Log24

“Mazur introduced the topic of prime numbers with a story from Don Quixote in which Quixote asked a poet to write a poem with 17 lines. Because 17 is prime, the poet couldn’t find a length for the poem’s stanzas and was thus stymied.”

— Undated American Mathematical Society news item about a Nov. 1, 2007, event

Durga

In honor of a memorable date: “… a spectacular seventh-century figure of the Hindu goddess Durga, whose hip-slung pose and     voluptuous torso, as plush and taut as ripe fruit, combine the naturalism and idealism of the very finest Indian work.” —The New York Times “The Wu Li Masters know that physicists are doing more than ‘discovering the endless diversity of nature.’ They are dancing with Kali [or Durga], the Divine Mother of Hindu mythology.” –Gary Zukav, Harvard ’64

Veronica

“I think transformation becomes the main word in my life, transformation.

Because you don’t want to just put a mirror in front of people and say, here, look at yourself. What do you see?

You want to have a skewed mirror. You want a mirror that says, you didn’t know you could see the back of your head. You didn’t know that you could… almost cubistic, see all aspects at the same time.

And what that does for human beings is it allows them to step out of their lives and to revisit it and maybe find something different about it.” —Julie Taymor

Related material:

The previous two entries and
readings for the Feast of
the Triumph of the Cross
in 2006 and in 2003.