Log24

Friday, September 24, 2010

Heisman Trophy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 pm

An Ecumenical Hymn

For those who observed Yom Kippur at
Harvard's Memorial Church on Saturday,
September 18, 2010—

Friday night and the lights are low…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/100924-NYsunset.jpg

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for
July 13, 2007— Manhattanhenge.

See also on July 13, 2007, in this  journal, a post
for Harrison Ford's 65th birthday featuring the
ecumenical diamond-in-a-football religious symbol—

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070713-Ford2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
Related story: Harvard Defeats Holy Cross 34 – 6.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Remains of the Day

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:29 am

Two deaths on Yom Kippur 2017 —

A note related to a Yom Kippur death seven years earlier

See also Monty's Doors as well as this  journal on Steiner and Barthes —

"The Seventh Door Meets the Seventh Function" (August 26, 2017).

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Hunting the Snark

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:04 pm

The conclusion of "Bob Dylan’s Year of Living Laureatishly,"
by Hart Seely, in The New York Times  online today —

"How about a Heisman?"

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Harvard Hicks

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:40 pm

Austin Considine on a Tennessee tourist trap

"It would be easy for a city slicker to assume this place misses its own punch lines."

It probably doesn't, but a certain academic  tourist trap does .

A trio of Harvard hicks—

1. The chairman of the Harvard philosophy department, Sean D. Kelly—

"Football can literally bring meaning to life."

(See also Garry Wills on Kelly, Rite of Spring, and Heisman Trophy.)

2. A professor of English at Harvard, Marjorie Garber, in a deconstructive meditation—

Garber notes that the word "literature" has two meanings– the English department's meaning, and that of other departments' references to "the literature."

"Whenever there is a split like this, it is worth pausing to wonder why. High/low, privileged/popular, aesthetic/professional, keep/throw away. It seems as if the category of literature in what we might inelegantly call the literary sense of the word is being both protected and preserved in amber by the encroachment, on all sides, of the nonliterary literature that proliferates in professional-managerial culture. But literature has always been situated on the boundary between itself and its other."

The Use and Abuse of Literature , published by Pantheon on March 29, 2011

3. The president of Harvard, Drew Faust—

A comment recently made to Faust—

“[A] tyrant wanted a crimson-tinged report that he was running a democracy, and for a price, a Harvard expert obliged…."

Her response—

"Faust replied that for her to say anything about this would make her 'scold in chief.'"

—  University Diaries  today. See the excellent commentary there.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Evocation*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 am

"Epistulae ad familiares" (adfamiliares for short) at livejournal.com

"Prefatory notes evoke a Republic of Letters— or at least an academic support group— in which the writer claims membership. In fact, they often describe something much more tenuous, the group of those who the author wishes had read his work, offered him references, or at least given him the time of day. Hence they retain something of the literary— not to say fictional— quality of traditional poets' prayers." (Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History)

P.S. This book rules.  Why did I wait so long to read it?

* See a definition. See also this  journal's previous post, Patterns in the Carpets. As for "those who the author wishes had read his work," see a quotation from an author mentioned in that post, Greg Egan, that seems relevant to the suicide outside Harvard's Memorial Church last Saturday during the morning Yom Kippur service—

… The word "transhumanism" (or, even worse, "posthumanism") sounds like a suicide note for the species, which effectively renders it a political suicide note for any movement by that name. No doubt there are people prepared to spend 90% of their time and energy explaining that they didn't intend  any negative connotations, but this is not one of those cases where other people will be to blame if "transhumanists" are reviled as the enemies of humanity on purely linguistic grounds. It's no use people proclaiming "Please, read my 1,000-page manifesto, don't just look at one word!"….

— Greg Egan on April 23, 2008,** at Metamagician and the Hellfire Club

Related material— A livejournal note on the Memorial Church suicide, nihilism, and a "final crux."

** Footnote to a footnote— See also Log24 on April 23, 2008— Shakespeare's birthday.

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