Log24

Related adcraft — "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"
became, for the U.S. market, "… and the Sorcerer's Stone."

The New York Times  today—
 "Reality and our perception of it are incommensurate…."

The above New York Times Wire  item from 3:35 PM ET today
mentions two topics touched on in today's earlier Log24 post
Bowling in Diagon Alley— magic (implied by the title) and
incommensurability. The connection in that post
between the two topics is the diagonal  of a square.

The  wire item shows one detail from a Times  illustration
of the linked article— a blindfolded woman.

Another detail from the same illustration—

Hands-on Wand Work

See also remarks on Magic in this journal and on Harry Potter.

I dislike both topics.

A remark from the prepared text of Salman Khan,
who spoke at the MIT commencement today—

"I always tell people that MIT is the closest
thing to being Hogwarts— Harry Potter’s
wizarding school— in real life."

A detail from one computer's view of
the webcast of the commencement—

Time elapsed (from the start
of the browser's window, not  
from the start of the webcast) 

This suggests a look at the date  11/27—

Click on St. Patrick's for further details.

* See June 6, 2007.

Death Flight

Lord Voldemort (in French vol de mort meaning “flight of death” or “steals of/in death,” in Portuguese volta da morte meaning “return from death”) made his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

— Wikipedia folk etymology; corrected, but may still contain errors.

Related material: Yesterday’s entries and the remarks from Porto Alegre, Brazil, quoted here on January 25, 2005.

Death Flight

Lord Voldemort (vol de mort meaning “flying in death,” or “steals of/in death”, or, more likely, ‘death flight’ in French. volta de morte in portuguese means return from the dead) made his debut in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
— Wikipedia

Magic

“I really don’t believe in magic. I believe in some kinds — the magic of imagination and the magic of love.”

— J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter’s creator,
June 26, 2003

Amen, Sister.

Harry Potter
and the Fairy Queen

Lest the incautious reader gain the impression from yesterday’s entry “The Real Hogwarts” that Christianity is anything other than a pack of damned lies, or that the phrase “oasis of civilisation” I used yesterday was meant otherwise than with tongue in cheek, I would like to nominate a well-known professional Christian liar as Queen of the Fairies this Midsummer Eve.

The reader is referred to

The Good Book:
Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart,

by the Rev. Peter Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard and pastor of that institution’s Memorial Church.

The Rev. Gomes, an acknowledged homosexual, gave a commencement address recently wearing a gorgeously red academic gown.  This comported well with his contention that the real heroine of “Through the Looking Glass” was not Alice, but the Red Queen.  The reason?  The Red Queen, Gomes says, could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.  Apparently this is a virtue in Christian Morals, at least at Harvard.

For a RealOne video of Gomes’s address, click on the link below:

The Red Queen

(Actually, the queen who discusses “six impossible things” in Chapter 5 of Through the Looking Glass is the White Queen, but clergymen never let a little detail like truth stand in their way.)

The Order of the Phoenix

Some links of interest
on this day of Potter-mania:

The Royal Order of the Phoenix

Knight’s Gold Cross
 With Swords

awarded to
Arthur Edmonds,
Royal New Zealand Engineers,
attached to Special Operations Executive and parachuted into occupied Greece
1 October 1941,
serving with Greek guerrillas.

St. James Church Cemetery,
Kerikeri, New Zealand

In Loving Memory of
 Arthur Edmonds
who died June 20th,
1914, aged 88 years:

Logos

 Logo,
Anglican Diocese
of Auckland


Logo,
Catholic Diocese
of Phoenix

See also Cullinane College.

— Me and Frodo Down by the Schoolyard

Great Simplicity

Today

is the day that Daisetsu Suzuki attained satori,
according to the Zen Calendar.  “Daisetsu” is
said to mean “Great Simplicity.”

For those who prefer Harry Potter and
Diagon Alley, here is another calendar:

To Have and Have Not

Those who prefer traditional Western religions may like a site on the Trinity that contains this:

“Zen metaphysics is perhaps most succinctly set forth in the words ‘not-two.”  But even when he uses this expression, Suzuki is quick to assert that it implies no monism.  Not-two, it is claimed, is not the same as one.*  But when Suzuki discusses the relationship of Zen with Western mysticism, it is more difficult to escape the obvious monistic implications of his thinking.  Consider the following:

We are possessed of the habit of looking at Reality by dividing it into two… It is all due to the human habit of splitting one solid Reality into two, and the result is that my ‘have’ is no ‘have’ and my ‘have not’ is no ‘have not.’  While we are actually passing, we insist that the gap is impassable.**”

*See: Daisetz T. Suzuki, ‘Basic Thoughts Underlying  Eastern Ethical and Social Practice’ in Philosophy and Culture — East and West: East-West Philosophy in Practical Perspective, ed. Charles A. Moore (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1968), p. 429

** Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki, Mysticism Christian and Buddhist (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957, Unwin paperback, 1979), p. 57.

Personally, I am reminded by Suzuki’s satori on this date that today is the eve of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  I am also reminded by the rather intolerant tract on the Trinity quoted above that the first atomic bomb was exploded in the New Mexico desert at a test site named Trinity.  Of course, sometimes intolerance is justified.

Concluding unscientific postscript:

On the same day in 1896 that D. T. Suzuki attained satori,
lyricist Ira Gershwin was born.

Dies irae, dies illa.