Log24

Continued from Once Upon a Matrix  (November 27, 2015).

Click image below to enlarge.

“… Which makes it a gilt-edged priority that one  of us 
 gets into that Krell lab and takes that brain boost.”

— American adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest , 1956

Midrash —

"Remember me to Herald Square."

AP Today in History 
Thought for the Day:

“I respect faith, but doubt is what
gives you an education.”
— Wilson Mizner, 
     American playwright (1876-1933)*

From this journal on the (wide) release date
of "X-Men: First Class" —

A minimalist 3×3 matrix favicon—

This may, if one likes, be viewed as the "nothing"
present at the Creation.  See Jim Holt on physics.

* A source —

Saturday night’s 9  PM post:

“Once again, Harvard defeats Holy Cross.”

That post quoted Joseph Campbell describing a

“… matrix of the cosmic process, whether in the macrocosm
or in a microcosmic field of manifestation.”

Related material —

Macrocosm:

Microcosmic field of manifestation:

This post was suggested by last night’s posts on conceptual art
(in São Paulo) and on a quarter-to-three story.

From this journal on May 31, 2012:

Matrix Problem:

Click image for some related material.

Meanwhile…

A game released on the above date:

Meanwhile…

Related journalism—

"What's the 'S'  stand for?" — Amy Adams

"My God, it's full of numbers!"

For the late Jim Hall—

Backstory:   Icon, 1:44 PM ET today.

Update of 11 PM ET Dec. 10, 2013 — 

For all  the notes, see Da Capo  (11 AM today)
and the Cullinane frequency matrix (12×12).

Matrix used to illustrate the well-tempered
scale. The integer frequency-ratio values
are only approximate in such a scale.

"… the primal ground of this 'one' is 'nothing.'
The elucidation of the generative matrix of the
myth-work is thus completed…." — Jadran Mimica

Related material— The Nothing That Is.

On the late Hugo Chávez:

"A couple of years later, I asked him why,
so late in the day, he had decided to
adopt socialism. He acknowledged that he
had come to it late, long after most of
the world had abandoned it, but said that it
had clicked for him after he had read
Victor Hugo’s epic novel Les Misérables .
That, and listening to Fidel."

— The New Yorker 's  Jon Lee Anderson

"As you can see, we've had our eye on you
for some time now, Mr. Anderson."

The Kernel of the Concept of the Object…

according to the New York Lottery yesterday—

From 4/27

From 11/24

A page numbered 176

A page numbered 187

Part I

Embedding the Stone (March 23, 2012) —

The Meno Embedding

Part II

ReverbNation.com — Lawrence Class —

New today…
John Markoff in this morning's New York Times—

"…what is new in recent months is the growing speed and accuracy
of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural networks
or just 'neural nets' for their resemblance to the neural connections
in the brain."

Not so new…
From the early days of Mike Lynch's Autonomy Inc.—

"Autonomy 's intelligent agents use neural networking
to search for patterns of information, rather than
specific words or phrases, thereby distinguishing relevant
from irrelevant information." (Business Wire , October 8, 1996)

And from 1999—

From AntiChristmas 2010—

Art theorist Rosalind Krauss and The Ninefold Square

Krauss is a co-founder of the art journal October .
For some backgound, see the overlapping searches
Krauss October and Matrix Architect.

Suggested by this morning's previous post (Araby) as well as
by Thursday's posts Jack and Jill and The Thing Itself …
an item from Google News—

Note the beauty of the headline's meter.

A midrash for Bloomberg—

"Let us return to the insertions." —André Topia, "The Matrix and the Echo."

COLLEGE OF THE DESERT
Minutes — Organization Meeting
11:00 a.m., Saturday, July 1, 1961—

15. Preparation of College Seal:

By unanimous consent preparation of a College
Seal to contain the following features was
authorized: A likeness of the Library building
set in a matrix of date palms, backed by
a mountain skyline and rising sun; before
the Library an open book, the Greek symbol
Alpha on one page and Omega on the other;
the Latin Lux et Veritas, College of the
Desert, and 1958 to be imprinted within or
around the periphery of the seal.

From the website http://geofhagopian.net/ of
Geoff Hagopian, Professor of Mathematics,
College of the Desert—

Note that this version of the seal contains
an Aleph  and Omega instead of Alpha and Omega.

From another Hagopian website, another seal.

Betty Skelton, "the First Lady of Firsts," died on the last day of August.

From this  journal on August thirty-first—

"The Tesseract was the jewel of Odin's treasure room."

Hugo Weaving also played Agent Smith
in The Matrix Trilogy .

For Cynthia Zarin, biographer of Madeleine L'Engle—

"There is  such a thing as a tesseract."
— A Wrinkle in Time

Today is Wednesday.

O.E. Wodnesdæg  "Woden's day," a Gmc. loan-translation of L. dies Mercurii  "day of Mercury" (cf. O.N. Oðinsdagr , Swed. Onsdag , O.Fris. Wonsdei , M.Du. Wudensdach ). For Woden , see Odin  . — Online Etymology Dictionary

Above: Anthony Hopkins as Odin in the 2011 film "Thor"

Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt in the related 2011 film "Captain America"—

"The Tesseract* was the jewel of Odin's treasure room."

Weaving also played Agent Smith in The Matrix Trilogy.

The figure at the top in the circle of 13** "Thor" characters above is Agent Coulson.

"I think I'm lucky that they found out they need somebody who's connected to the real world to help bring these characters all together."

— Clark Gregg, who plays Agent Coulson in "Thor," at UGO.com

For another circle of 13, see the Crystal Skull film implicitly referenced in the Bright Star link from Abel Prize (Friday, Aug. 26, 2011)—

Today's New York Times  has a quote about a former mathematician who died on that day (Friday, Aug. 26, 2011)—

"He treated it like a puzzle."

Sometimes that's the best you can do.

* See also tesseract  in this journal.

** For a different arrangement of 13 things, see the cube's 13 axes in this journal.

Today is Commencement Day at MIT.

Well, perhaps not quite nothing.

The above pictures were posted here on the day the following book was published—

The lives of the nine Jews in the above book amount to more than Yau's "nothing."

Note, however, that claims by Jews (see Jill Abramson yesterday) 
that their secular publications constitute a substitute for religion
and contain only "absolute truth" should be viewed with at least one
raised eyebrow.

Abramson's remark yesterday that her promotion to New York Times  executive editor
was like "ascending to Valhalla" had a religious flavor worthy of yesterday's
Feast of the Ascension.

In related news from yesterday's Times—

See also a symbol related to Apollo, to nine, and to "nothing"—

A minimalist 3×3 matrix favicon—

This may, if one likes, be viewed as the "nothing"
present at the Creation.  See Jim Holt on physics.

and under budget —

The Tiffany Case

See also Sunday morning’s pictures —

The sound of singing grows louder.

From the current index to obituaries at Telegraph.co.uk—

Teufel is also featured in today's New York Times—

"Mr. Teufel became a semicelebrity, helped in no small part by his last name, which means 'devil' in German."

From Group Analysis ,  June 1993, vol. 26 no. 2, 203-212—

The Problem of Good and Evil

by Ronald Sandison, Ledbury, Herefordshire HR8 2EY, UK

In my contribution to the Group Analysis Special Section: "Aspects of Religion in Group Analysis" (Sandison, 1993) I hinted that any consideration of a spiritual dimension to the group involves us in a discussion on whether we are dealing with good or evil spirits. But if we say that God is in the group, why is not the Devil there also? Can good and evil coexist in the same group matrix? Is the recognition of evil "nothing but" the ability to distinguish between good and bad? If not, then what is evil? Is it no more than the absence of good?

These and other questions were worked on at a joint Institute of Group Analysis and Group-Analytic Society (London) Workshop entitled "The Problem of Good and Evil." We considered the likelihood that good and evil coexist in all of us, as well as in the whole of the natural world, not only on earth, but in the cosmos and in God himself What we actually do with good and evil is to split them apart, thereby shelving the problem but at the same time creating irreconcilable opposites. This article examines this splitting and how we can work with it psychoanalytically.

This suggests a biblical remark—

"Now there was a day… when the sons of God
came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan came also among them."

— Job 1:6, quoted by Chesterton in The Man Who Was Thursday

Sandison died on June 18. See the Thursday, August 5, Log24 post "The Matrix."

Teufel died on July 6. See the Log24 posts for that day.

The title of this  post, "rift designs," refers to a recurring theme in the July 6 posts. It is taken from Heidegger.

From a recent New Yorker  review of Absence of Mind  by Marilynne Robinson—

"Robinson is eloquent in her defense of the mind’s prerogatives, but her call for a renewed metaphysics might be better served by rereading Heidegger than by dusting off the Psalms."

Following this advice, we find—

"Propriation gathers the rift-design of the saying and unfolds it  in such a way that it becomes the well-joined structure of a manifold showing."

— p. 415 of Heidegger's Basic Writings , edited by David Farrell Krell, HarperCollins paperback, 1993

"Das Ereignis versammelt den Aufriß der Sage und entfaltet ihn zum Gefüge des vielfältigen Zeigens." 

— Heidegger, Weg zur Sprache

"Fact and fiction weave in and out of novels
 like a shell game." –R. B. Kitaj
 as quoted by Marco Livingstone

Related material: Prime Designer,
Shell Game, and Evil Daemon.

See also remarks by root@matrix.net.

A Cross for the
Goat Men

Related material:

Krauss, Malevich, and
Linguistic Creation

"A devoted father, Smith passes on his philosophy of life to his children through chess, among other things.

'My father taught me how to play chess at seven and introduced beautiful concepts that I try to pass on to my kids. The elements and concepts of life are so perfectly illustrated on a chess board. The ability to accurately assess your position is the key to chess, which I also think is the key to life.'

He pauses, searching for an example. 'Everything you do in your life is a move. You wake up in the morning, you strap on a gun, and you walk out on the street– that's a move. You've made a move and the universe is going to respond with its move.

'Whatever move you're going to make in your life to be successful, you have to accurately access the next couple of moves– like what's going to happen if you do this? Because once you've made your move, you can't take it back. The universe is going to respond.'

Smith has just finished reading The Alchemist, by the Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho: 'It says the entire world is contained in one grain of sand, and you can learn everything you need to learn about the entire universe from that one grain of sand. That is the kind of concept I'm teaching my kids.'"

 Putting the
X
in Xmas

— C. S. Lewis

Apparently they teach them nihilism, empty rhetoric, and despair, as reflected in Borges, Baudrillard, and Benjamin, according to the art review below from today’s New York Times.  Let us hope that the late Peter Boyle, who died on Tuesday, Dec. 12, has moved beyond these now– singing “Heaven, I’m in Heaven,” rather than “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”

Black, White, and Read All Over by Randy Kennedy in The New York Times Friday, Dec. 15, 2006 “In one of Jorge Luis Borges’s best-known short stories, ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,’ a 20th-century French writer sets out to compose a verbatim copy of Cervantes’s 17th-century masterpiece simply because he thinks he can, originality perhaps not being all it’s cracked up to be. He manages two chapters word for word, a spontaneous duplicate that Borges’s narrator finds to be ‘infinitely richer’ than the original because it contains all manner of new meanings and inflections, wrenched as it is from its proper time and context….” [An artist’s version of a newspaper is]…. “a drawing of a copy of a version of what happened, holding a mirror up to nature with a refraction or two in between.  In a way that mixes Borges with a dollop of Jean Baudrillard and a heavy helping of Walter Benjamin, the work also upends ideas….”

The Work:

Pennsylvania Lottery
December 2006
Daily Number (Day):

Click on numbers
for commentary.

“There is nothing new under the sun. With the death of the real, or rather with its (re)surrection, hyperreality both emerges and is already always reproducing itself.”  –Jean Baudrillard

But seriously…

Order and Disorder

From “Connoisseur of Chaos,”
by Wallace Stevens, in
Parts of a World, 1942:

I

A.  A violent order is a disorder; and
B.  A great disorder is an order.
    These Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)               

IV  

A.  Well, an old order is a violent one. This proves nothing.
    Just one more truth, one more
    Element in the immense disorder of truths.

B.  It is April as I write. The wind
    Is blowing after days of constant rain.
    All this, of course, will come to summer soon.
    But suppose the disorder of truths should ever come
    To an order, most Plantagenet, most fixed. . . .
    A great disorder is an order.
    Now, A And B are not like statuary, posed
    For a vista in the Louvre. They are things chalked
    On the sidewalk so that the pensive man may see.

V

    The pensive man . . . He sees that eagle float
    For which the intricate Alps are a single nest.

Related material:

Skewed Mirrors,
Sept. 14, 2003

“Evil did not  have the last word.”
— Richard John Neuhaus, April 4, 2005

Logocentric Theology

“Logic is all about the entertaining of possibilities.”

— Colin McGinn,
Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning,
Harvard U. Press (See yesterday’s entry.)

“God is the sum of all possibilities.”

— Isaac Bashevis Singer, according to
the Associated Press “Today in History“
feature for today, March 30, 2005

“A probability space is a measure space with total measure one.”

— Gregory F. Lawler, Probability Notes

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

— Deuteronomy 6:4

For other illustrations of logocentric theology, see

Matrix of the Death God (May 25, 2003),

Transcendental Meditation (July 30, 2003),

and, for Warren Beatty’s birthday today,

Graphical Password (April 27, 2003).

Absolute Full Spin Mode

In today’s news:

“Kerry… said Bush and Cheney
were in ‘absolute full spin mode.'”

Today’s midday
California lottery number:

525.
Related material–
5/25, 2003:

Star Wars and
Matrix of the Death God. 

For similar theological remarks,
see yesterday’s
Spin the Numbers.

For Sinatra’s Birthday

Sinatra made as good use as anyone in the past century of the 12-note tempered scale, so the above seems a reasonably apt tribute on this, his 12/12 birthday.

Today in History:
The Comeback Kid

(Courtesy of Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar)

On this date:

In 1962, having lost the California governor’s race, Richard Nixon said to the press, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.”

In 1972, Republican incumbent President Richard Nixon was re-elected, defeating Democratic candidate George McGovern, 520 electoral votes to 17.

From the archives of singer/songwriter Shannon Campbell (“voice of an angel, mouth of a truckdriver”)–

Feb. 6, 2002: The Essential Matrix

NEO: (whines) Who am I?

TRINITY: You are The One.

EVERYONE ELSE: Eh, he might be The One.

TRINITY: He is The One.

NEO: I am not The One.

TRINITY: You are The One.

THE ORACLE: You are not The One, but you can’t tell anybody.

NEO: (whines) But I wanted to be The One. I want to go home….

TRINITY: Fuck. He’s not The One.

EVERYONE ELSE: Told you so.

MORPHEUS: Sure wish someone was The One. I’m in deep shit.

Transcendental Meditation

The bicentennial of Ralph Waldo Emerson was on May 25, 2003.  For a commemoration of Emerson on that date, click on the picture below of Harvard University’s Room 305, Emerson Hall.

This will lead you to a discussion of the properties of a 5×5 array, or matrix, with a symbol of mystical unity at its center.  Although this symbol of mystical unity, the number “1,” is not, pace the Shema, a transcendental number, the matrix is, as perhaps a sort of Emersonian compensation, what postmodernists would call phallologocentric.  It is possible that Emerson is a saint; if so, his feast day (i.e., date of death), April 27, might reveal to us the sort of miraculous fact hoped for by Fritz Leiber in my previous entry.  A check of my April 27 notes shows us, lo and behold, another phallologocentric 5×5 array, this one starring Warren Beatty.  This rather peculiar coincidence is, perhaps, the sort of miracle appropriate to a saint who is, as this week’s politically correct New Yorker calls him, a Big Dead White Male.

 Leiber’s fiction furnishes “a behind-the-scenes view of the time change wars.”

“It’s quarter to three…” — St. Frank Sinatra

Mental Health Month, Day 24:

The Sacred Day of
Kali, the Dark Lady

On this day, Gypsies from all over Europe gather in Provence for the sacred day of St. Sarah, also known as Kali.

Various representations of Kali exist; there is a novel about the ways men have pictured her:

The above is one of the best descriptions of Kali I know of in literature; another is in a short story by Fritz Leiber, “Damnation Morning.”   It is not coincidental that one collection of Leiber’s writings is called “Dark Ladies.”

My journal note “Biblical Proportions” was in part inspired by Leiber.

Frank Sinatra may have pictured her as Ava Gardner.  I think I saw her the night Sinatra died… hence my entries of March 31 and April 2, 2003. 

It is perhaps not irrelevant that Kali is, among other things, a mother goddess, and that my entry “Raiders of the Lost Matrix” of May 20 deals with this concept and with the number 24.

The above religious symbol (see “Damnation Morning“) pictures both the axes of symmetry of the square¹ and a pattern with intriguing combinatorial properties².  It also is the basis of a puzzle³ I purchased on August 29, 1997 — Judgment Day in Terminator 2.  Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in that film is an excellent representation of the Dark Lady, both as mother figure and as Death Goddess.

 
Sarah Connor

Background music: “Bit by bit…” — Stephen Sondheim… See Sondheim and the Judgment Day puzzle in my entry of May 20. The Lottery Covenant.

¹ A. W. Joshi, Elements of Group Theory for Physicists, Third Edition, Wiley, 1982, p. 5

² V. K. Balakrishnan, Combinatorics, McGraw-Hill, 1995, p. 180

³ The Izzi Puzzle