Log24

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Ninth Configuration

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:01 pm

The showmanship of Nicki Minaj at Sunday's
Grammy Awards suggested the above title, 
that of a novel by the author of The Exorcist .

The Ninth Configuration —

The ninth* in a list of configurations—

"There is a (2d-1)d  configuration
  known as the Cox configuration."

— MathWorld article on "Configuration"

For further details on the Cox 326 configuration's Levi graph,
a model of the 64 vertices of the six-dimensional hypercube γ6  ,
see Coxeter, "Self-Dual Configurations and Regular Graphs,"
Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.  Vol. 56, pages 413-455, 1950.
This contains a discussion of Kummer's 166 as it 
relates to  γ6  , another form of the 4×4×4 Galois cube.

See also Solomon's Cube.

* Or tenth, if the fleeting reference to 113 configurations is counted as the seventh—
  and then the ninth  would be a 153 and some related material would be Inscapes.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Plan 9 (continued)–

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

In Like Flynn

From the Wall Street Journal  site Friday evening—

ESSAY September 21, 2012, 9:10 p.m. ET

Are We Really Getting Smarter?

Americans’ IQ scores have risen steadily over the past century.
James R. Flynn examines why.

IMAGE- Raven's Progressive Matrices problem with ninth configuration a four-diamonds grid

No, thank you. I prefer the ninth configuration as is—

IMAGE- Four-diamonds grid, the ninth configuration in a Raven's Progressive Matrices problem

Why? See Josefine Lyche’s art installation “Grids, you say?“

Her reference there to “High White Noon” is perhaps
related to the use of that phrase in this journal.

The phrase is from a 2010 novel by Don DeLillo.
See “Point Omega,” as well as Lyche’s “Omega Point,”
in this journal.

The Wall Street Journal  author above, James R. Flynn (born in 1934),
“is famous for his discovery of the Flynn effect, the continued
year-after-year increase of IQ scores in all parts of the world.”
—Wikipedia

His son Eugene Victor Flynn is a mathematician, co-author
of the following chapter on the Kummer surface— 

For use of the Kummer surface in Buddhist metaphysics, see last night’s
post “Occupy Space (continued)” and the letters of Nanavira Thera from the
late 1950s at nanavira.blogspot.com.

These letters, together with Lyche’s use of the phrase “high white noon,”
suggest a further quotation—

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher

See also the Kummer surface at the web page Configurations and Squares.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Plan 9

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:00 pm

(Continued)

IMAGE- 'The Ninth Configuration,' based on a novel by William Peter Blatty

See also "Or Only Die" and Corpus Hypercubus .

Monday, April 23, 2012

Mate in Six

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:29 pm

In memory of Mike Wallace—

  1. An April 8 post noting the death of Wallace—
    a NY Times  obituary notice with ad at top— "The North Face"
     
  2. An April 21 post noting the death of Charles Colson,
    reportedly at at 3:12 PM on Saturday, April 21, 2012,
    with ad at top— "Discover New Horizons" 
     
  3. An April 21 post linking to a 3/12 post (this date being
    suggested by the reported time of Colson's death)
    that has a review of the film "The Ninth Configuration"
     
  4. An April 22 post with six lines that some might
    interpret as meeting on a horizon, two lines that might
    be interpreted as meeting at a "depth horizon," and
    a ninth line that emerges from the other eight
     
  5. An April 23 post that combines a passage from
    "The Ninth Configuration" with a detail from
    the North Face ad that appeared above Wallace's
    NY TImes  obituary on April 8 and again above
    Colson's obituary on April 23
     
  6. "The game's…"

See also Knight Moves.

Footnote

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

IMAGE- Cutshaw in 'The Ninth Configuration' on God as a giant Foot

IMAGE- April 23, 2012, NY Times obit for Charles Colson with foot from ad for 'The North Face' running shoes

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Split

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 pm

"So the sundering we sense between nature and culture
lies not like a canyon outside us, but splits our being
at its most intimate depths the way mind breaks off from body.
It is still another version of that bitter bifurcation
long ago decreed— our expulsion from Eden…."

— William H. Gass in Finding a Form ,
     Cornell U. Press paperback, 1997, page 138

See also…

IMAGE- 'The Line,' a post on Blatty's 'The Ninth Configuration'

For another bitter bifurcation, see La Despedida .

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Margaret’s Haiku

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Margaret Soltan this morning posted a haiku about a fox in her garden.

Related material— The Ninth Gate* versus The Ninth Configuration.

* For some backstory, see pop physics.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A Job for St. Valentine

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:01 am

Maureen Dowd's NY Times  column today is on exorcism.

Related material— This morning's update at the end of 
yesterday morning's Valentine's Day post Notable Transitions.

See also another post for St. Valentine — The Ninth Configuration.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Noon (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

    This journal on April 8—
http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110408-HopkinsAsExorcist.jpg

See also a quote from William Peter Blatty in this journal yesterday.

The green cell in the array may be viewed as representing
Blatty's The Ninth Configuration … or perhaps Plan 9.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Starting Out in the Evening

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

… and Finishing Up at Noon

This post was suggested by last evening’s post on mathematics and narrative
and by Michiko Kakutani on Vargas Llosa in this morning’s New York Times.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101008-StartingOut.jpg

Above: Frank Langella in
“Starting Out in the Evening”

Right: Johnny Depp in
“The Ninth Gate“

 http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101008-NinthGate.jpg

“One must proceed cautiously, for this road— of truth and falsehood in the realm of fiction— is riddled with traps and any enticing oasis is usually a mirage.”

— “Is Fiction the Art of Lying?”* by Mario Vargas Llosa, New York Times  essay of October 7, 1984

My own adventures in that realm— as reader, not author— may illustrate Llosa’s remark.

A nearby stack of paperbacks I haven’t touched for some months (in order from bottom to top)—

  1. Pale Rider by Alan Dean Foster
  2. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
  3. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
  4. Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
  5. Literary Reflections by James A. Michener
  6. The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty
  7. A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
  8. Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
  9. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
  10. The Tempest by William Shakespeare
  11. Being There by Jerzy Kosinski
  12. What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson
  13. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
  14. A Gathering of Spies by John Altman
  15. Selected Poems by Robinson Jeffers
  16. Hook— Tinkerbell’s Challenge by Tristar Pictures
  17. Rising Sun by Michael Crichton
  18. Changewar by Fritz Leiber
  19. The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe
  20. The Hustler by Walter Tevis
  21. The Natural by Bernard Malamud
  22. Truly Tasteless Jokes by Blanche Knott
  23. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
  24. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry

What moral Vargas Llosa might draw from the above stack I do not know.

Generally, I prefer the sorts of books in a different nearby stack. See Sisteen, from May 25. That post the fanciful reader may view as related to number 16 in the above list. The reader may also relate numbers 24 and 22 above (an odd couple) to By Chance, from Thursday, July 22.

* The Web version’s title has a misprint— “living” instead of “lying.”

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