Log24

Report to the
Joint Mathematics Meetings

“What was the lecture about,
Cosmo wanted to know.

‘It’s about solving equations
of the fifth degree,
which are supposed to be insoluble.'”

— Chapter 2 of
The Shadow Guests,
by Joan Aiken

For more material on insolubility
of fifth-degree equations
and on this winter’s
Joint Mathematics Meetings
(Phoenix, Jan. 7-10), see
the January 6 entry
720 in the Book.

For more material on Joan Aiken,
who died on January 4,
see the previous entry.

The number 720 is the order of
the symmetric group of degree 6.

For material related to
exceptional outer automorphisms
of this group and to
a song about Arizona, see

Skewed Mirrors.

Arizona Star:

“Shinin’ like a diamond
 she had tombstones
in her eyes.”

For the Man in Black

Lyrics:  Arizona Star

“Shinin’ like a diamond
 she had tombstones in her eyes.”

A picture: Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor

A book:  Dark Ladies, by Fritz Leiber

This offers a gentler form of the alcoholic experience than Malcolm Lowry’s classic Under the Volcano:

“I’ve had hallucinations from alcohol, too…. But only during withdrawal oddly, the first three days.  In closets and dark corners and under tables — never in very bright light — I’d see these black and sometimes red wires, about the thickness of telephone cords, vibrating, whipping around.  Made me think of giant spiders’ legs and such.  I’d know they were hallucinations — they were manageable, thank God.  Bright light would always wipe them out.”

— Fritz Leiber, “Our Lady of Darkness,” in Dark Ladies

Related entries:

The Feast of Kali, the Dark Lady, and

Architecture of Eternity,
my own “Once Upon a Time in Mexico.”

For a more serious Dark Lady portrait, see the site of artist John de la Vega.