Friday, December 24, 2021
For Your Consideration:
Sunny Side Down
Crossing Pico Boulevard from the site of the previous post —
♫ "I like to walk in the shade, with the blues on parade . . . ."
— Adapted from the great American songbook.
Thursday, December 23, 2021
Refrain
From Didion’s Play It As It Lays :
Everything goes. I am working very hard at
not thinking about how everything goes.
I watch a hummingbird, throw the I Ching
but never read the coins, keep my mind in the now.
— Page 8
From Play It As It Lays :
I lie here in the sunlight, watch the hummingbird.
This morning I threw the coins in the swimming pool,
and they gleamed and turned in the water in such a way
that I was almost moved to read them. I refrained.
— Page 214
Didion and her husand John Gregory Dunne
wrote the screenplay for the 1976 version of
"A Star is Born."
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
The Houghton Line
(Lily Houghton, that is, at the end of Jungle Cruise .)
(HORN TOOTS)
LILY — Ready for your first driving lesson?
FRANK — I think so, Pants.
LILY — I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into here, Frank.
FRANK — A car.
LILY — Oh, your jokes. They will be the death of me.
Related material: The previous post, Sunday's Woke Joke, this morning's
online New York Times obituary for a musical-comedy star, and a famous
song lyric detailing "where you'll find me."
Bluntly Articulated*
"Come find me when you wake up."
— Emily Blunt, not as Mary Poppins.
* The title is from the previous post.
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Raiders of the Inarticulate . . .
. . . Continues.
". . . thematic preoccupations with binaries
(free will and destiny,
fact and fiction,
conscious and unconscious,
desire and fear)
and with the overarching notion
that stories become real
when they profoundly stir
one’s heart and mind.
These elements aren’t dramatized
as much as bluntly articulated . . . ."
— Nick Schager, thedailybeast.com, Dec. 21, 2021
Square to Block
Related geometry . . .
Many, of course, have not yet mastered the square.
Related art . . .
See Object of Beauty.
Matrix 4 Meets Plan 9
Grid Language, Grid Logic
Monday, December 20, 2021
Blake’s Joke*
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand . . . . " — Blake
Two years ago on this date —
* Those who prefer entertainment may consult Laurie Blake.
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Signs and Symbols: Spell-a-Phone
Desargues, Galois, Veblen, and Young
This post was suggested by a review in the Jan. 2022
Notices of the American Mathematical Society :
My own sympathies are with Veblen.
For Doctor Sleep . . .
(A post suggested by the fictions of last night's post)
Friday, December 17, 2021
What Dreams May Come… continues.
For Harlan Kane:
The Rechtschaffen Avatar
In memory of dream researcher Allan Rechtschaffen,
who reportedly died at 93 on November 29, a story
concept by Stephen King:
"Then she realized she wasn’t actually seeing them at all.
They were projections. Avatars. And so was the huge telephone
they were circling."
— King, Stephen. The Institute: A Novel .
Scribner. Kindle Edition. Location 7120.
From a Log24 search,
"Signs and Symbols."
Group Actions
The above title might describe the long damned nightmare
that is the history of the human species, or — a usage I prefer —
a concept from pure mathematics. For an example of the latter,
see posts tagged Octad Group and the URL http://octad.group.
Thursday, December 16, 2021
Scholium on a Star Wars Joke
Overarching Story
Six uses of "overarching" in an Aeon essay today —
- "an overarching story of life"
- "the overarching themes of thresholds and energy flows"
- "the overarching stages of human history"
- "an overarching evolutionary perspective"
- "overarching directional development"
- "the overarching laws of science"
See also "overarching" in this journal.
Veritas
"You get right down to the naked truth
With those dirty, dirty looks" — Juice Newton (1983)
Search result for "Sandringham juice octads" —
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
The Illustrator
This post was suggested by Chapter Two, "The Sprite and the Synergist,"
of Alfred Bester's The Deceivers , and by . . .
Instagram, @theglassmagazine yesterday —
"Playing the character of Lisa, a typical
love triangle storyline unravels…."
Magical Mystical Writing on Glass
Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, May 25, 2017 —
"No one writes math formulas on glass.
That’s not a thing."
Notes on Lines
The triangle,
a percussion instrument
featured prominently in
the Tom Stoppard play
"Every Good Boy
Deserves Favour"
From Log24 posts tagged EGBDF —
Monday, December 13, 2021
The Dangling Triangle
Pretty
On the song "Different Drum" by the late Michael Nesmith:
"Ronstadt's version flips the gender references
in Nesmith's original lyrics, replacing 'girl' with 'boy'
when describing her lover, but still referring to him
being 'pretty'." — Wikipedia
Sunday, December 12, 2021
The Swinging
The obituary in the previous post mentioned an author, George Kubler,
who captured my attention at a Harvard Square bookstore in the early sixties.
Nostalgia trip —
"The rock might have been the earliest form of a hammer,
but it was improved when someone tied a handle onto the rock
so it would swing harder and faster."
— Wikipedia on The Shape of Time
The Shining of November 29th
See Log24 on November 29th, the birth date of storytellers
C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle.
A related obituary from today's online New York Times —
Related fictional character:
"Ecumenical Edwards"
in Exorcist II: The Heretic .
Saturday, December 11, 2021
News for Enthusiasts
"Enthusiasts of group theory or incidence structures may enjoy reading about Tits'
work, such as Tits buildings, the Tits alternative, the Tits group, and the Tits metric."
— Annie Rauwerda, Boing Boing reporter. See also Tits in this journal.
Memorial for an Unknown Artist
Related material: Smallfield.
Friday, December 10, 2021
Unhinged Melody
The time of the previous post was 4:46 AM ET today.
Fourteen minutes later —
"I'm a groupie, really." — Murray Bartlett in today's online NY Times
The previous post discussed group actions on a 3×3 square array. A tune
about related group actions on a 4×4 square array (a Galois tesseract ) . . .
Dance of the Lo Shu
The ancient Chinese matrix known as the Lo Shu
is one of 432 matrices equivalent under the action of . . .
The Lo Shu Group:
For related material, see (for instance) AGL(2,3) in . . .
"Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."
— Wallace Stevens
Thursday, December 9, 2021
Tune for a Matrix Dance
"… inextricably intertwined in the fate of the Matrix …."
See as well The Eddington Song in this journal.
(The "intertwining" part is at Sex Textiles (March 26, 2021).)
Lo Shu Space . . .
. . . is now at loshu.space. (Update on 10 Dec. — See also loshu.group.)
See as well GL(2,3) in this journal.
Wednesday, December 8, 2021
For the Dark Matter Holy Office of Philip Pullman —
The Big White Hashtag:
Tuesday, December 7, 2021
“Maybe this isn’t the story we think it is.”
Click for further details.
Memory and Desire… Continue.
Mutant Ninja Turtles Xmas by Kristine DeBell yesterday —
Wikipedia — "The Turtles are assisted by April O'Neil, who is variously
depicted as a news reporter, lab assistant or genius computer programmer."
From this journal in 2005 . . .
More recently in this journal . . .
Tortoise Variations
Fanciful version —
Less fanciful versions . . .
Unmagic Squares Consecutive positive integers:
1 2 3 Consecutive nonnegative integers:
0 1 2
Consecutive nonnegative integers
00 01 02
This last square may be viewed as
Note that the ninefold square so viewed
As does, similarly, the ancient Chinese
These squares are therefore equivalent under This method generalizes. — Steven H. Cullinane, Nov. 20, 2021 |
Monday, December 6, 2021
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Saturday, December 4, 2021
Baez and the Pink Lotus
Delphic Code
Log24 on this date — December 4th — in 2008:
"I named this script ocode and chmod 755'd it to make it executable…"
— Software forum post on the OCR program Tesseract
The New York Times at 7:55 PM ET today:
Short Story
"Better to give people space."
— Detail from a story by Greg Jackson, "The Hollow,"
dated November 22, 2021, in The New Yorker issue
dated November 29, 2021.
Friday, December 3, 2021
Art Memorial
Thursday, December 2, 2021
The Last Emperor
Something Old, Something New
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
“Probing Composer of Soundscapes”
Click for the soundscape "Nothing Is Real."
“Man’s Search for Meaning” — and Woman’s
“Show Details” — Art Pallets
Chrome Extensions
Bumper stickers for fans of the FAAR from respectable —
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
The Big X*
Memorial for an art critic who reportedly
died on November 12, 2021 —
* See a poem quoted here on November 12.
Diagonals for St. Andrew
From St. Stephen's Day 2016 —
The apparent symbols for "times" and "plus"
in the above screenshot are, of course, icons for
browser functions. Readers who prefer the
fanciful may regard them instead as symbols for
"a gateway to another realm," that of number theory.
Monday, November 29, 2021
Abstraction and Structure
For the mathematical properties of the vertical and horizontal
white grid lines above, see the Cullinane theorem.
Apophenia for Woit
Peter Woit is quoted in the previous post as saying that
"Deluding oneself by seeing deep connections
in unrelated events is a common human problem."
Namely . . .
The term occurred in a recent miniseries, "The Queen's Gambit,"
in dialogue by screenwriter Scott Frank. "Apophenia" is not in the
book of the same title, by the much better writer Walter Tevis.
The original version of the fictional LIFE Magazine interview —
The version by Scott Frank —
As for the phrase "an entire world of just 64 squares," also not in the book,
some mathematicians may recall the definition of impolite numbers .
The reader may supply his or her own impolite commentary.
November 29 …
… is the birth date of storytellers C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle.
Another perspective on this date —
In the context of mathematics, I prefer to think of it as Brosterman Day.
See, from last year on this date, Osterman Meets Brosterman . . .
and, more generally, Brosterman.
But seriously . . . LAST THOUGHTS ON DEVIL'S NIGHT :
Sunday, November 28, 2021
The Night Clerk’s Motto
From "Ready Player Meets the Night Clerk,"
a montage of 12 Aug. 2020 —
"Our credit manager is Helen Hunt. If you want credit…"
The Fermi Question
A fictional version of Turning Nine —
A bewildering phrase —"That famous lunch."
What famous lunch? This is the book's first
mention of Fermi.
Google solves the mystery —
Saturday, November 27, 2021
The Bito Obit
The New York Times reports a Nov. 14 death:
"He backed young musicians, especially those of
the Roma, a traditionally itinerant people . . . ."
This journal on Nov. 14 —
“Are you going to Barcelona?” — Sondheim, “Company”*
* In honor of Sondheim, recent posts are now
tagged with a phrase from a different show —
Send in the Clowns.
Cable
"SS refers to SuperSpeed,
a new transfer rate…"
And then there is USB,
the Universal Serial Bus . . .
From a post of 11/11, 2003.
Friday, November 26, 2021
“A Problem, a Difficulty, a Contradiction”
DOM
The title can mean the protagonist of the classic film "Inception"
or Document Object Model or Dirty Old Man. Related material:
Click the above image for related material.
Thursday, November 25, 2021
Saying Grace
Fire
"Faced with a larger surface than he had ever provided with facets,
in his desperation he had divided the diamond with imaginary lines,
treating each section as if it were a single small stone and arranging
the clusters of facets so they would interact with one another, as if they
were single facets in a smaller stone. What if the final result lacked fire?"
— Novel* by Noah Gordon, who reportedly died on Monday, Nov. 22.
*
German translation of an April 1, 1979, novel.
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Turning Nine Continues*
From Log24 on Epiphany 2012 —
A version of the Zemeckis Cube —
* See Turning Nine (Log24, Nov. 8, 2021).
“Ihn zu lieben war rot” — Taylor Swift
Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Monday, November 22, 2021
Ities* Icons
Details from yesterday's "Ities" image —
Some less abstract imagery —
* For James Joyce fans, a phrase suggested by the "ities" of the title —
Itty Bitty Titty Ditty.
Google reveals that this phrase was used as a poem title on
September 3, 2011 . . .
Some may enjoy seeking the significance of the poem's date .
Sunday, November 21, 2021
The Legend of the Disney Cheerleader
1 2 3 4
who are we for?
Lying at the Axis: A Meditation for Phaedrus
The title is from yesterday's 8:19 PM post.
An image from yesterday's 12:31 PM post —
What happens when the Logies meet the Ities ?
A clue . . .
Saturday, November 20, 2021
A Saturday Evening Post
" Lying at the axis of everything, zero is both real and imaginary. Lovelace was fascinated by zero; as was Gottfried Leibniz, for whom, like mathematics itself, it had a spiritual dimension. It was this that let him to imagine the binary numbers that now lie at the heart of computers: 'the creation of all things out of nothing through God's omnipotence, it might be said that nothing is a better analogy to, or even demonstration of such creation than the origin of numbers as here represented, using only unity and zero or nothing.' He also wrote, 'The imaginary number is a fine and wonderful recourse of the divine spirit, almost an amphibian between being and nonbeing.' "
— A footnote from page 229 of Sydney Padua's |
Some context: A search in this journal for Lovelace.
Compelling Options
The previous post suggests a followup . . .
The Times's obnoxious phrase "compelling options" suggests a review of . . .
And that’s why they call it . . .
The Unmagicking
Unmagic Squares Consecutive positive integers:
1 2 3 Consecutive nonnegative integers:
0 1 2
Consecutive nonnegative integers
00 01 02
This last square may be viewed as
Note that the ninefold square so viewed
As does, similarly, the ancient Chinese
These squares are therefore equivalent under This method generalizes. — Steven H. Cullinane, Nov. 20, 2021 |
Shining On
From the above Rock obituary —
"One friend, whom he had met early in his time
at Cambridge, was Syd Barrett of the band Pink Floyd."
See as well "Crazy Diamond" in this journal.
Friday, November 19, 2021
Fields of Consciousness
"If I'd been out 'til quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?"
Thursday, November 18, 2021
Secret Math!
"… let’s stick to the math that gets our hot dogs to match our buns."
— https://www.quantamagazine.org/
the-secret-math-of-hot-dogs-and-buns-20211118/
<meta property="article:published_time"
content="2021-11-18T10:31-05:00" />
The Cruelest Month, 1976 Version
A favorite rabbit hole —
"She looked at my palm and she made a magic sign,
She said 'What you need is Love Potion #9.' "
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
The Comedian as the Letter C
For the November Man: 3205
Wrap Party
Monday, November 15, 2021
Dating
From a search in this journal for the right stuff —
A date which will live in _________________ . . .
Desert Elegy
Above: Instagram profile image,
Georgia O’Keeffe with Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1945.
Below: Instagram image of art by the late Etel Adnan.
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Greek-Letter Structures
Α, ϴ, Ω
Related line:
Also from a Culture Desk of sorts:
Related art — Background colors for the letters in the NPR logo —