Log24

An essay linked to here on the date of Kuhn’s
death discussed the film “Good Will Hunting”:

“You can be sure that when an experienced movie director
like Gus Van Sant selects an establishing shot for the lead
character, he does so with considerable care, on the advice
of an expert.”

Establishing shots —

1. From a post of January 29, 2014:

2. From a post of April 12, 2011:

Parting shot —

From another post of January 29, 2014:

Note Watson‘s title advice.

“Orson Scott Card offers a Christmas gift to his millions of fans
with A War of Gifts …. The War over Santa Claus will force
everyone to make a choice.”  — Publisher’s description

” ‘Peace on Earth, good will toward brats,’ said Peter. ”
— Orson Scott Card,  “Ender’s Stocking” in A War of Gifts

(Continued from this date two years ago)

"Hell is other people." —Sartre
"With a laugh track." —Cullinane

A sequel to Good Will Hunting and Hereafter—

The Emory Board

The Story Theory of Truth

“We have a need to tell ourselves stories
that explain it all. We use these stories to
supply the metaphysics, without which
life seems pointless and empty.”

– David Brooks, NY Times of Nov. 10

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's website has quotes on her soon-to-be-published novel 36 Arguments for the Existence of God—

"Hilarious"
"Savagely funny"
"Supremely witty"
"Rollicking"

Description of the novel–

"At the center: Cass Seltzer, a professor of psychology…."

Not to be confused with Professor Seltzer in Wanted  or characters in the films of Matt Damon–

Related material–

Stories and Metaphysics

“Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas– only I don’t exactly know what they are!…. Let’s have a look at the garden first!”

— A passage from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. The “garden” part– but not the “ideas” part– was quoted by Jacques Derrida in Dissemination in the epigraph to Chapter 7, “The Time before First.”

“‘For you… he… we aren’t meaning…’ She was almost stammering, as if she were trying to say several things at once…. Suddenly she gave a little tortured scream. ‘O!’ she cried, ‘O! I can’t keep up! it keeps dividing! There’s too many things to think of!'”

— A passage from Charles Williams’s The Place of the Lion, Chapter 12.

“He was thinking faster than he had ever done, and questions rose out of nothing and followed each other– what was to will? Will was determination to choose– what was choice? How could there be choice, unless there was preference, and if there was preference there was no choice, for it was not possible to choose against that preferring nature which was his being; yet being consisted in choice, for only by taking and doing this and not that could being know itself, could it indeed be; to be then consisted in making an inevitable choice, and all that was left was to know the choice, yet even then was the chosen thing the same as the nature that chose, and if not… So swiftly the questions followed each other that he seemed to be standing in flashing coils of subtlety, an infinite ring of vivid intellect and more than intellect, for these questions were not of the mind alone but absorbed into themselves physical passion and twined through all his nature on an unceasing and serpentine journey.”

— A passage from The Place of the Lion, Chapter 10.

“Do you like apples?“

— Good Will Hunting

A Date Which Will
Live in Infamy

Today’s saint’s day:
St. Ursula

Today’s birthday:
Ursula K. Le Guin

Today’s Scripture:

Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance

Chapter 20:

“Then, on impulse, Phædrus went over to his bookshelf and picked out a small, blue, cardboard-bound book. He’d hand-copied this book and bound it himself years before, when he couldn’t find a copy for sale anywhere. It was the 2,400-year-old Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. He began to read….

Phædrus read on through line after line, verse after verse of this, watched them match, fit, slip into place. Exactly. This was what he meant. This was what he’d been saying all along, only poorly, mechanistically. There was nothing vague or inexact about this book. It was as precise and definite as it could be. It was what he had been saying, only in a different language with different roots and origins. He was from another valley seeing what was in this valley, not now as a story told by strangers but as a part of the valley he was from. He was seeing it all.

He had broken the code.

He read on. Line after line. Page after page. Not a discrepancy. What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything.”

Annals of Education:

Eyes on the Prize

Dialogue from “Good Will Hunting” —

Will:    He used to just put a belt,
          a stick, and a wrench
          on the kitchen table
          and say, “Choose.”
Sean: Gotta go with the belt, there.
Will:   I used to go with the wrench.

 Location, Location, Location

See, too, Dick Morris on triangulation.

Highballs

“If you can bounce high,
bounce for her too….”
 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, epigraph to
The Great Gatsby

Magazine purchased at
newsstand May 14, 2003:

A Whiff of Camelot
as ‘West Wing’
Ends an Era

– New York Times,
 May 14, 2003

Song title from the
June Carter Cash album “Press On“:

“Gatsby’s Restaurant”

From The Great Gatsby, Chapter Four:

“Highballs?” asked the head waiter.
“This is a nice restaurant here,”
said Mr. Wolfsheim, looking at the
Presbyterian nymphs on the ceiling.

Presbyterian Nymph:

Mimi Beardsley, JFK playmate,
in the news on May 15, 2003 

On JFK’s plane trips:
“Whenever the President traveled,
members of the press staff traveled as well.
You always have a press secretary
and a couple of girls traveling….
 Mimi, who obviously couldn’t perform
 any function at all, made all the trips!”

Apparently there was some function….

“Don’t forget the coffee!”
– Punchline from the film
  “Good Will Hunting.”