Log24

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Raiders of the Lost Symbol … Continues*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:12 pm

A Log24 search for "Watercourse" leads to . . .

("Watercourse" is in the Customer review link.)

The "five years ago" link leads to . . .

Invariants 

"What modern painters are trying to do,
if they only knew it, is paint invariants."

— James J. Gibson in Leonardo
(Vol. 11, pp. 227-235.
Pergamon Press Ltd., 1978)

An example of invariant structure:

The three line diagrams above result from the three partitions, into pairs of 2-element sets, of the 4-element set from which the entries of the bottom colored figure are drawn.  Taken as a set, these three line diagrams describe the structure of the bottom colored figure.  After coordinatizing the figure in a suitable manner, we find that this set of three line diagrams is invariant under the group of 16 binary translations acting on the colored figure.

A more remarkable invariance — that of symmetry itself — is observed if we arbitrarily and repeatedly permute rows and/or columns and/or 2×2 quadrants of the colored figure above. Each resulting figure has some ordinary or color-interchange symmetry.

This sort of mathematics illustrates the invisible "form" or "idea" behind the visible two-color pattern.  Hence it exemplifies, in a way, the conflict described by Plato between those who say that "real existence belongs only to that which can be handled" and those who say that "true reality consists in certain intelligible and bodiless forms."

* See that title in this journal.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Raiders of the Lost Symbol

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 5:00 pm

A print copy of next Sunday’s New York Times Book Review
arrived in today’s mail. From the front-page review:

Marcel Theroux on The Book of Strange New Things ,
a novel by Michel Faber —

“… taking a standard science fiction premise and
unfolding it with the patience and focus of a
tai chi master, until it reveals unexpected
connections, ironies and emotions.”

What is a tai chi master, and what is it that he unfolds?

Perhaps the taijitu  symbol and related material will help.

The Origin of Change

Diamond Theory version of 'The Square Inch Space' with yin-yang symbol for comparison

“Two things of opposite natures seem to depend
On one another, as a man depends
On a woman, day on night, the imagined

On the real. This is the origin of change.
Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace
And forth the particulars of rapture come.”

Wallace Stevens,
“Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,”
Canto IV of “It Must Change”

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Raiders of the Lost Symbols

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:09 am

See Lines of Symbols in this journal.

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Number, Time, and Dan Brown*

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:12 pm

The title is a nod to the book Number and Time  ( not  by Dan Brown ).

An illustration —

This journal 10 years ago today

"Dan Brown certainly packed a lot into
the 500-plus pages of The Lost Symbol ."

— DailyGrail.com

That sentence suggests a review of Efficient Packing

Sunday, December 13, 2020

The Alcott Gesture, from the author of Little Women

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:32 pm

A speaker in Washington, D.C., yesterday —

“We are in a crucible moment in the history
of the United States of America,” he said at
the “Let the Church Roar” rally at the National Mall.

In other drama —

“It’s a gesture, dear, not a recipe.”
— Peggy (Vanessa Redgrave) in a 1987 film.

The above Emma Watson date — Oct. 28, 2014 — suggests
some DC-related remarks in a Log24 search for “The Lost Symbol.”

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

A Dead Ringer

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

"According to Thelemic legend, in 1918 Aleister Crowley
came into contact with a interdimensional entity
named Lam, who by the way is a dead ringer for
the popular conception of the 'alien grey '
depicted on the cover of Whitley Strieber's Communion ."

Related material —

"Robert Langdon stood mesmerized at the glass portal,
absorbing the power of the landscape below him."

Also

From 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' season 1, episode 2

"Ting-a-ling." — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Mimicry

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:09 pm

This journal Tuesday,  Oct. 28, 2014, at 5 PM ET:

"What is a tai chi master, and what is it that he unfolds?"

From an earlier post, Hamlet's father's ghost
on "the fretful porpentine":

Hamlet , Act 1, Scene 5 —

Ghost:

“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood."

Galway Kinnell:

"I roll
this way and that in the great bed, under
the quilt
that mimics this country of broken farms and woods"

— "The Porcupine"

For quilt-block designs that do not mimic farms or woods,
see the cover of Diamond Theory .  See also the quotations
from Wallace Stevens linked to in the last line of yesterday's
post in memory of Kinnell.

"… a bee for the remembering of happiness" — Wallace Stevens

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Catholic Schools Week

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 6:00 pm

"The theme for the National Catholic Schools Week 2013
is 'Catholic Schools Raise the Standards.' The annual
observance starts the last Sunday in January and runs
all week, which in 2013 is January 27 to February 2." 

"After all, tomorrow is another day." —Scarlett O'Hara,
quoted here in a post of May 9, 2005.

"Dr.  Tomorrow is another guy ." —A comment on that post.

The Dr. Tomorrow link leads to a page promoting something
called the Institute of Noetic Sciences. This in turn leads to
the 2009 Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol .

For related material in this journal, see
Raiders of the Lost Dingbat.

As for raising the standards, see the conclusion of
Adolf Holl's The Left Hand of God 

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

24 Hour DeLillo

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Review of DeLillo's novel Point Omega

"One difference between art and entertainment has to do with the speed of perception. Art deliberately slows and complicates reading, hearing, and/or viewing so that you’re challenged to re-think and re-feel form and experience. Entertainment deliberately accelerates and simplifies them so that you don’t have to think about or feel very much of anything at all except, perhaps, the adrenalin rush before dazzling spectacle. Although, of course, there can be myriad gradations between the former and latter, in their starkest articulation we’re talking about the distance between, say, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest  and Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol…."

— Lance Olsen, March 1, 2010, in The Quarterly Conversation

Robert Hughes on fast and slow art—

"We have had a gutful of fast art and fast food. What we need more of is slow art: art that holds time as a vase holds water: art that grows out of modes of perception and whose skill and doggedness make you think and feel; art that isn't merely sensational, that doesn't get its message across in 10 seconds, that isn't falsely iconic, that hooks onto something deep-running in our natures. In a word, art that is the very opposite of mass media. For no spiritually authentic art can beat mass media at their own game."

– Speech of June 1, 2004

Log24 on art speeds—

A Study in Art Education (June 15, 2007)

Twenty-four (March 13, 2011)

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The Lost Plot

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm

Daredevil work—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110927-DaredevilWork.jpg

For Dan Brown, author of The Lost Symbol

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101031-PacinoReeves300w.jpg

Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in Devil's Advocate
(Syfy channel, 9 PM tonight)

"Klaatu barada nikto."

Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Lost Word

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:11 am

In memory of Bible translator Eugene Nida, who died on August 25

An excerpt from Log24 on that date

IMAGE- Aschbacher on the 2-local geometry of M24

Related biblical material from DailyGrail.com

"Dan Brown certainly packed a lot into the 500-plus pages of The Lost Symbol . But perhaps the key element to the story is the search for the ‘Lost Word,’ and— in the final pages— Robert Langdon’s discovery as to what that actually means. In the early chapters, Langdon explains to Sato that the Lost Word was 'one of Freemasonry’s most enduring symbols'…

…a single word, written in an arcane language that man could no longer decipher. The Word, like the Mysteries themselves, promised to unveil its hidden power only to those enlightened enough to decrypt it. “It is said,” Langdon concluded, “that if you can possess and understand  the Lost Word . . . then the Ancient Mysteries will become clear to you.”

and from Amazon.com.

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