In memoriam —
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Obit et Orbit …
Flashback
Related material —
“The message was clear: having a finite frame of reference
creates the illusion of a world, but even the reference frame itself
is an illusion. Observers create reality, but observers aren’t real.
There is nothing ontologically distinct about an observer, because
you can always find a frame in which that observer disappears:
the frame of the frame itself, the boundary of the boundary.”
— Amanda Gefter in 2014, quoted here on Mayday 2020.
See as well, in a post from the date of Hunter Thompson’s death :
“Today, February 20, is the 19th anniversary of my note
The Relativity Problem in Finite Geometry.”
Saturday, May 30, 2020
New Era of Space Exploration
See lowroad62.
“If you are a Scottish lord then I am Mickey Mouse!”
— The butler at Brunwald Castle (below).
The Stars and the Gutter
Friday, May 29, 2020
Where It Used to Be
"Looking for what was, where it used to be"
— Wallace Stevens, "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," I
"It Must Be Abstract," X
"X marks the spot" — Indiana Jones
Click the above image for a country song.
The May Queens
In remembrance of Else Blangsted and Nancy Stark Smith,
who each reportedly died on May 1, 2020 —
Posts tagged Mayday 2020.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Unity Game
“Old men ought to be explorers.” — T. S. Eliot
“Everybody’s lost but me!” — Young Indiana Jones, quoted
in a book review (“Knox Peden on Martin Hägglund”) in
Sydney Review of Books on May 26 . . .
” Here I am reminded of the words of
the young Indiana Jones alone in the desert,
decades before the Last Crusade:
‘Everybody’s lost but me.’ “
Related remarks — Now You See It, Now You Don’t.
Finite Geometry at GitHub
My website on finite geometry is now available
on GitHub at http://m759.github.io/ . The part
of greatest interest to coders is also at
https://repl.it/@m759/View-4x4x4#index.html .
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
In Search of the Diamond Chariot*
From an obituary in The New York Times today —
“After graduating from Oberlin in 1974 with a degree in dance
and writing, she studied meditation and Buddhism at what is
now the Buddhist-inspired Naropa University in Boulder, Colo.”
— Gia Kourlas, May 27, 2020, 11:23 a.m. ET
* For the chariot, see other posts tagged September Samurai.
Finite Jest
“No serious difficulty is encountered as long as one deals
with a domain consisting of a finite number of points only,
which can be ‘called up’ one after the other.” — Weyl
Background — The relativity problem in this journal.
Continental Taste-Envy
The title is a phrase by Kyle Smith, who writes with
considerable taste and little envy.
Then there is Rebecca Newberger Goldstein . . .
See as well Heidegger at Davos.
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Introduction to Cyberspace
Or approaching.
On the Threshold:
Click the search result above for the July 1982 Omni
story that introduced into fiction the term "cyberspace."
Part of a page from the original Omni version —
For some other kinds of space, see my notes from the 1980's.
Some related remarks on space (and illustrated clams) —
— George Steiner, "A Death of Kings," The New Yorker ,
September 7, 1968, pp. 130 ff. The above is from p. 133.
See also Steiner on space, algebra, and Galois.
Monday, May 25, 2020
Cyberface
(A sequel to D8ing the Joystick)
Adam Gopnik today in The New Yorker —
“In remote therapy sessions, with the loss of familiarly structured
therapeutic spaces, a kind of staring contest takes place.”
This journal on the above YouTube date — May 28, 2011 —
“Two things of opposite natures seem to depend
On one another, as a man depends
On a woman, day on night, the imagined
On the real. This is the origin of change.
Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace
And forth the particulars of rapture come.”
— Wallace Stevens,
“Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,”
Canto IV of “It Must Change”
Update of 5:45 PM ET —
The above May 28, 2011, Stevens quotation is from a post
titled “Savage Detectives.” A related image starring Sean Young —
D8ing Continues.
Mathematics and Narrative
Mathematics: This journal on September 1, 2011 —
Posts tagged September Morn.
Narrative: Also on September 1, 2011 —
See as well Nabokov’s Magic Carpet.
The Shimada Documents
(For Harlan Kane)
From Shimada’s notes on computational data at
http://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~shimada/
preprints/Edge/PaperEdge/compdataEdge.pdf —
“C24 is the list of codewords of the extended
binary Golay code C24. Each codeword is expressed
by a subset of the set M of the positions [1, . . . , 24]
of MOG.”
Sunday, May 24, 2020
A Lexicon of Operators
“If we ended Part 1 proud of our accomplishment—
perhaps even a little smug—then we will get reacquainted
with our humility in this article.” — Robert Jacobson
Related to the grammar of operators —
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Deep Dogma
“Far from making us revise our fundamentals and reform our thoughts,
major historical crises almost invariably reinforce our previous beliefs,
and make us entrench deeper into our dogma. ”
— Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker , May 1, 2020
See also Geometric Theology.
Structure for Linguists
"MIT professor of linguistics Wayne O’Neil died on March 22
at his home in Somerville, Massachusetts."
— MIT Linguistics, May 1, 2020
The "deep structure" above is the plane cutting the cube in a hexagon
(as in my note Diamonds and Whirls of September 1984).
See also . . .
Eightfold Geometry: A Surface Code “Unit Cell”
The resemblance to the eightfold cube is, of course,
completely coincidental.
Some background from the literature —
Friday, May 22, 2020
Surface Code News
From a paper cited in the above story:
“Fig. 4 A lattice geometry for a surface code.” —
The above figure suggests a search for “surface code” cube :
Related poetic remarks — “Illumination of a surface.”
Annals of Crystalline Beauty
The phrase “laborious cerebration” quoted in the previous post,
Sombre Figuration, suggests . . .
For an example of such cerebration, see Aitchison’s Octads.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Sombre Figuration
Duke University Press states above that …
“You do not currently have access to this content.”
But see…
Some less difficult rigor —
For some less sombre figurations, see the category in which Google
has placed (as above) a book by the late Harold Bloom —
Click the box to perform the indicated search.
The Dead and the Quick
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Scholarly History
On “emergence, institutionalization and (importantly) legitimation …
(with its resource allocation system and authority structure)” —
“It’s still the same old story.” — Song lyric
See as well other posts now tagged Raiding Minsky’s.
Something to Look At
Stephen Ornes in Quanta Magazine today —
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
Symbolic Mathematics Finally Yields to Neural Networks
“Another possible direction for the neural net to explore
is the development of automated theorem generators.
Mathematicians are increasingly investigating ways to
use AI to generate new theorems and proofs, though
‘the state of the art has not made a lot of progress,’
Lample said. ‘It’s something we’re looking at.’ “
As is Stephanie Dick.
A Queen of Fact*
The American Mathematical Society has noted the May 12 death
of Nancy D. Anderson. According to an unsigned May 14 obituary
in the Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, News-Gazette , Anderson was
“at the time of her retirement in 2000… one of the most respected
mathematics librarians of her generation.”
Related material (click to enlarge) —
* Phrase suggested by a Wallace Stevens poem. See May 12.
Monday, May 18, 2020
This about That…
Lifetime Achievement —
“Eugene Telemachus Rossides (his middle name was for the son of
Odysseus and Penelope in the Odyssey ) was born in Brooklyn on
Oct. 23, 1927.” —
Click the horse to search this journal for Trojan .
Sunday, May 17, 2020
“The Ultimate Epistemological Fact”
"Let me say this about that." — Richard Nixon
Interpenetration in Weyl's epistemology —
Interpenetration in Mazzola's music theory —
Interpenetration in the eightfold cube — the three midplanes —
A deeper example of interpenetration:
Aitchison has shown that the Mathieu group M24 has a natural
action on the 24 center points of the subsquares on the eightfold
cube's six faces (four such points on each of the six faces). Thus
the 759 octads of the Steiner system S(5, 8, 24) interpenetrate
on the surface of the cube.
Gran Torino
Source citation for an article quoted here last night —
“Hegel’s Conceptual Group Action” —
A check of that source yields the seal of the University of Torino —
Related material —
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Bullshit Studies
From https://www.mathunion.org/outreach/logos/versions-all-logos —
Click the logo for some IMU history.
Related bullshit —
“Hegel’s Conceptual Group Action” —
Click the banner below for the background of the logo —
Adventures on Prescott Street…
For a member of a 1960-1961 Harvard Freshman Seminar
at 8 Prescott Street —
Dusenbury’s study of color was published on June 9, 2015.
This journal on that date —
Annals of Intellectual History*
The date — Nov. 20, 2011 — of a post cited here last night
was suggested as follows. It was the opening date of a
Broadway show, “Seminar,” that later starred Jeff Goldblum.
Jeff Goldblum in “Seminar“
* See Intellectual History in this journal.
SPACE COMMAND
Friday, May 15, 2020
Review
Charles Taylor,
“Epiphanies of Modernism,”
Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self
(Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477) —
“… the object sets up
a kind of frame or space or field
within which there can be epiphany.”
See also Talking of Michelangelo.
Related material for comedians —
Literature ad absurdum —
Thursday, May 14, 2020
For Mask Aficionados
Saturday, September 17, 2016
|
For those who prefer comedy —
Other toys: Archimedes at Hiroshima and related posts.
Tournamonde
In memory of Wallace Stevens, a not-so-gay tournamonde —
Tony Award
"Tony Stark: That's how I wished it happened.
Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing, or BARF.
God, I gotta work on that acronym.
An extremely costly method of hijacking the
hippocampus to . . . clear traumatic memories. Huh."
Another acronym — AIEEE !
Art Issue*
"… the beautiful object
that stood in
for something else.”
— Holland Cotter quoting an art historian
in The New York Times on May 13
From a post of April 27, 2020 —
“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….”
— Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
The beautiful object —
Something else —
* The title is a reference to other posts now also tagged Art Issue.
Object
In memory of an art historian who reportedly died on May 6 —
What he loved about the art of the Baroque,
he told Ms. Soboleva, was that
“it was for a higher purpose.
It wasn’t just about the beautiful object;
it was the beautiful object that stood in
for something else."
— Holland Cotter in The New York Times
Related material:
The previous post and . . .
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
The Follower: A Short Story for Stephen King
“Mathematics may be art, but to the general public it is
a black art, more akin to magic and mystery. This presents
a constant challenge to the mathematical community: to explain
how art fits into our subject and what we mean by beauty.”
— Sir Michael Atiyah, quoted here on April 4, 2016
What is the vashikaran? – QuoraMar 17, 2015 – Vashikaran is a well-known term in the field of Tantra and Mantra. It is an ancient legacy Tantra and Mantra used to control someone’s mind. It is a tantrik process … |
Adventures in the Book Trade
Click the Springer “train of thought” advertisement below to enlarge.
A line for Stephen King:
“She gets the locomotive, I get the caboose.”
Cover Design: Will Staehle / Unusual Co.
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Mehta Physics
Epigraph to Fly and the Fly-Bottle:
Encounters with British Intellectuals ,
by Ved Mehta , remarks first published
in The New Yorker in 1961 and 1962 —
See as well the Wallace Stevens phrase “The Ruler of Reality.”
Monday, May 11, 2020
Finite Geometry at Harvard
Now at https://dataverse.harvard.edu —
Archived copy of finitegeometry.org/sc .
For some related remarks in a more literary vein,
see posts now tagged Beadgame Space.
Nietzsche for Comedians
See also Shangri-La and “At the Back of the North Wind .”
Update from the Times —
“Some things that happen for the first time….” — Song lyric
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Plato Again Thanks the Academy
Capilla
In memory of an architect who reportedly died yesterday at 88,
a search in this journal for capilla (Spanish for chapel).
Deschooling* M.I.T.
New York Times opinion yesterday from a professor at M.I.T. —
* For some background on Deschooling, see (for instance) . . .
Film Theory Love Call
From April 2, 2019 —
From this journal yesterday afternoon —
“The default sound for any new tweet is a whistle,
somewhere between a neighbourly ‘yoo-hoo’
and a dog-walker’s call to heel.” — The Economist
Saturday, May 9, 2020
Quicksilver* Meditation
Suggested by the previous post —
Tom Lamont in The Economist , June/July 2020 —
Recently, I saw that a person called Celine in San Francisco had tweeted to her 2,500-odd followers about the difficulty of “trying to date SF guys in between their week-long meditation retreats, Tahoe weekends, month-long remote work sessions…” About 4,000 people tapped to endorse the sentiment, launching Celine onto an exponential number of strangers’ screens, including my own. The default sound for any new tweet is a whistle, somewhere between a neighbourly “yoo-hoo” and a dog-walker’s call to heel. |
“Everybody, here comes the life of the party
Everybody, here comes the life of the party, yeah, she is.”
Songwriters: Ben Hayslip / Rhett Akins / Jason Sellers
See as well Life of the Party in this journal.
Synchronologists may consult posts of March 2015.
* ” This was Language herself , as she first sprang at Maleldil’s bidding
out of the molten quicksilver of the first star called Mercury on Earth,
but Viritrilbia in Deep Heaven.” ― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength .
Comedy Team: Tedious and Rigged
“Much of ‘Laurel Canyon’ proves tedious and rigged as it moves from Cambridge, where both Sam and Alex have graduated from Harvard Medical School, to California, where Sam will intern as Alex completes her doctoral thesis on the sex lives of fruit flies. — Malcolm Johnson in The Hartford Courant |
See as well this journal on the above Courant date — March 28, 2003 —
“Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like bananas.”
— Saying attributed to Harvard linguist Anthony Oettinger
Shrikhande Continues.
See also earlier posts mentioning Shrikhande in this journal.
He reportedly died on April 21, 2020.
Synchronologists may consult posts now tagged with that date.
Friday, May 8, 2020
Orthodox
In memory of a performer and historian of popular music
who reportedly died on April 19, 2020 —
Related material with an Easter theme —
See also posts in this journal related to March 11.
Production Values
From Log24 on August 30, 2013 —
Portrait, in the 2013 film Oblivion , of a 2005 graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art — London derrière. |
From a 2015 film viewed last night —
Moon Song
"Even when some parts of the show don’t feel like they’re working,
the production is always top notch and eye-popping. The score, too,
is top notch here, but it’s the use of Pink Floyd’s 'The Dark Side of
the Moon' that resonates most."
— Kevin Lever on the Westworld May 3 Season 3 finale
Image from Log24 posts tagged Spectral Valhalla —
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Happy Vesak
“The holiday goes by dozens of names — but many countries unofficially
refer to it as Buddha’s Birthday or Buddha Day. It celebrates three
important events of Buddha’s life: birth, enlightenment, and death —
said to have occurred on the same calendar day, albeit many years apart.”
— CNN
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
“Mathematics may be art, but to the general public it is
a black art, more akin to magic and mystery. This presents
a constant challenge to the mathematical community: to explain
how art fits into our subject and what we mean by beauty.”
— Sir Michael Atiyah, quoted here on April 4, 2016
Illustrations, from the American Mathematical Society Spring
2020 book sale, of a book scheduled to be published May 28.
Kant as Diamond Cutter
"He wished Kant were alive. Kant would have appreciated it.
That master diamond cutter."
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , Part III.
Kant's "category theory" —
"In the Transcendental Analytic, Kant deduces the table of twelve categories, or pure concepts of the understanding….
The categories must be 'schematized' because their non-empirical origin in pure understanding prevents their having the sort of sensible content that would connect them immediately to the objects of experience; transcendental schemata are mediating representations that are meant to establish the connection between pure concepts and appearances in a rule-governed way. Mathematical concepts are discussed in this context since they are unique in being pure but also sensible concepts: they are pure because they are strictly a priori in origin, and yet they are sensible since they are constructed in concreto . " — Shabel, Lisa, "Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/kant-mathematics/>. |
See also The Diamond Theorem and Octad.us.
Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Identity Problem
The phrase “problem of identity” in the previous post suggests a search
for other instances of the phrase. That search yields a talk by Andrei Rodin:
A later book by Rodin echoes Vladimir Arnold‘s remark
that “mathematics is a part of physics.” (Rodin is a Russian
who apparently worships at the Church of Scientism.)
The Rodin talk is dated 19 November 2012.
For some very different philosophical remarks, by poet
Wallace Stevens, see the Log24 posts of 19 November 2012.
“The Ship of Theseus”…
is a philosophical conundrum discussed this morning in the weblog of
David Justice.
A related statement of this “problem of identity,” from posts
in this weblog tagged “For Banff 2009” yesterday afternoon—
Remarks related to the ship of Theseus —
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Monday, May 4, 2020
May the Fourth
“This is not the Hartshorne you’re looking for.”
“Reality as a Social Process (1953) developed the ideas
that becoming, or process, is fundamental throughout
reality, and that all the things that become are interrelated.”
— From American National Biography
Related material —
The New York Times obituary of Madeline Faith Kripke
and Nietzsche on “becoming, or process.”