Log24

Shell Game

Part I:

Overview of Unix
at pangea.stanford.edu

Last revision August 2, 2004

“The Unix operating environment is organized into three layers. The innermost level of Unix is the kernel. This is the actual operating system, a single large program that always resides in memory. Sections of the code in this program are executed on behalf of users to do needed tasks, like access files or terminals. Strictly speaking, the kernel is Unix.

The next level of the Unix environment is composed of programs, commands, and utilities. In Unix, the basic commands like copying or removing files are implemented not as part of the kernel, but as individual programs, no different really from any program you could write. What we think of as the commands and utilities of Unix are simply a set of programs that have become standardized and distributed. There are hundreds of these, plus many additional utilities in the public domain that can be installed.

The final level of the Unix environment, which stands like an umbrella over the others, is the shell. The shell processes your terminal input and starts up the programs that you request. It also allows you to manipulate the environment in which those programs will execute in a way that is transparent to the program. The program can be written to handle standard cases, and then made to handle unusual cases simply by manipulating its environment, without having to have a special version of the program.” (My italics.)

Part II:

Programs

From my paper journal
on the date
“Good Will Hunting”
was released:

Friday, December 5, 1997 To: The executive editor, The New York Times Re: The Front Page/His Girl Friday Match the speaker with the speech–
The Speech— “The son of a bitch stole my…”			The Speaker	Frame of Reference
1.	rosebud	A.	J. Paul Getty	The front page, N.Y. Times, Monday, 12/1/97
2.	clock	B.	Joel Silver	Page 126, The New Yorker, 3/21/94
3.	act	C.	Blanche DuBois	The Elysian Fields
4.	waltz	D.	Bob Geldof	People Weekly 12/8/97
5.	temple	E.	St. Michael	Heaven’s Gate
6.	watch	F.	Susanna Moore	In the Cut (pbk., Dec. ’96) p. 261
7.	line	G.	Joseph Lelyveld	Page A21, The New York Times, 12/1/97
8.	chair	H.	Kylie Minogue	Page 69, People Weekly, 12/8/97
9.	religion	I.	Carol Gilligan	The Garden of Good and Evil
10.	wife	J.	John Travolta	“Michael,” the movie
11.	harp	K.	Shylock	Page 40, N.Y. Review of Books, 12/4/97
12.	Oscar	L.	Stephen King	The Shining (pbk., 1997), pp. 316, 317

Postscript of June 5, 2003:

“…while the scientist sees
everything that happens
in one point of space,
the poet feels
everything that happens
in one point of time…
all forming an
instantaneous and transparent
organism of events….”

— Vladimir Nabokov

Part III:

The Bourne Shell

Afterword:

See also
the recent comments
of root@matrix.net in
Peter Woit’s weblog.

“Hey, Carrie-Anne,
what’s your game now….”
— The Hollies, 1967   

  Some wrestle on the sands, and some in play
  And games heroic pass the hours away.
  Those raise the song divine, and these advance
  In measur'd steps to form the solemn dance.

Bulletin of the
American Mathematical Society,
July 2006 (pdf):

"But however you classify the branch of mathematics it is concerned with, Diophantus’s Arithmetica can claim the title of founding document, and inspiring muse, to modern number theory. This brings us back to the goddess with her lyre in the frontispiece, which is the cover of this issue. As is only fitting, given the passion of the subject, this goddess is surely Erato, muse of erotic poetry."

Mazur has admitted, at his website, that this conclusion was an error:

"I erroneously identified the figure on the cover as Erato, muse of erotic poetry, but it seems, rather, to be Orpheus."

"Seems"? 

The inscription on the frontispiece, "Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum," is from a description of the Elysian Fields in Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI:

  His demum exactis, perfecto munere divae,
  Devenere locos laetos, & amoena vireta
  Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.
  Largior hic campos aether & lumine vestit
  Purpureo; solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
  Pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris,
  Contendunt ludo, & fulva luctanter arena:
  Pars pedibus plaudunt choreas, & carmina dicunt.
  Necnon Threicius longa cum veste sacerdos
  Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum:
  Jamque eadem digitis, jam pectine pulsat eburno.

PITT:

  These rites compleat, they reach the flow'ry plains,
  The verdant groves, where endless pleasure reigns.
  Here glowing AEther shoots a purple ray,
  And o'er the region pours a double day.
  From sky to sky th'unwearied splendour runs,
  And nobler planets roll round brighter suns.
  Some wrestle on the sands, and some in play
  And games heroic pass the hours away.
  Those raise the song divine, and these advance
  In measur'd steps to form the solemn dance.
  There Orpheus graceful in his long attire,
  In seven divisions strikes the sounding lyre;
  Across the chords the quivering quill he flings,
  Or with his flying fingers sweeps the strings.

DRYDEN:

  These holy rites perform'd, they took their way,
  Where long extended plains of pleasure lay.
  The verdant fields with those of heav'n may vie;
  With AEther veiled, and a purple sky:
  The blissful seats of happy souls below;
  Stars of their own, and their own suns they know.
  Their airy limbs in sports they exercise,
  And on the green contend the wrestlers prize.
  Some in heroic verse divinely sing,
  Others in artful measures lead the ring.
  The Thracian bard surrounded by the rest,
  There stands conspicuous in his flowing vest.
  His flying fingers, and harmonious quill,
  Strike seven distinguish'd notes, and seven at once they fill.

It is perhaps not irrelevant that the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's next role would have been that of Orfeo in Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice."  See today's earlier entries.

The poets among us may like to think of Mazur's own role as that of the lyre: