Log24

Sein Feld

1984 Janine

"But Angels love their own
And they're reaching out
    for you
Janine… Oh Janine
— Kim Wilde lyric,
    Teases & Dares album,
    1984, apparently about
    a British biker girl

"Logos means above all relation."
— Simone Weil,
    Gateway to God,
    Glasgow, 1982

"Gesang ist Dasein….
 Ein Hauch um nichts.
 Ein Wehn im Gott.
 Ein Wind."
— Not Heidegger but Rilke:
Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 3

Geometry and Theology

PA lottery May 14, 1998:
256
   
S₈  The group of all projectivities and correlations of PG(3,2).

The above isomorphism implies the geometry of the Mathieu group M₂₄.

"The Leech lattice is a blown-up version of
S(5,8,24)."
— W. Feit

"We have strong evidence that the creator of the universe loves symmetry."
— Freeman Dyson

"Mackey presents eight axioms from which he deduces the [quantum] theory."
— M. Schechter

"Theology is about words; science is about things."
— Freeman Dyson, New York Review of Books, 5/28/98

What is "256" about?

"In the middle of 1982 Janine there are pages in which Jock McLeish is fighting with drugs and alcohol, attempting to either die or come through and get free of his fantasies. In his delirium, he hears the voice of God, which enters in small print, pushing against the larger type of his ravings.  Something God says is repeated on the first and last pages of Unlikely Stories, Mostly, complete with illustration and the words 'Scotland 1984' beside it. God's statement is 'Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation.'  It is the inherent optimism in that statement that perhaps best captures the strength of Aladair Gray's fiction, its straightforwardness and exuberance."
— Toby Olson, "Eros in Glasgow," in Book World, The Washington Post, December 16, 1984