Related material in this journal: See Euphoria and The Idol .
Update of 9:42 AM ET Nov. 16 —
Monday, November 13, 2023
Deadline News
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Saturday, January 8, 2022
Nah, I think I’ll skip Deadline.
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Sunday, August 4, 2024
MacGuffin Variations
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Saturday, May 25, 2024
Seattle Build
From The Harvard Crimson , "Atlas to the Text," on March 8, 2011 —
See as well the new Atlas on Netflix —
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Wednesday, April 3, 2024
For a Dead Playwright (and Dr. Yen Lo):
I Ching Meets Cha-Ching
Amazon order for Here in the Dark: A Novel by Alexis Soloski,
author of today's New York Times obituary for a playwright
who reportedly died last night ——
Update at 12:03 PM ET Wednesday — From April 1 . . .
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I Ching Meets Cha-Ching
I Ching Meets Cha-Ching
Aesthetics from The New York Times :
“High Art and Low Humor”
Report of a Tuesday death:
For another such mixture, see yesterday's posts
now also tagged Art Humor.
"Always with a little humor." — Dr. Yen Lo
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“High Art and Low Humor”
“High Art and Low Humor”
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Sunday, July 23, 2023
Friday, June 16, 2023
Opening on Bloomsday (in LA and NY)*
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Friday, April 7, 2023
Nightmare Gresham
… And then there is Gresham College —
Film script adapted from the Gresham novel Nightmare Alley —
Update of 4:04 PM ET —
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Wednesday, November 2, 2022
The Plot
"Principal photography has begun in Croatia
on the action thriller Canary Black , starring Kate Beckinsale
and Rupert Friend (Anatomy of a Scandal )."
"The film’s plot follows a top CIA operative, Avery Graves
(Beckinsale)…. Cut off from her team, she turns to her
underworld contacts to survive and help locate the
coveted intelligence that the kidnappers want."
[Croatia , underworld , and coveted intelligence links added.}
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Monday, October 10, 2022
The 10/10 Business
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Saturday, August 27, 2022
Lullaby 86
In memory of a founder of MCC Theater:
A musical rendition of the ending of the classic
1947 E. B. White short story
"The Second Tree from the Corner."
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Monday, June 13, 2022
The Theater Game
FLOYD GONDOLLI:
"Jack, I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you
stay one step ahead of the game."
JACK HORNER:
"We’re going in circles now, but we’re in familiar territory."
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Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Sunday, February 6, 2022
Ringing the Changes
In memory of Hale Trotter, a mathematician who reportedly
died at Princeton, N.J., on Jan. 17, 2022.
Other perspectives —
“The carnival is an incredibly close-knit, hermetic society.”
— Guillermo del Toro, director and co-writer of
the new remake of "Nightmare Alley"
Dialogue from that remake —
STAN — How do you ever get a guy to geek?
CLEM — Oh- I ain’t going to crap you up. It ain’t easy.
"There is such a thing as a four-set."
— Saying adapted from a 1962 young-adult novel
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Sunday, January 16, 2022
O’Hara vs. West
"You see, Malloy, I'm writing a novel about Los Angeles….
It's a fantastic place, you know, Malloy…. It has a Spanish name,
with religious Roman Catholic connotations…. And yet, Malloy,
consider this: the really fantastic thing about it is that it's the
crystallization of the ordinary, cheap ordinary American.
The people. The politics. The cults…. And I'm going to put it
in a book…."
— Hope of Heaven, by John O'Hara (1938)
The Malloy character perhaps represents O'Hara, and the
speaker in the passage above, Nathanael West. The planned
book is perhaps The Day of the Locust , by West (1939).
The opening of Miss Lonelyhearts , an earlier work by West —
|
The Miss Lonelyhearts of The New York Post-Dispatch (Are-you-in-trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. On it a prayer had been printed by Shrike, the feature editor.
“Soul of Miss L, glorify me. Although the deadline was less than a quarter of an hour away, he was still working on his leader. He had gone as far as: “Life is worth while, for it is full of dreams and peace, gentleness and ecstasy, and faith that burns like a clear white flame on a grim dark altar.” But he found it impossible to continue. The letters were no longer funny. He could not go on finding the same joke funny thirty times a day for months on end. And on most days he received more than thirty letters, all of them alike, stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie knife. |
This post was suggested by an obituary in tonight's online
New York Times and by the German nickname — Würger ,
in English: Shrike — of a WWII German fighter plane
mentioned in that obituary.
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Wednesday, January 5, 2022
The Casting Couch and the Killer Clown … Exclusive!
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Monday, December 27, 2021
“Sharp Objects” Director Dead at 58
"Jean-Marc Vallée has died suddenly at age 58."
See as well a post from Joan Didion's Dec. 5th birthday.
"You look in her eyes, the music begins to play"
— Eagles, "New Kid in Town"
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Tuesday, November 16, 2021
The Comedian as the Letter C
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Monday, November 15, 2021
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Hope
From a story about the May 2017 un-cancellation ot "Timeless" —
"The nation’s only hope is an unexpected team. . . ."
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Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Metaphor Those Blocks!
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Saturday, July 20, 2019
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Split
"My words say split, but my words they lie" — Bruce Springsteen
See a search for "Split" in this journal.
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Friday, May 10, 2019
I Ching g6
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Thursday, May 9, 2019
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Our Brand
From the subtitles of "Our Brand is Crisis" (2015) —
1357
01:07:58,242 –> 01:08:01,537
Uh, if you should feel something
during the interview, like an emotion…
1358
01:08:03,164 –> 01:08:07,251
If you have some tears,
could you just turn towards
1359
01:08:07,501 –> 01:08:08,836
the camera?
"Our Brand is Crisis" is set in La Paz, Bolivia. Related material —
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Monday, April 15, 2019
Friday, July 13, 2018
Segue for Harlan Ellison
From a Log24 post of March 13, 2003 —
|
"For many of us, the geometry course sounded the death knell — "Shape and Space in Geometry"
© 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved. |
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Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Professional Style
For an example of the admirable Schwartz style, see a recent letter.
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Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Child’s Play
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Friday, January 19, 2018
The Pentagram Papers
Jodie Foster in a Dec. 15, 2017, sketch with Stephen Colbert —
"People invest in and take ownership of brands,
and they wonder why the brand didn’t
ask their permission to change."
— Michael Bierut of Pentagram Design
in a Design Week article of Jan. 17, 2018
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Saturday, October 7, 2017
Broken Symmetries
From posts tagged Design Deadline —
A quotation from Lefebvre:
"… an epoch-making event so generally ignored
that we have to be reminded of it at every moment.
The fact is that around 1910 a certain space was shattered…
the space… of classical perspective and geometry…."— Page 25 of The Production of Space
(Blackwell Publishing, 1991)
This suggests, for those who prefer Harvard's past glories
to its current state, a different Raum from the Zeit 1910.
In January 1910 Annals of Mathematics , then edited at Harvard,
published George M. Conwell's "The 3-space PG (3, 2) and Its Group."
This paper, while perhaps neither epoch-making nor shattering, has
a certain beauty. For some background, see this journal on February 24, 2009.
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Friday, September 1, 2017
Harvey’s Tulips
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Monday, May 15, 2017
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Partner, Anchor, Decompose
See also a figure from 2 AM ET April 26 …
" Partner, anchor, decompose. That's not math.
That's the plot to 'Silence of the Lambs.' "
— Greg Gutfeld, September 2014
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Saturday, April 15, 2017
A Cinematographer Departs
In memory of cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who reportedly
died at 81 in Berlin on Tuesday evening, April 11, the first full day
of Passover, 2017.
From a New York Times description of his work —
"The sinuous shot, which shows people parting …
like the Red Sea. . . ." — Margalit Fox tonight
From Log24 on the reported date of Ballhaus's death:
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Friday, January 27, 2017
In Memory of Actor John Hurt
Hurt, who reportedly died today, played a purveyor
of magic wands in the Harry Potter series and also
Control in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
“In the original screenplay for the film adaptation
of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley muses that
Control had once told him that Howard Staunton
was the greatest chess master Britain had ever
produced. ‘Staunton’ later turns out to be the name
that Control used for the rental of his flat.”
— Wikipedia, Control (fictional character)
Related images —
Happy Chinese New Year.
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Friday, November 11, 2016
Westworld
The character who dies in the above scene was not
played by Robert Vaughn (also in the film), but by
Brad Dexter, who reportedly died on Dec. 12, 2002.
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Thursday, September 15, 2016
Metaphysics in Brooklyn
— Cover of a novel, Graveland
Cover: Night at the Brooklyn Bridge
"Francesco Joseph Barbaro was born in Brooklyn
on Dec. 18, 1927. His father was an Italian immigrant
fisherman who became a master butcher. His mother
was from Sicily. They lived in what became known as
Carroll Gardens, then fell on hard times and moved
to Red Hook and then to Bensonhurst. . . . ."
— Obituary in yesterday's online New York Times
by Sam Roberts
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Sunday, September 11, 2016
Night at the Brooklyn Bridge
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Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Relax, He Said
From the online New York Times this afternoon —
|
James Houghton, the founder and, until recently, the artistic director of the Signature Theater Company, one of Off Broadway’s essential nonprofit theaters and perhaps the nation’s leading safe house for playwrights, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 57. …. From 2006 until his death, he was director of the drama division at the Juilliard School, which was founded in 1968 … by John Houseman. Like Professor Kingsfield, the Harvard law scholar famously played by Houseman in the 1973 film “The Paper Chase,” the drama division was long known for its emphasis on discipline and for upholding rigorous standards that kept the pressure on the small number of students who were admitted after auditions. (In 2016 there 2,000 applicants for 18 spots.) Mr. Houghton altered the Juilliard audition process and is credited with relaxing the atmosphere of the program. …. “I don’t think there was anyone in the theater community more beloved than Jim,” the playwright Tony Kushner… wrote in an email …. — Bruce Weber |
Related theater — Child's Play.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Friday, March 18, 2016
The Stone…
of Woody Allen's philosopher …
"Deadline reports that Stone is finalizing a deal
to star in Maniac , a 30-minute television series with
her former Superbad castmate Jonah Hill.
The project, a dark comedy, will be directed by
True Detective alum Cary Fukunaga and is based
on a 2014 Norwegian series about a mental-institution
patient living out a fantasy life in his dreams."
See as well the previous post and Jews Telling Stories.
Update of 11:07 PM ET —
From Variety today — "Hill and Stone would also make their
TV producing debut as the two stars are attached to exec produce
with … Anonymous Content’s Michael Sugar and Doug Wald …."
"The problem is having a solid business plan and knowing what
you're doing, whether it's a movie, a TV series or a company."
— Steve Golin in The Hollywood Reporter , Sept. 4, 2013
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Monday, March 14, 2016
Sausage Party* Humor
On Seth Rogen —
"He has described his parents, who met in Israel
on a kibbutz, as 'radical Jewish socialists.' [a] "
* "The film will have its world premiere at the
South by Southwest Film Festival on March 14, 2016. [b] "
Notes from Wikipedia —
a. Patterson, John (September 14, 2007). "Comedy's new centre of gravity".
The Guardian (London: Guardian News and Media Limited).
b. D'Alessandro, Anthony (March 1, 2016).
"Sony Is Throwing A ‘Sausage Party’ At SXSW…". Deadline.com.
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Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Steam
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Sunday, May 3, 2015
Friday, January 9, 2015
Fourth Right
In memory of Rod Taylor, who
reportedly died at 84 on Wednesday,
the seventh day of 2015 —
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Friday, November 28, 2014
Words and Pictures
Continued from Finder (Sept. 23, 2014)
"I wrote another book!" — Harlan Kane
From an online NY Times obituary this morning :
"At Newsweek, Mr. Bernstein and other top editors
became known as the Flying Wallendas for
managing tasks on deadline with the seeming ease
of the famed trapeze artists. In a tribute, staff
members framed a circus poster of the high-wire
troupe and hung it in his office."
Wikipedia on Bernstein's son-in-law :
"Married to New York Times correspondent Nina Bernstein,
Huyssen is also a longtime friend of Nobel Prize-winning
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, and often hosts him when
the writer comes to the US. The two teach an undergraduate
class together at Columbia called 'Words and Pictures,'
which examines problems of visual representation in literature,
particularly theories of ekphrasis."
Ekphrasis for Bernsteins:
The Wonder Show of the World!
See also Miniature Prize —
"Rosebud."
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Go Figure
For Karl Pribram and Katherine Neville,
a sequel to this morning's Figural Processing —
See also Christmas 2013.
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Monday, February 3, 2014
Occupy Wall
Moss on the Wall (Continued)
Tom Cruise at the Vatican in Mission: Impossible III (2006) —
Starring Tom Cruise as Ezekiel Moss, "a mysterious drifter
with the divine ability to channel and physically inhabit
the spirits of the dead."
— The quote is from "Philip Seymour Hoffman
Project 'Ezekiel Moss' Will Not Be Sold In Berlin*"
at Deadline.com.
See also Hereafter + Damon in this journal, as well as
the upload date for the above clip: Oct. 6, 2011.
* Here "Berlin" refers to the upcoming
European Film Market, Feb. 6-14
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Friday, June 14, 2013
Amy’s Shadow
Why knows what evil lurks…? — The Shadow
Backstory: "Amy Adams" + Shadow in this journal.
Related material —
Amy Adams as Lois Lane:
In the new Amy Adams version, Superman's Smallville mom
is played by Diane Lane.
Lane also played George Reeves's sugar mommy
in the 2006 film Hollywoodland .
Ben Affleck and Diane Lane at the 2006 Venice Film Festival
premiere of Hollywoodland :
See, too, today's previous post, and Amy Adams as Lacey Yeager
in the yet-to-be-made film version of An Object of Beauty .
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Thursday, June 21, 2012
Lynch’s Wake
In memory of actor Richard Lynch, 76, who was found
dead at his California home on Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Lynch's last role was apparently as the Reverend John Hawthorne
in the upcoming film The Lords of Salem .
(For a post on some related theological territory, see this journal
on the date Lynch's body was found.)
Lords of Salem is the third film from Haunted Films,*
the first two being Paranormal Activity and Insidious .
For other tales of paranormal activity, see the Bible.
For a post in this journal from the Insidious release date,
see Mathematics Awareness Month (April 1, 2011).
See, too, related discussions of Finnegans Wake by
James S. Atherton in The Books at the Wake—
* At IMDb, Haunted Movies. See also Blumhouse Productions.
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Saturday, April 21, 2012
But Seriously…
From Deadline Hollywood—
A film producer's death "between Friday night and early Saturday morning,"
April 13-14, 2012—
| R.I.P. Martin Poll
By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Sunday April 15, 2012 @ 7:36 pm PDT Veteran movie and TV producer Martin Poll died between Friday night and early Saturday morning of natural causes at a care facility on the Upper Westside in New York City. He was 89. |
See also the post linked to on the afternoon of Friday the 13th of April—
"All the saints have powers." — Cardinal Marchisano.
Happy birthday, James McAvoy (at left below in X-Men: First Class ).
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Tuesday, December 13, 2011
A Leonardo Job
Requiem for a Hollywood market researcher—
See also a more detailed obituary.
For a tune related to Leonardo in memory of Farrell, see Hudson Hawk.
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Monday, July 25, 2011
The Game
Virginia Heffernan in Sunday's online New York Times—
"… In the past, information on paper was something to read. Bricks and mortar were a place to be. But, since the first appearance of the Web in 1990, we have come to accept that information in pixels is something to read— and also a place to be . That familiar and yet still jaw-dropping metaphor takes energy to maintain. The odd shared sense that there’s three-dimensionality and immersion and real-world consequences on the Web as in no book or board game— that’s the Web’s sine qua non. Hence, cyberspace . And 'being on' the Internet….
… The dominant social networks are fantasy games built around rigged avatars, outright fictions and a silent— and often unconscious— agreement among players that the game and its somewhat creaky conceits influence the real world…."
— "The Confidence Game at Google+"
"It's just another manic Monday
I wish it was Sunday
'Cause that's my funday"
— The Bangles
"Accentuate the Positive"
— Clint Eastwood, soundtrack album
for "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"
This journal on All Saints' Day, Sunday, November 1, 2009—
|
Suggested by the New York State lottery numbers on All Hallows’ Eve [2009]— 430 (mid-day) and 168 (evening)… From 430 as a date, 4/30— Beyond Grief and Nothing: A Reading of Don DeLillo , by Joseph Dewey, University of South Carolina Press, 2006, page 123: “It is as if DeLillo himself had moved to an endgame….” For such an endgame, see yesterday’s link to a Mira Sorvino drama. The number 168 suggested by the Halloween lottery deals with the properties of space itself and requires a more detailed exegesis… For the full picture, consider the Log24 entries of Feb. 16-28 this year, esp. the entries of Feb. 27 and the phrase they suggest— Flores, flores para los muertos. |
See also Pearly Gates of Cyberspace in this journal.
For flores para los muertos , see today's Times .
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Monday, July 18, 2011
Daimon Theory (continued)
Press Release — Los Angeles, July 18, 2011—
Former Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen is planning his return to series television in Anger Management , a new sitcom loosely based on Revolution Studios’ 2003 hit comedy feature of the same name….
… in the series inspired by the film… a mild-mannered, non-confrontational man is ordered to attend group anger management sessions led by a therapist who could probably use some anger management himself.
“I chose Anger Management because, while it might be a big stretch for me to play a guy with serious anger management issues, I think it is a great concept,” Sheen said.
See also Daimon in this journal.
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Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Review
The late Hillard Elkins, producer of the erotic review "Oh! Calcutta!" —
The Well Dressed Man with a Beard
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
If the rejected things, the things denied,
Slid over the western cataract, yet one,
One only, one thing that was firm, even
No greater than a cricket's horn, no more
Than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech
Of the self that must sustain itself on speech,
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,
Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,
Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:
The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,
The aureole above the humming house . . .
It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.
— Wallace Stevens, from Parts of a World , 1942
Elkins died on Wednesday, December 1, 2010.
From this journal on that date —
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Monday, October 4, 2010
Philosophy
For the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi—
Deadline
The above scene was suggested by Robert Langdon's
Harvard course on Symbology —
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Friday, February 27, 2009
Friday February 27, 2009
Time and Chance
continued
continued
Today's Pennsylvania lottery numbers suggest the following meditations…
Midday: Lot 497, Bloomsbury Auctions May 15, 2008– Raum und Zeit (Space and Time), by Minkowski, 1909. Background: Minkowski Space and "100 Years of Space-Time."*
Evening: 5/07, 2008, in this journal– "Forms of the Rock."
Related material:
A current competition at Harvard Graduate School of Design, "The Space of Representation," has a deadline of 8 PM tonight, February 27, 2009.
The announcement of the competition quotes the Marxist Henri Lefebvre on "the social production of space."
A related quotation by Lefebvre (cf. 2/22 2009):
"… an epoch-making event so generally ignored that we have to be reminded of it at every moment. The fact is that around 1910 a certain space was shattered… the space… of classical perspective and geometry…."
— Page 25 of The Production of Space (Blackwell Publishing, 1991)
This suggests, for those who prefer Harvard's past glories to its current state, a different Raum from the Zeit 1910.
In January 1910 Annals of Mathematics, then edited at Harvard, published George M. Conwell's "The 3-space PG(3, 2) and Its Group." This paper, while perhaps neither epoch-making nor shattering, has a certain beauty. For some background, see this journal on February 24, 2009.†
* Ending on Stephen King's birthday, 2008
† Mardi Gras
Comments Off on Friday February 27, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sunday February 22, 2009
Design at Harvard:
Natural or Unnatural?
From the Harvard Graduate School of Design–
Call for Entries: The Space of Representation
DEADLINE FEBRUARY 27, 2009 8PM EST
"According to Henri Lefebvre, the social production of space has three components: spatial practice, the representation of space, and the space of representation. The latter two are integral to both design and the review process."
Also according to Henri Lefebvre:
This is clearly nonsense.
It is also, like much else at Harvard,
damned Marxist nonsense.
I recommend instead
James Joyce on space —
Dagger Definitions
Comments Off on Sunday February 22, 2009