Log24

The opening lines of Eliot's Four Quartets —

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past."

Perhaps.

Those who prefer geometry to rhetoric may also prefer
to Eliot's lines the immortal opening of the Transformers  saga —

"Before time began, there was the Cube."

One version of the Cube —

See 4x4x4 in this journal.  See also …

In memory of the inventor of the Pascal programming language,
who reportedly died on New Year's Day, 2024, an image from
this journal on that date —

"Before time began, there was the Cube." — Optimus Prime

See as well a Pascal that some will prefer, and my own ACM card.

That card gives Warren, PA, as my location… which is no longer
always the case… but Warren is where I learned, and worked, in
computing, after a somewhat belated education in pure mathematics
in New York State.

Some personal background is suggested by…

• Yesterday's post on the words "sexadecimal" and "hexadecimal"
• The related word "sexagesimal," referring to base-60 numbering
• My high school class of 1960 —
  quod vide.

Epigraph for Cormac McCarthy —

From this journal on April 18, 2023 —

" NY Times  columnist's advice to the recent Harvard donor of $300 million —

'At least make them build you some weird pharaonic monument.' "

Illustration suggested by my own high-school library reading many years ago —

Click to enlarge:

"Before time began, there was the Cube." — Optimus Prime

Before time began . . .

A  question attributed to John Horton Conway
about configurations in his Game of Life —

"Indeed, is there a Godlike still-life,
one that can only have existed
for all time . . . . ?"

A simple answer … but not  from Conway's Game —

"Before time began, there was the Cube." — Optimus Prime

Related remarks:  Ogdoad.

"Before time began, there was the Cube." — Optimus Prime

See also Design Cube.

* According to The Wall Street Journal … and possibly also
    dead on October 11th,  according to The New York Times .

Also on February Seventh —

“Before time began, there was the Cube.”
— Hassenfeld Brothers cinematic merchandising slogan

Continues.

The previous post  displayed a photo from November 2014.

Remarks quoted here  in November 2014 —

“Before time began, there was the Cube.”
— Optimus Prime

John Horgan in Scientific American  magazine on October 8, 2019 —

"In the early 1990s, I came to suspect that the quest
for a unified theory is religious rather than scientific.
Physicists want to show that all things came from
one thing:  a force, or essence, or membrane
wriggling in eleven dimensions, or something that
manifests perfect mathematical symmetry. In their
search for this primordial symmetry, however,
physicists have gone off the deep end . . . ."

Other approaches —

See "Story Theory of Truth" in this  journal and, from the November 2019  
Notices of the American Mathematical Society . . .

"Before time began, there was the Cube." — Optimus Prime

The Finkelstein Talisman —

"Before time began, there was the Cube."

— Optimus Prime in "Transformers" (Paramount, 2007)
 

Wikipedia on Hasbro —

Three American Jewish brothers,^[6] Herman, Hillel, and Henry Hassenfeld^[7] 
founded Hassenfeld Brothers in Providence, Rhode Island in 1923 . . . .
 

The Hassenfeld Auction — 

Also on September 16, 2015 —

The Hindman Image —

The Hood Warenkorb —

Under the Hood —

Megan Fox in "Transformers" (2007) —

This Way to the Egress —

For the late Anne M. Treisman, who reportedly died Friday, Feb. 9:

From "A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention" —

"The controversy between analytic and synthetic theories
of perception goes back many years: the Associationists
asserted that the experience of complex wholes is built
by combining more elementary sensations, while the
Gestalt psychologists claimed that the whole precedes
its parts, that we initially register unitary objects and
relationships, and only later, if necessary, analyze these
objects into their component parts or properties. This view 
is still active now . . . ."

— Anne M. Treisman, University of British Columbia,
and Garry Gelade, Oxford University, in
Cognitive Psychology  12, 97-136 (1980)

"Before time began, there was the Cube." — Optimus Prime

The previous post, "Mind," suggests a search for "n+1" in this journal.
From that search —

The above psychoanalytic remarks suggest . . .

See also "Transformers" (2007).

"Before time began, there was the Cube."

— Optimus Prime

"Before time began, there was the Cube." — Transformers  (2007)

Plot summary — "An ancient struggle between two Cybertronian races,
the heroic Autobots and the evil Decepticons, comes to Earth, with
a clue to the ultimate power held by a teenager."

* A post suggested by J. D. Salinger's phrase "a fresh impetus"
  in "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" (1955)

"The deepest strain in a religion is
the particular and particularistic doctrine
it asserts at its heart,
in the company of such pronouncements as
‘Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.’
Take the deepest strain of religion away…
and what remains are the surface pieties — 
abstractions without substantive bite — 
to which everyone will assent
because they are empty, insipid, and safe."

— Stanley Fish, quoted here on July 3, 2007…
The opening date of the film "Transformers."

The opening pronouncement of "Transformers" —

"Before time began, there was the Cube."

Those who prefer Fish's abstractions  may consult 
the previous post.