Log24

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Mathematics and Narrative

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am

(Continued)

Excerpts from a post of May 25, 2005 —

Above is an example I like of mathematics….

Here is an example I like of narrative:

Kate felt quite dizzy. She didn't know exactly what it was
that had just happened, but she felt pretty damn  certain  that
it  was  the  sort of experience that her mother would not have
approved of on a first date.
     "Is this all part of what we have to do to go to  Asgard?"
she said. "Or are you just fooling around?"
     "We will go to Asgard...now," he said.
     At that moment he raised his hand as if to pluck an apple,
but instead of plucking he made a tiny, sharp turning movement.
The effect  was as if he had twisted the entire world through a
billionth part of a billionth  part  of  a  degree.  Everything
shifted,  was  for  a  moment  minutely  out of focus, and then
snapped back again as a suddenly different world.

— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Image from a different  different world —

Hat-tip to a related Feb. 26 weblog post
at the American Mathematical Society.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Bridges

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:48 am
 

24 Frames column in the LA Times

Critical Mass: 'Thor' swings his hammer and the critics scream

May 6, 2011 |  2:55 pm

Bridges are the key theme of this weekend's "Thor," a film that bridges us from the doldrums of spring releases to the flashier, if not better, world of summer blockbusters. It also serves as another step in the bridge from the first "Iron Man" in 2008 to next summer's superhero all-star jam, "The Avengers." And within the film itself, a superhero actioner about the Norse god of thunder and his adventures in his home of Asgard and on Earth, a rainbow bridge connects the well-regarded Asgard sections of the film with the less successful Earth sections, set in Puente Antiguo, N.M. (which means "Old Bridge").

According to Times critic Kenneth Turan, the film also attempts to bridge director Kenneth Branagh's high-minded Shakespearean intentions with Marvel Entertainment's bottom-line-oriented need to crank out entertainment product.

— Patrick Kevin Day

Related material: Kate and Thor in The Turning  and A Bridge Too Far.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Thursday July 3, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 am
Blasphemous Thoughts
about Thor

Commonweal on Gopnik on Chesterton:

"Gopnik thinks Chesterton’s aphorisms are better than any but Oscar Wilde’s, and he describes some of them as 'genuine Catholic koans, pregnant and profound.' For example: 'Blasphemy depends on belief, and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.'"
 

Pregnant and Profound:
Douglas Adams on Thor

Kate felt quite dizzy. She didn't know exactly what it was that had just happened, but she felt pretty damn certain that it was the sort of experience that her mother would not have approved of on a first date.

"Is this all part of what we have to do to go to Asgard?" she said. "Or are you just fooling around?"

"We will go to Asgard… now," he said.

At that moment he raised his hand as if to pluck an apple, but instead of plucking he made a tiny, sharp turning movement.The effect was as if he had twisted the entire world through a billionth part of a billionth part of a degree. Everything shifted, was for a moment minutely out of focus, and then snapped back again as a suddenly different world.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

See also
The Turning:

"A theorem proposed betwen the two–"

— Wallace Stevens, "The Rock"

The Turning: An Approach to the Theorem of Pythagoras

From The History of Mathematics,
by Roger Cooke

"… point A
In a perspective that begins again
At B…."

— Wallace Stevens, "The Rock"

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Wednesday May 25, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:22 pm

The Turning

Readers who have an Amazon.com account may view book pages relevant to the previous entry.  See page 77 of The Way We Think, by Fauconnier and Turner (Amazon search term = Meno).  This page discusses both the Pythagorean theorem and Plato's diamond figure in the Meno, but fails to "blend" these two topics.  See also page 53 of The History of Mathematics, by Roger Cooke (first edition), where these two topics are in fact blended (Amazon search term = Pythagorean).  The illustration below is drawn from the Cooke book.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050525-Figs.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Cooke demonstrates how the Pythagorean theorem might have been derived by "blending" Plato's diamond (left) with the idea of moving the diamond's corners (right).

The previous entry dealt with a conference on mathematics and narrative.  Above is an example I like of mathematics…. Here is an example I like of narrative:

Kate felt quite dizzy. She didn't know exactly what it was
that had just happened, but she felt pretty damn  certain  that
it  was  the  sort of experience that her mother would not have
approved of on a first date.
     "Is this all part of what we have to do to go to  Asgard?"
she said. "Or are you just fooling around?"
     "We will go to Asgard...now," he said.
     At that moment he raised his hand as if to pluck an apple,
but instead of plucking he made a tiny, sharp turning movement.
The effect  was as if he had twisted the entire world through a
billionth part of a billionth  part  of  a  degree.  Everything
shifted,  was  for  a  moment  minutely  out of focus, and then
snapped back again as a suddenly different world.

— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

And here is a blend of the concepts "Asgard" and "conference":

"Asgard
    During the Interuniverse Society conference,
    a bridge was opened to Valhalla…."

  Bifrost
     In Norse myth, the rainbow bridge
     that connected Earth to Asgard,
     home of the gods.  It was extended
     to Tellus Tertius during the
     Interuniverse Society conference"

— From A Heinlein Concordance

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050525-Rainbow.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

— Front page picture from a
local morning newspaper published
today, Wednesday, May 25, 2005

 

As George Balanchine once asked,
"How much story do you want?"

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