Log24

Von Weizsäcker reportedly
died sometime last night.

* A reference to this journal's
  final post from 2014.

The New York Times  this morning, in an
obituary for a maker of crossword puzzles :

"… the first known crossword puzzle appeared in
an American newspaper. (Called a 'word-cross'
and shaped like a diamond, it was published in
The New York World  on Sunday, Dec. 21, 1913.)"

See St. Nicholas  magazine, November 1874, p. 59 :

For the answer, see this  journal on Aug. 29, 2002
(with a scene from Spellbound ) and on July 15, 2004.

In memory of a dead poet —

"Relax," said the night man.
"We are programmed to receive."

* A phrase from a new book by mathematician
  Michael Harris, Mathematics without Apologies .

The Yale Daily News  on Sept. 9, 2014 —

Related material on "the hard problem" of consciousness—

Wikipedia on the problem, and Tom Stoppard's first new
play in nine years, "The Hard Problem."

See also, in this journal, the posts of Sept. 9, 2014, 
the date of the above Yale Daily News  story
"Research Suggests New Consciousness Hub."

The above scene from the new Stoppard play
suggests also a review of Kulturkampf for Princeton. 

    See also a tribute to Wang (a Yale math major).

Lest the links in the previous post be thought merely
"absurd, imbecilic or sarcastic" —

   John 1:5 .

See Devil's Bible, Early Nothing, and A Good Time.

Click on the image above for the LA Times  obituary of Charles Townes, inventor of the laser.

See also a statement at Adherents.com —

From: "'STATEMENT BY CHARLES HARD TOWNES 
At The Templeton Prize News Conference, March 9, 2005,'
posted on Templeton Prize official website"—

"Science and religion have had a long history of interesting interaction. But when I was younger, that interaction did not seem like a very healthy one. For example, when I was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, even my professor who was directing my research jumped on me for being religiously oriented. I myself have always thought that science and religion are not unrelated, and should be honestly and openly interacting. Later, in the early 1960s, I was at Columbia University and the men's group of Riverside Church, near Columbia, asked if I would talk to them about my views, since I was one of few scientists they knew who attended church. Surprisingly, a week after my talk someone telephoned to ask if he could publish my talk he had heard on the relation between science and religion. Of all things, he wanted to publish it in THINK magazine of IBM, of which he was editor. Shortly after that, the editor of the MIT Alumni Journal read it and also wanted to publish it in his journal, and did. But a prominent MIT alumnus wrote him that if he ever published anything like it again on religion, he would never have anything more to do with MIT. This of course only encouraged me to provide many other talks and articles on the subject as I was invited, but it reflected a common view at the time among many scientists that one could not be a scientist and religiously oriented. There was an antipathy towards discussion of spirituality."

See as well a post, American Activities, from the above-mentioned date— March 9, 2005— in this journal.

A passage relevant to that post from a review of the recent film  Predestination :

"By the end, even bad jokes and tired riddles come together in a giddy concatenation of thought and feeling. When a central character asks, 'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?' he answers for himself: 'The rooster.'  We learn that he’s not just being absurd, imbecilic or sarcastic. He’s presaging the movie’s existential triple whammies."

— "Deep Focus: Predestination," by Michael Sragow, Jan. 8, 2015

Or: Spectral Theory 
(continued from Oct. 2, 2013, and earlier)

A memorable phrase by Verity Stob
at theregister.co.uk on Jan. 26:

"… remember you're not just an emotionless Dalek.
You are in the lavender  band of the autistic spectrum."

See also lavender  in this journal…

("Dalek, Spacek.  Spacek, Dalek.")

Verity herself —

Verity's column, illustrated above, on Nov. 12, 2013,
was titled "Three Men in a Tardis."

Connoisseurs of synchronicity may consult my own
remarks on that date.  Three men discussed there
are the two X-Men patriarchs Patrick Stewart and 
Ian McKellen, as well as a more interesting character,
composer Sir John Tavener.

Columbia University physics writer Peter Woit dubbed
yesterday Snowpocalypse 2015 in New York City.

Woit used the day to ponder a new book by mathematician
Michael Harris, Mathematics without Apologies .

Related material: a search for Michael Harris in this journal.

That search includes…   

The above art includes an image of William Rubin,
former director of painting and sculpture at the
Museum of Modern Art. Rubin reportedly died on
January 22, 2006. See Log24 posts from that date.

Julianne Moore at the Screen Actors Guild awards
on Sunday evening:

"When I was 17, I decided I wanted to be
an actor. It didn't seem possible because
I'd never met a real actor," Moore said.
"So I want to say to all the kids in the
drama club, you guys are the real actors."

On the main character of the new film "Birdman"—

"Thomson is clearly talented, yet unable to get out of
the shadow of his superhero role. He is filled with
a simmering rage as Robert Downey Jr. appears
on the TV, arguably the highest profile actor alive
courtesy of a role in the Marvel films."

— Grant Pearsall at The Snapper

A midrash for Robert:

See The Stars My Destination and Cube of Ultron.

From a search for "snowflake" in this journal —

See also the January 13  death of a mathematician,
graph theorist Ralph Faudree of the University of Memphis.

Two hymns that may or may not be relevant:

Walking in Memphis and Come Falda di Neve,
the song that plays over the ending credits of
Exorcist III —

†

Those who prefer more-secular music may consult
Princeton Requiem, a post from the day of Faudree's death.

See the works of Christine Brooke-Rose.

"In the garden of Adding, 
 Live Even and Odd…."

– The Midrash Jazz Quartet
    in the novel City of God
    by E. L. Doctorow (2000)

From a search in this journal
for "Against Dryness":

See also the previous three posts.

* See the previous post's link Against Dryness.

(Continued.)

“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

Photo opportunity
for the late John Bayley and Iris Murdoch —

From a cartoon graveyard, in memory of
a British artist who reportedly died yesterday: 

Against Dryness —

Cartoon by Martin Honeysett

The Malfunctioning TARDIS continues…

The New York Times  this evening claims that
this is a photo from the Year of Our Lord 1970:

It clearly is not.  [See correction below.]

Related material: 

See the reference to 1970 in a post from last Saturday night
and an image from the 2002 film Minority Report :

Update to Log24 at 6:52 PM ET Jan. 21
copied from an earlier correction at the Times :

"… as though echoing the road's vanishing point
up ahead…." — Album review, 2002

See Vanishing Point in this journal.

See as well Rolling Stone  four days ago
on Stevie Nicks in 1976:

Keep in mind, the audience has
no idea who Stevie Nicks is.

Song: "1970," by The Stooges.

In memory of music pioneers Kim Fowley
and Ervin Drake, each dead on Jan. 15…

The street was deserted late Friday night
We were buggin' each other while
     we sat out the light….

Dead Man's Curve, it's no place to play
Dead Man's Curve, you best keep away

— Jan and Dean

Remarks from The Harvard Crimson
last October on a library visit —

Remarks today by Margaret Soltan 
(University Diaries , or UD )
of George Washington (GW) University 
on writing well —

Links to the above essays:  
Shields (Jan. 5, 2015),  Rothstein (Jan. 12, 2015)

Talk amongst yourselves.

Angel Eyes

See a YouTube video, uploaded on May 26, 2014,
of the Princeton Wildcats singing "Angel Eyes."

See also "Angel Eyes" and "Proginoskes" in this journal.

For Saturday Night Live  and Robert Stone:

Moss Wall.

See a search for "Robert Stone" in this journal.

From The New York Times  this morning:

"David Henry Marlowe was born in Brooklyn
on June 6, 1931, the youngest of three children
of Karl and Lena Marlowe, Jewish immigrants
from Russia and Ukraine. His father sold
insurance, among other things, and his mother
ran the household.

For a time, the couple had a 'mind reading' act
on the Coney Island boardwalk, and their son
never forgot it. 'I can’t read minds, like my
parents,' he liked to say to friends. 'What I can
read is behavior.'"

For the rest of the story, see Marlowe's obituary.
For synchronicity, see this journal on the reported
date of his death.

*  "I wrote another book." — Harlan Kane

Kylie Minogue
in “Moulin Rouge”

(An episode of Mathematics and Narrative .)

Mathematician Peter J. Cameron this morning 
on a Paris anthropological exhibition subtitled 
Révélation d’un temps sans fin —

"I was reminded of Herbert Read’s
novel The Green Child ."

Related recent posts from this  journal:

Seal for the Seventh, Forthright, and Fourth Right.

A passage from The Green Child : 

"He watched over her until he too began to feel
overpowered by a desire to sleep. He therefore
got out on to the ledge of the trough and pulled
the Green Child after him. The rock there was
warm, smooth as jade to the flesh. They lay there
and sank into a profound slumber."

Sweet dreams, Mr. Taylor.

Green Child on the Rocks —

Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 1941-2014

The noted historian of mathematics reportedly
died on December 12, 2014.

"His forthright style of operating meant
he could occasionally ruffle academic feathers."
— An acquaintance quoted today in
    Times Higher Education 

See a quote from Grattan-Guinness in this 
journal on April 19, 2004 ("Cartesian Theatre").

See Instantia Crucis and Josefine Lyche's
One-Night-Only exhibition in Oslo Jan. 5.

"Bercovitch’s first published article, in 1964, was on
'Dramatic Irony in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground ';
his second and his third, in 1965, on 'Romance and Anti-Romance
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ' and 'Three Perspectives on
Reality in Paradise Lost .' Only thereafter does his publication record
begin to reflect his interest in the vagaries of early American culture,
when he published in 1966 his essay, 'New England Epic:
Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana .'"

— "Scholar and Exegete: A Tribute to Sacvan Bercovitch,
Honored Scholar of Early American Literature," by
Christopher Looby

Bercovitch reportedly died at 81 on Dec. 9, 2014.
See his New York Times  obituary from this evening
as well as a passage from Nicholas of Cusa quoted
here, also on Dec. 9, 2014 —

Bercovitch was a professor at Harvard (an institution
apparently unable to state accurately the date of
his death). The translator of of the above Nicholas of
Cusa passage may, I surmise, have been my section
man in a freshman philosophy course at Harvard
in the academic year 1960-1961.

"The way which directs a pilgrim to a city
is not the name of that city." 
— Nicholas of Cusa

For some backstory, see Ajna in this journal
as well as Groundhog Day, 2014.

A search for antimetaphoric  yields…

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder."

See also other instances of "As It Were" in this journal.

A sequel to New Year's Greeting from Franz Kafka: