Log24

* See that title in this journal.

(Continued)

Beloved professor dies unexpectedly

"Wesson also said Cottier had 'an encyclopedic
knowledge of everything historical and archaeological,'
and that he lectured straight from memory using
storytelling as a teaching method. 

'He was absolutely the best lecturer that I've ever had,
spellbinding,' Wesson said. 'He would tell the most
amazing narratives, and the one thing that I could say,
that I've said to a couple of people today, is he was the
closest thing to a real Indiana Jones that there ever will be.
He lived an extraordinary life, just absolutely unusual
in every way and was unafraid of anything. He was the
most fearless person that I've ever met.'" 

See also Pawn Sacrifice (June 28, 2015).

(Continued)

At right above, a possible image of Queen Isabella I 
of Castile, attributed to Gerard David.

At left above, a Hollywood version.

Happy birthday to Chris Wallace and Hugh Jackman.

Related material: The Foot Configuration 
and Jews Telling Stories.

See also the epigraph to this morning's post Deconstruction —

"                          … Had they deceived us 
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?"

— Four Quartets

This year's Black Friday Prize for Literature went to…

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

On The Blazing World , a new novel —

“Hustvedt uses fragment-stories, frame narratives, and unreliable
narrators to talk about the ways in which brilliant women across
history have been silenced, forgotten, and appropriated by men.
This is a narrative suspicious of narratives, a story that
demonstrates how damaging stories can be.”

— Review by Amal El-Mohtar

The protagonist of Hustvedt’s novel is named Harriet Burden.

A midrash for Darren Aronofsky, director of The Fountain*  and Noah—

Part I: The Burden of Proof —

Part II: The Story of Noam —

* See The Fountain  in “The Story Theory of Truth,” Columbus Day, 2013

Readings—

• Facts Are Stupid (Dan Kois at Slate.com yesterday)
• Tim O'Brien Quotes (cached from Goodreads.com)
• The Story Theory of Truth
  

For fans of the story theory of truth…

A date from the FX channel tonight
at the end of the film "Man on Fire"—

December 16, 2003— 

Material linked to here on that date— Blue Matrices.

From the "Man on Fire" soundtrack—
Title: Una Palabra  (Carlos Varela)—

Una palabra no dice nada
y al mismo tiempo lo esconde todo ….

The 2004 film, set in Mexico, was based on a 1981 novel set in Italy.

The author of that novel reportedly died in Malta on July 10, 2005.

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

Proof by Osmosis

by Kenneth Chang in the
New York Times of April 6, 2004

“A rigorous proof, a notion first set forth by Euclid around 300 B.C., is a progression of logic, starting from assumptions and arriving at a conclusion. If the chain is correct, the proof is true. If not, it is wrong.

But a proof is sometimes a fuzzy concept, subject to whim and personality. Almost no published proof contains every step; there are just too many….

…. reviewers rarely check every step, instead focusing mostly on the major points. In the end, they either believe the proof or not.

‘It’s like osmosis,’ said Dr. Akihiro Kanamori, a mathematics professor at Boston University who writes about the history of mathematics. ‘More and more people say it’s a proof and you believe them.’….”

See also The Story Theory of Truth.

A Contribution to Trudeau’s
“Story Theory of Truth” —

Epic of the Chosen People:

After Forty Years
in the Wilderness,

The Winners Are…

Dallas, 1963:

Sam the Sham
“started his music career
in Dallas in the early sixties”
— The Pharaohs Discography

Leesville, La., 2003:

Forty years later,
Leesville to honor
“Wooly Bully” singer

The West Wing’s
Story Line

See also the “story theory of truth”
versus the “diamond theory of truth.”

Beware of…
Jews Peddling Stories:

An episode in the ongoing saga of the conflict between the "story theory of truth" and the "diamond theory of truth."

The following set of pictures summarizes some reflections on truth and reality suggested by the August 9, 2003, New York Times obituary of writer William Woolfolk, who died on July 20, 2003.

Woolfolk was the author of The Sex Goddess and was involved in the production of the comic book series The Spirit (see below).

The central strategy of the three Semitic religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — is to pretend that we are all characters in a story whose author is God.  This strategy suggests the following Trinity, based on the work of William Woolfolk (The Sex Goddess and The Spirit) and Steven Spielberg ("Catch Me If You Can").  Like other Semitic tales, the story of this Trinity should not be taken too seriously.

A Confession of Faith:

Theology Based On the Film
"Catch Me If You Can":

The Son to God the Lutheran Father:

"I'm nothing really, just a kid in love with your daughter."

This is taken from a review of "Catch Me If You Can" by Thomas S. Hibbs.

For some philosophical background to this confession, see Hibbs's book

Shows About Nothing:
Nihilism in Popular Culture
from The Exorcist to Seinfeld.

By the way, today is the anniversary of the dropping on Nagasaki
of a made-in-USA Weapon of Mass Destruction, a plutonium bomb
affectionately named Fat Man.

Fat Man was a sequel to an earlier Jewish story,

Trinity.