Log24

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Mystery Box for J. J. Abrams . . . A “Time Cube”

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:56 am

"Twenty-four Seven" . . . may be interpreted as

24×7 = 168, the number of hours in a week
and also the number of elements in the group GL(3,2).

Related geometry —

http://www.log24.com/log08/saved/080510-Modernism.html

and . . .

Box containing Froebel's Third Gift-- The Eightfold Cube

Update at 11:48 AM EDT Thursday, August 20, 2026 —

260820-Ambiguity-and-Hell's_Kitchen.jpg

Sunday, August 4, 2024

ACME* for ATLAS

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:05 am

An old web page . . .

Reinventing Froebel's Gifts

Searching for updated information on the author yields . . .

Related reading:

m759.net/wordpress/?s=Swing+On

* https://www.colorado.edu/atlas/acme-lab

Saturday, May 4, 2024

What Lies Between

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:51 am

"I perceived . . . cinema is that which is between things,
not things [themselves] but between one and another."

— Jean-Luc Godard, "Introduction à une véritable histoire
du cinéma
," Albatros , Paris, 1980, p. 145

Log24 on 10 Dec. 2008

Road sign with double arrow pointing both left and right

Log24 on 12 Dec. 2008

Froebel's third gift, the eightfold cube

Between  the two image-dates above . . .

" 'The jury is still out on how long – and whether – people are actually
going to understand this.'  It took the world 150 years to realize
the true power of the printing press . . . ."  — Cade Metz

Friday, February 2, 2024

“Platonic Good Mathematics”

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:29 pm

"Before time began, there was the Cube."
— Optimus Prime

"Spiel ist nicht Spielerei."
Friedrich Froebel

Venice Beach Barbenheimer:  Design Cube News

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:12 am

See as well Froebel in this  journal.

Monday, December 26, 2022

Super-8 Box

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

For the title, see other posts tagged Super-8.

Box containing Froebel's Third Gift-- The Eightfold Cube

Click image for some background.

Related material —

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Blocks in a Box

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:54 pm

In Scientific American  today —

For a more sophisticated approach to the phrase
"blocks in a box," search for "the 759 blocks" and
then see box759.wordpress.com.

The mathematics there is based on an apparently
less  sophisticated example of "blocks in a box" —

See also Cube Space in this  journal.

Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Play Station

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 12:30 pm

"Spiel is nicht Spielerei." — Friedrich Fröbel

Friday, April 17, 2020

A Mechanism of Fission

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:01 pm

The above title was suggested by the previous post, Explosive Remarks.

'On Froebel's Third Gift,' from 'Paradise of Childhood,' 1906

Monday, October 7, 2019

Berlekamp Garden vs. Kinder Garten

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 pm

Stevens's Omega and Alpha (see previous post) suggest a review.

Omega — The Berlekamp Garden.  See Misère Play (April 8, 2019).
Alpha  —  The Kinder Garten.  See Eighfold Cube.

Illustrations —

The sculpture above illustrates Klein's order-168 simple group.
So does the sculpture below.

Froebel's Third Gift: A cube made up of eight subcubes  

Cube Bricks 1984 —

An Approach to Symmetric Generation of the Simple Group of Order 168

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Emissary

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 8:04 pm
 

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Tetrahedral Structures

Filed under: General — Tags:  —
m759 @ 8:11 PM 

In memory of a Church emissary  who reportedly died on  September 4 . . . .

Playing with shapes related to some 1906 work of Whitehead:

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Child’s Play Continues — La Despedida

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:03 pm

This post was suggested by the phrase "Froebel Decade" from
the search results below.

This journal a decade ago had a post on the late Donald Westlake,
an author who reportedly died of a heart attack in Mexico on Dec. 31,
2008, while on his way to a New Year's Eve dinner.

One of Westlake's books —

Related material —

"La Despedida " and "Finality indeed, and cleavage!"

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Geometry for Goyim

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 12:45 pm

Mystery box  merchandise from the 2011  J. J. Abrams film  Super 8  —

A mystery box that I prefer —

Box containing Froebel's Third Gift-- The Eightfold Cube

Click image for some background.

See also Nicht Spielerei .

Thursday, March 22, 2018

In Memoriam

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:10 pm

Also on March 18, 2015 . . .

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

WISC RISC

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:15 pm

WISC = Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

RISCReduced Instruction Set Computer   or
             Rust Inventory of Schizotypal Cognitions

See related material in earlier WISC RISC posts.

See also . . .

"Many parents ask us about the Block Design section
on the WISC and hope to purchase blocks and exercises
like those used on the WISC test. We explain that doing that
has the potential to invalidate their child's test results.
These Froebel Color Cubes will give you a tool to work with
your child on the skills tested for in the Block Design section
of the WISC in an ethical and appropriate way. These same
skills are applicable to any test of non-verbal reasoning like  
the NNAT, Raven's or non-verbal sections of the CogAT or OLSAT. "

An online marketing webpage

For a webpage that is perhaps un ethical and in appropriate,
see Block Designs in Art and Mathematics.

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

“Before Time Began, There Was the Cube”

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:00 am

See Eightfold Froebel.

The Paradise of Childhood'-- Froebel's Third Gift

Friday, January 5, 2018

Seven Types of Interality*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:00 am

'Paradise of CHildhood'— on Froebel's Third Gift

* See the term interality  in this journal.
For many synonyms, see
The Human Seriousness of Interality,”
by Peter Zhang, Grand Valley State University,
China Media Research  11(2), 2015, 93-103.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Rubik vs. Galois: Preconception vs. Pre-conception

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 1:20 pm

From Psychoanalytic Aesthetics: The British School ,
by Nicola Glover, Chapter 4  —

In his last theoretical book, Attention and Interpretation  (1970), Bion has clearly cast off the mathematical and scientific scaffolding of his earlier writings and moved into the aesthetic and mystical domain. He builds upon the central role of aesthetic intuition and the Keats's notion of the 'Language of Achievement', which

… includes language that is both
a prelude to action and itself a kind of action;
the meeting of psycho-analyst and analysand
is itself an example of this language.29.

Bion distinguishes it from the kind of language which is a substitute  for thought and action, a blocking of achievement which is lies [sic ] in the realm of 'preconception' – mindlessness as opposed to mindfulness. The articulation of this language is possible only through love and gratitude; the forces of envy and greed are inimical to it..

This language is expressed only by one who has cast off the 'bondage of memory and desire'. He advised analysts (and this has caused a certain amount of controversy) to free themselves from the tyranny of the past and the future; for Bion believed that in order to make deep contact with the patient's unconscious the analyst must rid himself of all preconceptions about his patient – this superhuman task means abandoning even the desire to cure . The analyst should suspend memories of past experiences with his patient which could act as restricting the evolution of truth. The task of the analyst is to patiently 'wait for a pattern to emerge'. For as T.S. Eliot recognised in Four Quartets , 'only by the form, the pattern / Can words or music reach/ The stillness'.30. The poet also understood that 'knowledge' (in Bion's sense of it designating a 'preconception' which blocks  thought, as opposed to his designation of a 'pre -conception' which awaits  its sensory realisation), 'imposes a pattern and falsifies'

For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have ever been.31.

The analyst, by freeing himself from the 'enchainment to past and future', casts off the arbitrary pattern and waits for new aesthetic form to emerge, which will (it is hoped) transform the content of the analytic encounter.

29. Attention and Interpretation  (Tavistock, 1970), p. 125

30. Collected Poems  (Faber, 1985), p. 194.

31. Ibid., p. 199.

See also the previous posts now tagged Bion.

Preconception  as mindlessness is illustrated by Rubik's cube, and
"pre -conception" as mindfulness is illustrated by n×n×n Froebel  cubes
for n= 1, 2, 3, 4. 

Suitably coordinatized, the Froebel  cubes become Galois  cubes,
and illustrate a new approach to the mathematics of space .

Friday, August 14, 2015

Being Interpreted

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:31 am

The ABC of things —

Froebel's Third Gift: A cube made up of eight subcubes

The ABC of words —

A nutshell —

Book lessons —

IMAGE- History of Mathematics in a Nutshell

Saturday, April 18, 2015

The Acme Corporation Presents…

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 11:45 am

Kyle Smith on April 15 in the New York Post —

"The ludicrous action thriller 'Beyond the Reach'
fails to achieve the Southwestern noir potency
of 'No Country for Old Men,' but there’s no denying
it brings to mind another Southwestern classic
about malicious pursuit: the Road Runner cartoons."

Related material: 

  1. Legespiel  Meets Würfelspiel  in…
    Gift of the Third Kind
    (April 7, 2007), featuring Ellen Yi-Luen Do —

    Reinventing Froebel's Gifts

  2. the current home page of Ellen Yi-Luen Do,
    now at Georgia Tech, and…
  3. a page about her ACME Lab —

Welcome to ACME lab!
A Creativity Machine Environment!
aka ACME Creativity Machine Environment –
ACME Lab

Yes, the name is both confusing and has
many meanings. We like the acronym of ACME,
since it means the highest point, and also refers to
the fictional company in Looney Tunes, which is
A Company that Makes Everything!

We call it ACME Creativity Machine Environment –
yes, the acronym of this is ACME.

We like recursive ideas.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Nicht Spielerei*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:45 pm

Von Weizsäcker reportedly
died sometime last night.

* A reference to this journal's
  final post from 2014.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Spiel ist nicht Spielerei

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:30 pm

Huffington Post this morning, noting that
today is the birthday of Henri Matisse:

"On this most holy of art holidays…."

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Kindergarten Geometry

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 11:22 pm

(Continued)

A screenshot of the new page on the eightfold cube at Froebel Decade:

IMAGE- The eightfold cube at Froebel Decade

Click screenshot to enlarge.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Mystery Box II

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:07 pm

Continued from previous post and from Sept. 8, 2009.

Box containing Froebel's Third Gift-- The Eightfold Cube

Examination of the box's contents does not solve
the contents' real mystery. That requires knowledge
of the non-Euclidean geometry of Galois space.

In this case, without that knowledge, prattle (as in
today's online New York Times ) about creativity and
"thinking outside the box" is pointless.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Nobel Jam

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:00 pm

From this date five years ago in The Guardian

Alice Munro: An Appreciation by Margaret Atwood

"The central Christian tenet is that
two disparate and mutually exclusive elements— 
divinity and humanity— got jammed together
in Christ, neither annihilating the other.
The result was not a demi-god, or a God
in disguise: God became totally a human being
while remaining at the same time totally divine.
To believe either that Christ was only a man or
that he was simply God was declared heretical
by the early Christian church. Christianity thus
depends on a denial of either/or classifying logic
and an acceptance of both-at-once mystery.
Logic says that A cannot be both itself and non-A
at the same time; Christianity says it can. The
formulation 'A but also non-A' is indispensable to it."

Related literary material— "Excluded Middle" and "Couple of Tots."

See also "The Divided Cube" and "Mimsy Were the Borogoves."

Thursday, June 20, 2013

ART WARS: Chesterton Thursday

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 8:00 pm

The New York Times  philosophy column "The Stone"
last evening had an essay on art by a sarcastic anarchist,
one Crispin Sartwell

"… whole generations of art lovers have been
trained in modernist dogma, and arts institutions’
access to various forms of state or foundation
support depend on it completely. One goes to
the museum to gasp at stunning works of
incomparable, super-human genius by beings
who are infinitely more exalted and important
than the mere humans staring at their paintings.
That’s why ordinary people staring at a Picasso
(allegedly) experience a kind of transcendence
or re-articulation of their lives and world."

 Cubism Re-Articulated:

  Click image for some backstory.

(IMAGE: Walter Gropius and Froebel's Third Gift,
from a Google image search today)

Background: Cubism in this journal and
Pilate Goes to Kindergarten.

Related material: Chesterton + Thursday in this journal.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

At the Still Point

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:05 pm

(Continued from yesterday's posts, "Object of Beauty"
and "Amy's Shadow")

A winner of a Nobel Prize for X-ray crystallography stands
at the head of the New York Times  obituary list today.

In memoriam —

X-Ray Vision

"Crystal Engineering in Kindergarten," by Bart Kahr:

"If the reader is beginning to suspect that Froebel’s
philosophy of spiritual crystallography is sometimes
incoherent I can confirm that this is so…."

Click images for some backstories.

Some further background:

The Times  follows yesterday's egregious religious error
with an egregious scientific error:

"The technique developed by Dr. Karle and Herbert A. Hauptman,
called X-ray crystallography, is now routinely used by scientists…."

Karle was reportedly born in 1918, Hauptman in 1917.

Wikipedia on the history of X-ray crystallography:

"The idea that crystals could be used as a 
diffraction grating for X-rays arose in 1912…."

The Nobel Foundation:

"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1914 was awarded to
Max von Laue 'for his discovery of the diffraction of
X-rays by crystals.'"

"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1915 was awarded jointly to
Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg 
'for their services in the analysis of crystal structure
by means of X-rays.'"

Friday, June 14, 2013

Object of Beauty

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 2:01 am

This journal on July 5, 2007 —

The Eightfold Cube and its Inner Structure

“It is not clear why MySpace China will be successful."

— The Chinese magazine Caijing  in 2007, quoted in
Asia Sentinel  on July 12, 2011

This  journal on that same date,  July 12, 2011 —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110712-ObjectOfBeauty.jpg

See also the eightfold cube and kindergarten blocks
at finitegeometry.org/sc.

Friedrich Froebel, Froebel's Chief Writings on Education ,
Part II, "The Kindergarten," Ch. III, "The Third Play":

"The little ones, who always long for novelty and change,
love this simple plaything in its unvarying form and in its
constant number, even as they love their fairy tales with
the ever-recurring dwarfs…."

This journal, Group Actions, Nov. 14, 2012:

"Those who insist on vulgarizing their mathematics
may regard linear and affine group actions on the eight
cubes as the dance of  Snow White (representing (0,0,0))
and the Seven Dwarfs—

  ."

Edwin M. Knowles Fine China Company, 1991

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Blockheads

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

(Continued)

"It should be emphasized that block models are physical models, the elements of which can be physically manipulated. Their manipulation differs in obvious and fundamental ways from the manipulation of symbols in formal axiomatic systems and in mathematics. For example the transformations described above, in which two linear arrays are joined together to form one array, or a rectangle of blocks is re-assembled into a linear array, are physical transformations not symbolic transformations. …"

— Storrs McCall, Department of Philosophy, McGill University, "The Consistency of Arithmetic"

"It should be emphasized…."

OK:

Storrs McCall at a 2008 philosophy conference .

His blocks talk was at 2:50 PM July 21, 2008.
See also this journal at noon that same day:

Froebel's Third Gift and the Eightfold Cube

Froebel's Third Gift: A cube made up of eight subcubes

The Eightfold Cube: The Beauty of Klein's Simple Group

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Group Actions

The December 2012 Notices of the American
Mathematical Society  
has an ad on page 1564
(in a review of two books on vulgarized mathematics)
for three workshops next year on “Low-dimensional
Topology, Geometry, and Dynamics”—

(Only the top part of the ad is shown; for further details
see an ICERM page.)

(ICERM stands for Institute for Computational
and Experimental Research in Mathematics.)

The ICERM logo displays seven subcubes of
a 2x2x2 eight-cube array with one cube missing—

The logo, apparently a stylized image of the architecture
of the Providence building housing ICERM, is not unlike
a picture of Froebel’s Third Gift—

 

Froebel's third gift, the eightfold cube

© 2005 The Institute for Figuring

Photo by Norman Brosterman from the Inventing Kindergarten
exhibit at The Institute for Figuring (co-founded by Margaret Wertheim)

The eighth cube, missing in the ICERM logo and detached in the
Froebel Cubes photo, may be regarded as representing the origin
(0,0,0) in a coordinatized version of the 2x2x2 array—
in other words the cube invariant under linear , as opposed to
more general affine , permutations of the cubes in the array.

These cubes are not without relevance to the workshops’ topics—
low-dimensional exotic geometric structures, group theory, and dynamics.

See The Eightfold Cube, A Simple Reflection Group of Order 168, and
The Quaternion Group Acting on an Eightfold Cube.

Those who insist on vulgarizing their mathematics may regard linear
and affine group actions on the eight cubes as the dance of
Snow White (representing (0,0,0)) and the Seven Dwarfs—

.

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