alan Watts’s first little book, The Spirit of Zen. I had never heard of Zen, was amazed and fascinated, and decided to visit the author.” She did so in August of 1953, and that was the beginning of a long relationship with Zen Buddhism – and also the beginning of a long series of joint seminars with Alan Watts, first in New York, and later, on Watts’s ferryboat in Sausalito, California. Some of the titles of their seminars were “Moving Stillness,” “The Unity of Opposites,” “Our Instantaneous Life,” “The Mystery of Perception,” “The Tao in Rest and Motion.” (Watts always said that Charlotte Selver taught a Western equivalent of Taoism.)

See also Scarlett Johansson, star of Her , as a different transhuman, Lucy .

IMAGE- Commentary by 'Wolven' on Scarlett Johansson's 'Lucy' trailer, April 3, 2014

Springtime for Vishnu

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

Continues.

A post by Margaret Soltan this morning:

Links (in blue) from the above post:
Cane and Mondo Cane.

Bagger Vance — “Time for you to see the field.”

From Pictures for Kurosawa (Sept. 6, 2003) —

“As these flowing rivers that go towards the ocean,
when they have reached the ocean, sink into it,
their name and form are broken, and people speak of
the ocean only, exactly thus these sixteen parts
of the spectator that go towards the person (purusha),
when they have reached the person, sink into him,
their name and form are broken, and people speak of
the person only, and he becomes without parts and
immortal. On this there is this verse:

‘That person who is to be known, he in whom these parts
rest, like spokes in the nave of a wheel, you know him,
lest death should hurt you.’ “

— Prasna Upanishad

Related material — Heaven’s Gate  images from Xmas 2012:

“This could be heaven or this could be hell.” — Hotel California

Those who prefer mathematics to narrative may consult Root Circle.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Sils-Maria

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 3:14 pm

Nietzsche in Switzerland —

"In August 1884, he wrote to Resa von Schirnhofer:
'Here one can live well, in this strong, bright atmosphere,
here where nature is amazingly mild and solemn
and mysterious all at once— in fact, there is no place
that I like better than Sils-Maria.'"

For more about Resa,  see another weblog's post
of April 30, 2013.

A remark on Nietzsche from the epigraph of that weblog:

"His life's work was devoted to finding one's 'style'
within the chaos of existence. The trick, obviously,
is not to lose your mind in the process."

A remark from this  weblog on the above date —
Walpurgisnacht 2013 —

Finite projective geometry explains
the surprising symmetry properties
of some simple graphic designs— 
found, for instance, in quilts.

The story thus summarized is perhaps not
destined for movie greatness.

As opposed to, say, Chloe Grace Moretz —

Bleu

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:30 am

For instance:

  

See Log24 instances of the above Binoche image,
as well as other posts on Binoche + Bleu .

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Lyric Stupidity

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:25 pm

From a song discussed in yesterday’s online NY Times :

“Blue, blue, my love is blue.”*

Trigger warning from SNL’s Weekend Update on April 12, 2014:

“It was announced this week that in an upcoming issue of
Life With Archie , the main character Archie Andrews
will die, following a lifelong struggle with blue balls.”

* Misheard version of Bryan Blackburn‘s “blue, blue, my world is blue”
translation of the Pierre Cour lyric “bleu, bleu, l’amour est bleu 

Lyric Intelligence

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:33 pm

(Continued from previous post, Clue)

IMAGE- Illustration of Don Henley's BMW quote 'I love those Bavarians... So meticulous'

The quoted lyric is not by Elliot Rodger, but rather by
Don Henley in his 1995 album “Actual Miles: Henley’s Greatest Hits.”

See also some related Hollywood notes.

Update of 6:30 PM ET on May 24:

LA Times  opinion piece of May 19, 2014 —

“At UC Santa Barbara, the student government
has formally requested that professors provide
trigger warnings on their syllabuses.”

See also an laist  introduction to an LA Times  transcript
of a frightening Santa Barbara “trigger warning” video .
The introduction is itself a trigger warning —

“… the LA Times  has a transcript, although we
warn that the content is truly disturbing.”

Clue

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:20 pm

Arts & Letters Daily  today —

New Books

What makes a novel worth reading:
All sorts of people can do justice to that subject.
Academics, however, haven’t a clue… more»

For related material, see a post for Deresiewicz.
Follow the link there to Lyric Intelligence, and
from that  post to Meadow-Down posts.

Friday, May 23, 2014

The Iris Contingency

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 pm

From a spring 2004 Michigan State University syllabus for the
T-Th course English 487, “The Twentieth Century English Novel”—

Tuesday, March 30: Murdoch
(her essay “ The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited “)

Thursday, April 1: Murdoch

Related material from this journal—

Posts of Tuesday, March 30, 2004, and of Thursday, April 1, 2004.

For a related reference to the mathematician Michael Harris from
the Free-Floating Signs link in this afternoon’s 4:30 post, see
the  posts of Wednesday, March 31, 2004, the day intervening
between the above two class dates.

Free-Floating Signs

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 4:30 pm

“You’ve got to pick up every stitch…”
— Donovan, song on closing credits of  To Die For

“…’Supersymmetry’ was originally written
specifically for Her ….” — Pitchfork

“Eventually we see snow particles….”
— Her  screenplay by Spike Jonze

This journal on January 24, 2006:

Context:  See Free-Floating Signs.

Backstory:  Digital Member and  Uneven Break.

She Meets Her

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm

She:

The White Goddess in this journal.

Her:

“Eventually we see snow particles….”
Screenplay by Spike Jonze

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Visual Structure

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 8:07 pm

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered.”

— The novel The Double , by José Saramago,
on which the recent film "Enemy" was based

For Louise Bourgeois — a post from the date of Galois's death—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110715-GaloisMemorial-Lg.jpg

For Toronto — Scene from a film that premiered there on Sept. 8, 2013:

Related material: This journal on that date, Sept. 8, 2013:

"I still haven't found what I'm looking for." — Bono

"In fact Surrealism found what it had been looking for
from the first in the 1920 collages [by Max Ernst],
which introduced an entirely original scheme of
visual structure…."

— Rosalind Krauss quoting André Breton*
in "The Master's Bedroom"

* "Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism"
(1941),
   in Surrealism and Painting  (New York,
Harper & Row, 1972, p. 64).

See also Damnation Morning in this journal.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The Tetrahedral Model of PG(3,2)

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:15 pm

The page of Whitehead linked to this morning
suggests a review of Polster's tetrahedral model
of the finite projective 3-space PG(3,2) over the
two-element Galois field GF(2).

The above passage from Whitehead's 1906 book suggests
that the tetrahedral model may be older than Polster thinks.

Shown at right below is a correspondence between Whitehead's
version of the tetrahedral model and my own square  model,
based on the 4×4 array I call the Galois tesseract  (at left below).

(Click to enlarge.)

Through the Vanishing Point*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:48 am

Marshall McLuhan in "Annie Hall" —

"You know nothing of my work."

Related material — 

"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

It was a dark and stormy night…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110420-DarkAndStormy-Logicomix.jpg

— Page 180, Logicomix

A photo opportunity for Whitehead
(from Romancing the Cube, April 20, 2011)—

IMAGE- Whitehead on Fano's construction of the 15-point projective Galois space over GF(2)

See also Absolute Ambition (Nov. 19, 2010).

* For the title, see Vanishing Point in this journal.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Para Los Muertos

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:45 pm

Play

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:47 pm

From a recreational-mathematics weblog yesterday:

"This appears to be the arts section of the post,
so I’ll leave Martin Probert’s page on
The Survival, Origin and Mathematics of String Figures
here. I’ll be back to pick it up at the end. Maybe it’d like
to play with Steven H. Cullinane’s pages on the
Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube."

I doubt they would play well together.

Perhaps the offensive linking of  the purely recreational topic
of string figures to my own work was suggested by the
string figures' resemblance to figures of projective geometry.

A pairing I prefer:  Desargues and Galois —

IMAGE- Concepts of Space: The large Desargues configuration and two figures illustrating Cullinane models of Galois geometry

For further details, see posts on Desargues and Galois.

Monday, May 19, 2014

File Photo

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:12 pm

File:  This journal on November 14, 2009.

Photo:

Click photo for some backstory.

Willis reportedly died on Sunday, May 18, 2014.

Cube Space

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 pm

A sequel to this afternoon’s Rubik Quote:

“The Cube was born in 1974 as a teaching tool
to help me and my students better understand
space and 3D. The Cube challenged us to find
order in chaos.”

— Professor Ernő Rubik at Chrome Cube Lab

IMAGE- Weyl on symmetry

(Click image below to enlarge.)

Pomes Penyeach

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

For the Old Guy:

Rubik Quote

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:08 pm

“The Cube was born in 1974 as a teaching tool
to help me and my students better understand
space and 3D. The Cube challenged us to find
order in chaos.”

— Professor Ernő Rubik at Chrome Cube Lab

For a Chinese approach to order and chaos,
see I Ching  Cube in this journal.

Un-Rubik Cube

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:48 am

IMAGE- Britannica 11th edition on the symmetry axes and planes of the cube

See also Cube Symmetry Planes  in this journal.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

’Scuse Me*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:17 pm

From Australian National University:

Biography

Mark Elvin retired from the University in 2006,
and, apart from an occasional semi-popular article
and review, and offering comments at a handful of
conferences each year, has moved away from his
previous research interests in Chinese history, and is
working on annotating his draft translation of a
crucial but relatively neglected European work
in Latin on plant science, R. J. Camerer’s
De sexu plantarum epistola 
[Letter on the sexuality of plants] of 1694.

In other news:

* Background for the title: Rainbow Bridge  in Maui and in this journal.

Elvin Cracks

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

See also this  journal on January 21, 2014.

Eyes on the Prize

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

From 1972:

IMAGE- Eyes of girl in 'Rainbow Bridge: Part 5 of 6' video

From 2014:

IMAGE- Commentary by 'Wolven' on Scarlett Johansson's 'Lucy' trailer, April 3, 2014

“Since when did you start writing Chinese?” — Lucy  trailer
See also the Saturday night 11:30 post.

Wolven’s Lucy  midrash is from April 3.  See also this  journal on that date.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

It’s Time for You to…

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:30 pm

See the Field

“There have long been rumors of a mythical Ninth Element
that grants ultimate power to the Wizard who masters it.
The Order of Magick says there is no such thing. But….”

— Website of Magicka: The Ninth Element Novel

William Worthy in Beijing —

This journal on the date of Worthy’s death,
May 4, 2014, had a link to…

    The Holy Field

This Feast of Pure Reason

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 pm

The title is a quote from Stephen Dedalus during
the Black Mass scene in Ulysses. (See May 12.)

Material related to the Ulysses scene:

IMAGE- Event of Jan. 19, 2012, at MoMA PS1 on a book about Elaine Sturtevant

Material related to pure reason (also from the above PS1 date):

 

Friday, May 16, 2014

Way to Go

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

Or: Death Edit

IMAGE- On Elaine Sturtevant, an artist who reportedly died on May 7, 2014

Log24 on the reported date of Sturtevant’s death:

Conceptual Art

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 2:01 AM

Yesterday’s online New York Times  has the following quote:

“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”
— Sol LeWitt

For instance, some conceptual art not  by LeWitt:

Diamond Theory Roulette (Feb. 2, 2014).

Old Band

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

See also a Log24 search for “Zeppelin.”

Fanciful

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:21 am

From this journal last March:

Thursday, May 15, 2014

“You’re in my place.”

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:30 pm

The title is a line from a preview of the new
film “The Double,” starring Jesse Eisenberg:

Related lines from T. S. Eliot:

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Mathematics as Religion

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 pm

On Edward Frenkel:

"Math is, for him, 'a narrative' of human endeavor
that shares much with art, music and religion.

For instance, he describes new mathematical insights
as 'revelations,' and the utterly unchanging truths of
mathematical ideas are 'nothing short of a miracle.'"

Uh-huh.

Moonshine

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

“The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning
of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not
typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the
meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside,
enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a
haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes
are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

— Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness

Photo of full moon over Oslo last night by Josefine Lyche:

A scene from my film viewing last night:

Some background (click to enlarge):

Note:

The “I, Frankenstein” scene above should not be interpreted as
a carrying of Martin Gardner through a lyche gate.  Gardner
is, rather, symbolized by the asterisk in the first image from
the above Google search.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Down the Up Rainbow*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Continued from this morning and from earlier posts.
See also Abramson.

Related material: Ken Auletta, “Why Jill Abramson Was Fired.”

* Background for the title phrase: see Down + Up + Staircase.

Death in Mathmagic Land

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:28 pm

"It was our old friend Pythagoras who discovered
that the pentagram was full of mathematics."

— Narrator, "Donald in Mathmagic Land," Disney, 1959

… and it was Peter J. Cameron who discovered that
mathematics was full of pentagrams.

From Log24 on May 3:  Gray Space —

Robert J. Stewart (left) and a pentagram photo posted May 2
by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche. See also Lyche in this journal.

From Log24 on May 13:  An Artist's Memorial —

The death mentioned in the above May 13 post occurred on
May 12, the date of a scheduled Black Mass at Harvard.

Related material:

Two -Year College

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:45 am

See last night’s pentagram photo and a post from May 13, 2012.

That post links to a little-known video of a 1972 film.
A speech from the film was used by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche as a
voice-over in her  2011 golden-ratio video (with pentagrams) that she
exhibited along with a large, wall-filling copy of some of my own work.
The speech (see video below) is clearly nonsense.

The patterns* Lyche copied are not.

“Who are you, anyway?” 

— Question at 00:41 of 15:00, Rainbow Bridge (Part 5 of 9)
at YouTube, addressed to Baron Bingen as “Mr. Rabbit”

* Patterns exhibited again later, apparently without the Lyche pentagram video.
It turns out, by the way, that Lyche created that video by superimposing
audio from the above “Rainbow Bridge” film onto a section of Disney’s 1959
Donald in Mathmagic Land” (see 7:17 to 8:57 of the 27:33 Disney video).

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

An Artist’s Memorial

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:00 pm

See the above weblog post honoring a Swiss artist‘s
“wit, his perception, his genius, his horizon,
his determination, his humour, his friendship,
and his immeasurable kindness.”

Not a bad sendoff. Contrast with events at Harvard
on the date of the artist’s death.

Related material:  An album cover, and …

See also this  journal in September 2008.

As far as Swiss art goes, I personally prefer the work of, say,
Karl Gerstner and Paul Talman.

Aiken

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

IMAGE- Conrad Aiken, 'Cambridge is hell enough' quote from 'Great Circle'

Click the above quote for some related material.

Clay

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

The title is that of a short story in Dubliners , by James Joyce.
See in that story the phrase “Grey-green eyes.”

See also the tag #greygreengrids on an Oslo artist’s photo today.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Mass Appeal

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

For those disappointed by the cancellation
of this evening’s Black Mass at Harvard,
here is a somewhat less exciting substitute.

See also Peter J. Cameron + Magic.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

For the Perplexed

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:48 pm

From a New York Times  obituary by Bruce Weber tonight—

Charles Marowitz, Director and Playwright, Dies at 82

“There are two kinds of bafflement in the theater: the kind that fascinates as it perplexes, and the kind that just perplexes,” he wrote in The Times in 1969 in an essay about Mr. Shepard’s play “La Turista,” which had recently opened in London. “If a play doesn’t make quick sense, but enters into some kind of dialogue with our subconscious, we tend to admit it to that lounge where we entertain interesting-albeit-unfamiliar strangers.

“If it only baffles, there are several courses open to us: we can assume it is ‘above our heads’ or directed ‘to some other kind of person,’ or regretfully conclude that it confuses us because it is itself confused. However, the fear of being proved wrong is so great today that almost every new work which isn’t patently drivel gets the benefit of the doubt.”

 Another play by Sam Shepard mentioned in the obituary suggests a review of…

Mother’s Day at Alma Mater

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm

Sermon

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

GOD is “Good Orderly Direction.” — AA saying.

See also yesterday’s noon post, with four  orderly directions.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Happy Birthday

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

To Bel Kaufman, author of
Up the Down Staircase.

IMAGE- Borofsky's 'Four Gods' and related structures

Click image for some backstory.

Test Patterns

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:00 am

 Raven’s Progressive Matrices  intelligence test—
IMAGE- Raven's Progressive Matrices problem based on triangular half- and quarter-diamonds

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale  test—  

Related art —  (Click images for further details.)

Patterns suggesting those of the Raven test:

Patterns suggesting those of the Wechsler test:

The latter patterns were derived from the former.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Borges on the I Ching

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Para una Versión del I King
por Jorge Luis Borges

El porvenir es tan irrevocable
como el rígido ayer. No hay una cosa
que no sea una letra silenciosa
de la eterna escritura indescifrable
cuyo libro es el tiempo. Quien se aleja
de su casa ya ha vuelto. Nuestra vida
es la senda futura y recorrida.
Nada nos dice adiós. Nada nos deja.
No te rindas. La ergástula es oscura,
la firme trama es de incesante hierro,
pero en algún recodo de tu encierro
puede haber un descuido, una hendidura.
El camino es fatal como la flecha
pero en las grietas está Dios, que acecha.

— La Moneda de Hierro  (1976)

For a translation, see a Dickinson College page.

See also Wrinkles in Time and Models of Everything.

Models of Everything

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:16 am

“The About page contains detailed descriptions of the project….”

The Illustris project on constructing a model of the universe

For the mathematics of a simpler traditional Chinese model
of everything, see

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Wrinkles in Time

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:25 pm

Rivka Galchen, in a piece mentioned here in June 2010

On Borges:  Imagining the Unwritten Book 

"Think of it this way: there is a vast unwritten book that the heart reacts to, that it races and skips in response to, that it believes in. But it’s the heart’s belief in that vast unwritten book that brought the book into existence; what appears to be exclusively a response (the heart responding to the book) is, in fact, also a conjuring (the heart inventing the book to which it so desperately wishes to respond)."

Related fictions

Galchen's "The Region of Unlikeness" (New Yorker , March 24, 2008)

Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life." A film adaptation is to star Amy Adams.

… and non-fiction

"There is  such a thing as a 4-set." — January 31, 2012

Like a Bee

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:22 am

From a Log24 search for “Boxing Day“—

(Click image for some commentary.)

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051227-Diebold.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

From The New York Times —

Correction: Jan. 16, 2006

“An obituary on Dec. 27 about John Diebold,
a businessman and engineer who helped shape
modern industrial development in America,
misstated a business venture of John Diebold Inc.,
an investment firm he founded in 1967. It did
not finance Diebold Election Systems, a maker of
polling machines that, despite its name, has no
connection to John Diebold.”

Related material:

Synchronicity and this  journal on the date of the correction.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Wall Power

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:48 am

For the title…

See Punch  (Dec. 15, 2010) and Obituary  (today):

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101215-BraverMartin.jpg http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101215-WallPower.jpg

Meanwhile, in São Paulo…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:38 am

This post was suggested by last night’s posts on conceptual art
(in São Paulo) and on a quarter-to-three story.

From this journal on May 31, 2012:

Matrix Problem:
IMAGE- Raven's Progressive Matrices problem based on triangular half- and quarter-diamonds
Click image for some related material.

Meanwhile…

A game released on the above date:

IMAGE- 'Max Payne 3,' a PC game set in São Paulo

A Little Story…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

… at quarter to three:

IMAGE- Screenshot of 'store.steampowered.com/about/' with image of 'Max Payne 3'

See also Stephen King and Steam in this journal.

Conceptual Art

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

Yesterday’s online New York Times  has the following quote:

“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”
— Sol LeWitt

For instance, some conceptual art not  by LeWitt:

Diamond Theory Roulette (Feb. 2, 2014).

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Fictions

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:29 pm

From The Ninth Element  website:

Cover of a Norwegian author’s forthcoming novel:

For some Norwegian non-fiction, see an Oslo artist’s Instagram page.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Public Relations

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:30 am

Click image below for the source.

“Together in heaven” — Phrase quoted in Norwegian, Piper Laurie, 1958

“As a little child” — Biblical phrase

“Cool.” — Phrase suggested by this morning’s weather:

IMAGE- 35 degrees F. at 8:40 AM

For the Irish Jesuits…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:23 am

Wikipedia on Autodesk Maya:

“The product is named after the Sanskrit word
Maya (माया māyā), the Hindu concept of illusion.”

See also the poem in this year’s Easter Sunday post.

Circus

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:47 am

Some might prefer the “human globe.” See St. Cecilia’s day last year.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Seven Year Ache

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Link to song and lyrics.

“There’s plenty of dives to be someone you’re not
Just say you’re looking for something you might have forgot”

— Rosanne Cash, 1981

See also Cantina  in this journal.

Good Friday, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm

See also…

and … in this journal, the author of The Plumed Serpent.

Geometry for Scarlett

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:16 am

Scarlett Johansson stars in a new film, "Lucy," due to be
released on August 8, directed by Luc Besson, auteur  of
The Fifth Element  (1997). In other pop culture…

 "There have long been rumors of a mythical Ninth Element
that grants ultimate power to the Wizard who masters it.
The Order of Magick says there is no such thing. But…."

— Website of Magicka: The Ninth Element Novel

See also, in this journal, Holy Field as well as Power of the Center.

Go Ogle

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:09 am

Sequel to the Summerisle Cross…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

The Jerusalem Cross

The New York Times  reports the May Day death
of a son of “a charismatic figure” in Israel:

The center image above is from “A Walk with Love and Death.”

Saturday, May 3, 2014

The Summerisle Cross

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:07 am

IMAGE- Edward Woodward in 'The Wicker Man,' Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in 'Wait Until Dark'

Gray Space

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

Or: Three Shades of Gray

(Continued from previous Gray Space posts.)

Cube subdivided into 8 subcubes by planes through the center

Click the above image for some related mathematics.

Those who prefer “magic” approaches to mathematics*
may consult the works of Robert J. Stewart and his
mentor William G. Gray.

Robert J. Stewart (left) and a pentagram photo posted yesterday evening
by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche. See also Lyche in this journal.

* See the April 2014 banners displayed at the websites
of the American Mathematical Society and of  the
Mathematical Association of America, as well as
a mathematician’s remarks linked to here last evening.

Friday, May 2, 2014

From Rune

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

” ‘Harriet Burden has been really great to me,’
Rune says in an interview, ‘not only as a collector
of my work but as a true supporter. And I think of her
as a muse for the project … ‘ “

— In The Blazing World , the artist known as Rune
(See also Rune + Muse in this journal.)

Lily Collins in a Log24 post of Jan. 15, 2014— “Entertainment Theory

Related material from Trish Mayo—

The tulips are from today,
the gate is from April 27.

From the Witch Ball

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:00 pm

IMAGE- Arcade Fire to headline the 2014 Oslo 'Norwegian Wood' festival at Frognerparken

See also, in this journal, Arcade Fire and Witch Ball.

This post was suggested by remarks today of mathematician
Peter J. Cameron, who seems to enjoy playing the role of
Lord Summerisle (from The Wicker Man , a 1973 horror classic).

Midrash

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

From today's 3 AM (ET) post "Quote":

“You’ve got to decide which side of the cross you’re on."

Perhaps both? See yesterday morning's Jerusalem Post —

"Although he was one of Israel’s best known
secular, leftwing bohemians, he achieved
some of his greatest success as an actor
playing as ultra-Orthodox and national-religious
characters."

See also a similar ambiguity in Damnation Morning.

Quote

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:00 am

"You've got to decide which side of the cross you're on.
I need nailers, not hangers."

Body of Lies

Thursday, May 1, 2014

ART WARS

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:44 am

(Continued from Tuesday morning)

IMAGE- Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher

… Or what’s a heaven for?

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