Log24

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Variations in Memory of a Designer

Last updated at 22:46 PM ET on 1 February 2023.

Galois Additions of Space Partitions

Click for a designer's obituary.

Paraphrase for a road-sign collector:

See as well Today's New York Times  obituary
of the Harvard Business School Publishing 
Director of Intellectual Property.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Signs

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:58 pm

The diamond signs of Donald Knuth

“When there’s nothing to believe in 
Still you’re coming back,
you’re running back 
You’re coming back for more
 
So put me on a highway….”
— Eagles, 1975  

See also …

See as well Knuth in this  journal.

"Spirit-guide of the algorithmic realm"
— Description of Donald Knuth by Siobhan Roberts, Dec. 17, 2018.

There are spirit guides and spirit  guides.

"One of These Nights  is the fourth studio album
by the Eagles, released in 1975." — Wikipedia

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Intersection

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

to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint

Four Quartets

The sign of the crossroads at Stanford

Intersection sign,
courtesy of Donald Knuth

Related material:

The previous post and Fourfold in this journal.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Baccalaureate–

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:07 pm

A Comedy of Manners

Today is Stanford's Baccalaureate.

From Stanford Professor Emeritus Donald E. Knuth

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110611-DiamondSigns.jpg

From The Blues Brothers

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110611-finding-mr-fabulous.jpg

"Inscribe a white diamond…."

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Tuesday June 9, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:56 pm
Recessional

"I know what 
nothing means."
— Joan Didion, 
Play It As It Lays

President Faust at Harvard Baccalaureate, June 2, 2009

Faust

President Faust of Harvard on Joan Didion:

"She was referring to life as a kind of improvisation: that magical crossroads of rigor and ease, structure and freedom, reason and intuition. What she calls being prepared to 'go with the change.'"
 

Bippity Boppity Boo.


Didion's own words:

"I think about swimming with him into the cave at Portuguese Bend, about the swell of clear water, the way it changed, the swiftness and power it gained as it narrowed through the rocks at the base of the point. The tide had to be just right. We had to be in the water at the very moment the tide was right. We could only have done this a half dozen times at most during the two years we lived there but it is what I remember. Each time we did it I was afraid of missing the swell, hanging back, timing it wrong. John never was. You had to feel the swell change. You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but he did tell me that."

From the same book:

"The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place."

— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

For a magical crossroads at another university, see the five Log24 entries ending on November 25, 2005:


The sign of the crossroads at Stanford

This holy icon
appeared at
N37°25.638'
W122°09.574'
on August 22, 2003,
at the Stanford campus.

Also from that date,
an example of clarity
  in another holy icon —

A visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem

— in honor of better days
 at Harvard and of a member
of the Radcliffe Class of 1964.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Thursday November 24, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:33 pm
Crossroads

In memory of Diego Rivera,
who died on this date in 1957

"… the socialist muralist Diego Rivera, hired by Nelson Rockefeller to paint a fresco for the newly constructed Rockefeller Center in New York, inserted a likeness of Lenin's head into the fresco. Rockefeller insisted that the head be replaced or removed, and when Rivera refused the fresco was destroyed…. The event… is captured with great wit in E.B. White's poem…."

Harvard Law Review

I Paint What I See
[A Ballad of Artistic Integrity]
by E.B. White
The New Yorker, 20 May 1933

"'What do you paint, when you paint on a wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you paint just anything there at all?
'Will there be any doves, or a tree in fall?
'Or a hunting scene, like an English hall?'

'I paint what I see,' said Rivera.

'What are the colors you use when you paint?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Do you use any red in the beard of a saint?
'If you do, is it terribly red, or faint?
'Do you use any blue? Is it Prussian?'

'I paint what I paint,' said Rivera.

'Whose is that head that I see on the wall?'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
'Is it anyone's head whom we know, at all?
'A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?
'Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?
Or is it the head of a Russian?

'I paint what I think,' said Rivera.

'I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,
'I paint what I think,' said Rivera,
'And the thing that is dearest in life to me
'In a bourgeois hall is Integrity;
'However . . .
'I'll take out a couple of people drinkin'
'And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln;
'I could even give you McCormick's reaper
'And still not make my art much cheaper.
'But the head of Lenin has got to stay
'Or my friends will give the bird today,
'The bird, the bird, forever.'

'It's not good taste in a man like me,'
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson,
'To question an artist's integrity
'Or mention a practical thing like a fee,
'But I know what I like to a large degree,
'Though art I hate to hamper;
'For twenty-one thousand conservative bucks
'You painted a radical. I say shucks,
'I never could rent the offices—–
'The capitalistic offices.
'For this, as you know, is a public hall
'And people want doves, or a tree in fall
'And though your art I dislike to hamper,
'I owe a little to God and Gramper,
'And after all,
'It's my wall . . .'

'We'll see if it is,' said Rivera.

Related material:

Pictures of the Rockefeller Center mural,
"Man at the Crossroads," and
Rivera's re-creation of the mural,
"Man, Controller of the Universe."

See also another treatment of the "Man at the Crossroads" theme–

The Concrete Gospel
of Donald E. Knuth:

In Hoc Signo

(from Feb. 18),
continued —

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050219-Signo.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

This holy icon
appeared at
N37°25.638'
W122°09.574'
on August 22, 2003,
at the Stanford campus.

Log24, Feb. 19, 2005  

Monday, February 28, 2005

Monday February 28, 2005

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

The Meaning of 3:16

From The New Yorker, issue dated Feb. 28, 2005:

"Time Bandits," by Jim Holt, pages 80-85:

"Wittgenstein once averred that 'there can never be surprises in logic.'"

"Miss Gould," by David Remnick, pages 34-35:

"She was a fiend for problems of sequence and logic…. Her effect on a piece of writing could be like that of a master tailor on a suit; what had once seemed slovenly and overwrought was suddenly trig and handsome."

Suddenly:

See Donald E. Knuth's Diamond Signs, Knuth's 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated, and the entry of 3:16 PM today.

Trig and handsome:

Remnick on Miss Gould again:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050228-MissGould.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Miss Gould,
photo from
Oberlin site

 

"She shaped the language of the magazine, always striving for a kind of Euclidean clarity– transparent, precise, muscular."

Figure from           
3/16 2004:           
Intersecting altitudes
Einstein on Time cover

Einstein on his
"holy geometry book" —

"Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point, which– though by no means evident– could nevertheless be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question. This lucidity and certainty made an indescribable impression upon me."

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050228-Graveyard.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

   "I need a photo opportunity,   
      I want a shot at redemption…."

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Saturday February 19, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:01 pm
Highway

From previous Log24.net entries:
 

Eight is a Gate:

"There is no highway in the sky."
— Quotation attributed to
Albert Einstein.
(See Gotthard Günther's website
"Achilles and the Tortoise, Part 2".) 

"Don't give up until you
Drink from the silver cup
And ride that highway in the sky."
—  America, 1974    

In Hoc Signo:

 

"So put me on a highway…."
The Eagles, 1975  

Stephen Yablo, draft of
"A Paradox of Existence,"
Nov. 8, 1998, section heading:

"III. Quine's way or the highway"

From that section:

"Burgess & Rosen begin their book A Subject with No Object with a relevant fable:

Finally, after years of waiting, it is your turn to put a question to the Oracle of Philosophy…you humbly approach and ask the question that has been consuming you for as long as you can remember: 'Tell me, O Oracle, what there is. What sorts of things exist?' To this the Oracle responds: 'What? You want the whole list? …I will tell you this: everything there is is concrete; nothing there is is abstract….'

Suppose we continue the fable a little. Impressed with what the Oracle has told you, you return to civilization to spread the concrete gospel. Your first stop is at [your school here]…."
 

The Concrete Gospel
of Donald E. Knuth:

 

In Hoc Signo
(from yesterday),
continued —

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050219-Signo.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

This holy icon
appeared at
N37°25.638'
W122°09.574'
on August 22, 2003,
at the Stanford campus.

See also
Cognitive Blending
and the Two Cultures
.

Friday, February 18, 2005

Friday February 18, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:33 pm

In Hoc Signo

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050218-Highwater.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sources:

Hellblazer: Highwater,
from a graphic-novel
series that is the source
of Keanu Reeves's latest
spiritual adventure —


The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050218-Poster.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Another source…
The home page of Donald E. Knuth.

For those who prefer a more
  ecumenical spiritual experience,
there is
  Knuth's collection of —

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050218-Signs.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors..

"When there's nothing to believe in
Still you're coming back,
you're running back
You're coming back for more

  So put me on a highway…."
The Eagles, 1975  

Powered by WordPress