Log24

Monday, October 7, 2019

Oblivion

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:09 pm

(A sequel to Simplex Sigillum Veri and
Rabbit Hole Meets Memory Hole)

” Wittgenstein does not, however, relegate all that is not inside the bounds
of sense to oblivion. He makes a distinction between saying  and showing
which is made to do additional crucial work. ‘What can be shown cannot
be said,’ that is, what cannot be formulated in sayable (sensical)
propositions can only be shown. This applies, for example, to the logical
form of the world, the pictorial form, etc., which show themselves in the
form of (contingent) propositions, in the symbolism, and in logical
propositions. Even the unsayable (metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic)
propositions of philosophy belong in this group — which Wittgenstein
finally describes as ‘things that cannot be put into words. They make
themselves manifest. They are what is mystical’ ” (Tractatus  6.522).

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , “Ludwig Wittgenstein

From Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus  by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

(First published in Annalen der Naturphilosophie ,1921.
English edition first published 1922 by Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner. This translation first published 1961 by Routledge & Kegan Paul. Revised edition 1974.)

5.4541

The solutions of the problems of logic must be simple, since they set the standard of simplicity.

Men have always had a presentiment that there must be a realm in which the answers to questions are symmetrically combined — a priori — to form a self-contained system.

A realm subject to the law: Simplex sigillum veri.

Somehow, the old Harvard seal, with its motto “Christo et Ecclesiae ,”
was deleted from a bookplate in an archived Harvard copy of Whitehead’s
The Axioms of Projective Geometry  (Cambridge U. Press, 1906).

In accordance with Wittgenstein’s remarks above, here is a new
bookplate seal for Whitehead, based on a simplex

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Alms for Oblivion

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:20 am

Friday, September 6, 2013

Oblivion

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:45 pm

(Continued)

"Born of blood and tribulation" 
Gangs of New York

"Oblivion is not to be hired: The greater part must be content
to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register
of God, not in the record of man."

— Sir Thomas Browne

The part of the above quotation preceding the first comma may be
found, among other places, in a New York Times  piece published
online on August 7, 2012. See also this  journal on that date.

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Cryptic

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:48 pm

The above title, from a Oregon professor's writings quoted in this morning's
midnight-hour post, suggests a memory-hole date . . .

The above Crypt  remarks are dated October 7, 2019.

Also on that date . . .

Friday, May 8, 2020

Production Values

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:53 pm

From Log24 on August 30, 2013

Portrait, in the 2013 film Oblivion , of  a 2005 graduate
of London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art —

London derrière.

From a 2015 film viewed last night —

Saturday, September 14, 2019

The All-Night Record Player

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:00 am

See "Politics of Experience" and "Blue Guitar."

IMAGE- Scene from 'Oblivion' (2013) 

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,
here is a Log24 flashback reposted on that date —

Related poetry —

"To every man upon this earth,
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
and the temples of his gods…?"

— Macaulay, quoted in the April 2013 film "Oblivion"

Related fiction —

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

“Crossword Omen” Continues.

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:14 pm

An image from earlier Log24 posts tagged Crossword Omen

Portrait, in the 2013 film Oblivion , of  a 2005 graduate
of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art —

London derrière.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Tetrahedral Death Star

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:00 pm

Continuing the "Memory, History, Geometry" theme
from yesterday

See Tetrahedral,  Oblivion,  and Tetrahedral Oblivion.

IMAGE- From 'Oblivion' (2013), the Mother Ship

"Welcome home, Jack."

Friday, December 4, 2015

Turntable

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

André Weil in a letter to his sister

"I spoke of a bridge; it would be more correct
to speak of a turntable."

IMAGE- Scene from 'Oblivion' (2013)

Click the above image for a post from 10 years ago today.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Notes towards an Unreliable Narrator

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm

Related material from this  journal (Sept. 6, 2013) —

"Oblivion is not to be hired: The greater part must be
content to be as though they had not been, to be found
in the Register of God, not in the record of man."

— Sir Thomas Browne

See also the post Monolith  of August 23, 2014, as well as
the history of Farkas Hall  at Harvard and posts with that tag.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

In Nomine Patris

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

I.e., Neugebauer (See The Source, 9 PM Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014.)

See also Alms for Oblivion (January 22, 2006).

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Altar

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

"To every man upon this earth,
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
and the temples of his gods…?"

— Macaulay, quoted in the April 2013 film "Oblivion"

"Leave a space." — Tom Stoppard, "Jumpers"

Related material: The August 16, 2014, sudden death in Scotland
of an architect of the above Cardross seminary, and a Log24 post,
Plato's Logos, from the date of the above photo: June 26, 2010.

See also…

IMAGE- T. Lux Feininger on 'Gestaltung'

Here “eidolon” should instead be “eidos .”

An example of eidos — Plato's diamond (from the Meno ) —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100607-PlatoDiamond.gif

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Honors Night

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 pm

Tonight was Honors Night at the Kennedy Center.

"For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross." — Pynchon

From "Colin Wilson: The Persistence of Meaning"

"At a literary conference at SUNY New Paltz three years ago, among people who I thought would be positively disposed to Wilson, my mentioning of his name resulted in any number of arched eyebrows and suavely disparaging remarks. Now this might itself be, not an affirmation of justified oblivion, as one could easily assume, but rather a kind of indirect evidence for intrinsic merit. I stress the academic  character of the event and the self-assured oiliness of the dismissal. In context, the reference seemed to carry a distinctly un-PC valence so that the reaction to it, as I picture it in retrospect, resembled that of a patrician vampire to garlic."

—  Thomas F. Bertonneau on Thursday,
      May 7, 2009, in The Brussels Journal 

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Secretary

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 pm

Margalit Fox in The New York Times  this evening

Judith Daniels, the founding editor in chief of Savvy ,
the first glossy magazine aimed at executive women,
died on Sunday at her home in Union, Me. She was 74….

Savvy  will not tell you how to be a good secretary,”
one of its early promotional fliers read. “Savvy  will tell you
how to hire a good secretary— and how to fire.”

From the date of Daniels' death:  The Crossword Omen.

See, too,  Vogue  in this journal and Ontology.

From a post of January 26, 2013

IMAGE- Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and the ontology of entities

Sally in the 2013 film Oblivion : "Are you an effective team?"

Friday, August 30, 2013

Her

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 7:20 pm

(A sequel to today's noon post, Hymn)

Portrait, in the 2013 film Oblivion , of  a 2005 graduate
of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art —

London derrière.

Monday, August 12, 2013

To the Day

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:29 pm

IMAGE- Scene from 'Oblivion' (2013)

From "Ramble On" lyrics as quoted by OzWho:

"I've been this way ten years to the day"

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Demonstrations

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

IMAGE- Wolfram Demonstrations, '15 Point Projective Space'

IMAGE- From 'Oblivion' (2013), the Mother Ship

"Welcome home, Jack."

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Sunday January 22, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 am
Fourstone Parable
(continued)

Alms for Oblivion:

IMAGE- Yale Babylonian tablet 7289 and Father Time

In memory of Akkadian scholar
Erica Reiner, who died at 81 on
December 31, 2005.

"Erica combined a tough-minded commitment to intellectual excellence with a dry wit, charm, and a deep love of art, music, and literature.  Erica's passion for her work was legendary. She was someone who expected the very highest standards of scholarly rigor both in her own work, and in the efforts of others."

Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago

A Mass for Dr. Reiner
was scheduled for
Friday the 13th
  at the church of
"doubting Thomas"–
St. Thomas the Apostle
in Chicago.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Wednesday March 17, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:31 pm

Readings for
St. Patrick's Day

Books:

Finnegans Wake (1939)

Gravity's Rainbow (1978)

Masks of the Illuminati (1981)

Quotations:

"Nature does not know extinction;
all it knows is transformation.
Everything science has taught me,
and continues to teach me,
strengthens my belief in
the continuity of our
spiritual existence
after death."

Wernher von Braun

"I faced myself that day
with the nonplused apprehension
of someone who has
come across a vampire
and has no crucifix in hand."

— Joan Didion, "On Self-Respect,"
in Slouching Towards Bethlehem

 

"For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross.
"

— Thomas Pynchon,
Gravity's Rainbow

Inscribed
Carpenter's Square:

In Latin, NORMA

Multa renascentur quae iam cecidere, cadentque
quae nunc sunt in honore uocabula, si uolet usus,
quem penes arbitrium est et ius et norma loquendi.

Horace, Ars Poetica

Many terms will be born again
that by now have sunk into oblivion,
and many that are now held in respect
will die out if that is what use should dictate
in whose power is the judgment and the law
and the rule of speech.

All, all must perish — but, surviving last,
The love of Letters half preserves the past;
True — some decay, yet not a few revive,
Though those shall sink, which now
     appear to thrive,
As Custom arbitrates, whose shifting sway
Our life and language must alike obey.

Hints from Horace

"Norma was the latin word for what we now call a carpenter's square. It was used to construct lines which were at right angles to another line, so the created line was said to be 'normal.'  The norma was also used as a standard to compare if objects, like a wall, might be erect (perpendicular to the ground) and so those that met the standard were called 'normal' and this use extended to the 'typical' element of any type of set. Eventually normal came to mean anything that 'met the standard.' "

Pat Ballew on mathematical usage

 

"317 is a prime,
not because we think so,
or because our minds are shaped
in one way rather than another,
but
because it is so,
because mathematical reality
is built that way."

— G. H. Hardy,
A Mathematician's Apology

Monday, August 18, 2003

Monday August 18, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:09 pm

Entries since Xanga’s
August 10 Failure:


Sunday, August 17, 2003  2:00 PM

A Thorny Crown of…

West Wing's Toby Ziegler

From the first episode of
the television series
The West Wing“:

 

Original airdate: Sept. 22, 1999
Written by Aaron Sorkin

MARY MARSH
That New York sense of humor. It always–

CALDWELL
Mary, there’s absolutely no need…

MARY MARSH
Please, Reverend, they think they’re so much smarter. They think it’s smart talk. But nobody else does.

JOSH
I’m actually from Connecticut, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that I hope…

TOBY
She meant Jewish.

[A stunned silence. Everyone stares at Toby.]

TOBY (CONT.)
When she said “New York sense of humor,” she was talking about you and me.

JOSH
You know what, Toby, let’s just not even go there.

 

Going There, Part I

 

Crown of Ideas

Kirk Varnedoe, 57, art historian and former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, died Thursday, August 14, 2003.

From his New York Times obituary:

” ‘He loved life in its most tangible forms, and so for him art was as physical and pleasurable as being knocked down by a wave,’ said Adam Gopnik, the writer and a former student of his who collaborated on Mr. Varnedoe’s first big show at the Modern, ‘High & Low.’ ‘Art was always material first — it was never, ever bound by a thorny crown of ideas.’ ”

For a mini-exhibit of ideas in honor of Varnedoe, see

Fahne Hoch.

Verlyn Klinkenborg on Varnedoe:

“I was always struck by the tangibility of the words he used….  It was as if he were laying words down on the table one by one as he used them, like brushes in an artist’s studio. That was why students crowded into his classes and why the National Gallery of Art had overflow audiences for his Mellon Lectures earlier this year. Something synaptic happened when you listened to Kirk Varnedoe, and, remarkably, something synaptic happened when he listened to you. You never knew what you might discover together.”

Perhaps even a “thorny crown of ideas“?

“Crown of Thorns”
Cathedral, Brasilia

Varnedoe’s death coincided with
the Great Blackout of 2003.

“To what extent does this idea of a civic life produced by sense of adversity correspond to actual life in Brasília? I wonder if it is something which the city actually cultivates. Consider, for example the cathedral, on the monumental axis, a circular, concrete framed building whose sixteen ribs are both structural and symbolic, making a structure that reads unambiguously as a crown of thorns; other symbolic elements include the subterranean entrance, the visitor passing through a subterranean passage before emerging in the light of the body of the cathedral. And it is light, shockingly so….”

Modernist Civic Space: The Case of Brasilia, by Richard J. Williams, Department of History of Art, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

 

Going There, Part II

Simple, Bold, Clear

Art historian Kirk Varnedoe was, of course, not the only one to die on the day of the Great Blackout.

Claude Martel, 34, a senior art director of The New York Times Magazine, also died on Thursday, August 14, 2003.

Janet Froelich, the magazine’s art director, describes below a sample of work that she and Martel did together:

“A new world of ideas”

Froelich notes that “the elements are simple, bold, and clear.”

For another example of elements with these qualities, see my journal entry

Fahne Hoch.

The flag design in that entry
might appeal to Aaron Sorkin’s
Christian antisemite:

 

Fahne,
S. H. Cullinane,
Aug. 15, 2003

Dr. Mengele,
according to
Hollywood

 

Note that the elements of the flag design have the qualities described so aptly by Froelich– simplicity, boldness, clarity:

They share these qualities with the Elements of Euclid, a treatise on geometrical ideas.

For the manner in which such concepts might serve as, in Gopnik’s memorable phrase, a “thorny crown of ideas,” see

“Geometry for Jews” in

ART WARS: Geometry as Conceptual Art.

See also the discussion of ideas in my journal entry on theology and art titled

Understanding: On Death and Truth

and the discussion of the wordidea” (as well as the word, and the concept, “Aryan”) in the following classic (introduced by poet W. H. Auden):

 

 

Saturday, August 16, 2003  6:00 AM

Varnedoe’s Crown

Kirk Varnedoe, 57, art historian and former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, died Thursday, August 14, 2003.

From his New York Times obituary:

” ‘He loved life in its most tangible forms, and so for him art was as physical and pleasurable as being knocked down by a wave,’ said Adam Gopnik, the writer and a former student of his who collaborated on Mr. Varnedoe’s first big show at the Modern, ‘High & Low.’ ‘Art was always material first — it was never, ever bound by a thorny crown of ideas.’ “

For a mini-exhibit of ideas in honor of Varnedoe, see

Fahne Hoch. 

Verlyn Klinkenborg on Varnedoe:

“I was always struck by the tangibility of the words he used….  It was as if he were laying words down on the table one by one as he used them, like brushes in an artist’s studio. That was why students crowded into his classes and why the National Gallery of Art had overflow audiences for his Mellon Lectures earlier this year. Something synaptic happened when you listened to Kirk Varnedoe, and, remarkably, something synaptic happened when he listened to you. You never knew what you might discover together.”

Perhaps even a “thorny crown of ideas”?

“Crown of Thorns”
Cathedral, Brasilia

Varnedoe’s death coincided with
the Great Blackout of 2003.

“To what extent does this idea of a civic life produced by sense of adversity correspond to actual life in Brasília? I wonder if it is something which the city actually cultivates. Consider, for example the cathedral, on the monumental axis, a circular, concrete framed building whose sixteen ribs are both structural and symbolic, making a structure that reads unambiguously as a crown of thorns; other symbolic elements include the subterranean entrance, the visitor passing through a subterranean passage before emerging in the light of the body of the cathedral. And it is light, shockingly so….”

Modernist Civic Space: The Case of Brasilia, by Richard J. Williams, Department of History of Art, University of Edinburgh, Scotland


Friday, August 15, 2003  3:30 PM

ART WARS:

The Boys from Brazil

It turns out that the elementary half-square designs used in Diamond Theory

 

also appear in the work of artist Nicole Sigaud.

Sigaud’s website The ANACOM Project  has a page that leads to the artist Athos Bulcão, famous for his work in Brasilia.

From the document

Conceptual Art in an
Authoritarian Political Context:
Brasilia, Brazil
,

by Angélica Madeira:

“Athos created unique visual plans, tiles of high poetic significance, icons inseparable from the city.”

As Sigaud notes, two-color diagonally-divided squares play a large part in the art of Bulcão.

The title of Madeira’s article, and the remarks of Anna Chave on the relationship of conceptual/minimalist art to fascist rhetoric (see my May 9, 2003, entries), suggest possible illustrations for a more politicized version of Diamond Theory:

 

Fahne,
S. H. Cullinane,
Aug. 15, 2003

Dr. Mengele,
according to
Hollywood

 

Is it safe?

These illustrations were suggested in part by the fact that today is the anniversary of the death of Macbeth, King of Scotland, and in part by the following illustrations from my journal entries of July 13, 2003 comparing a MOMA curator to Lady Macbeth:

 

Die Fahne Hoch,
Frank Stella,
1959


Dorothy Miller,
MOMA curator,
died at 99 on
July 11, 2003
.

 


Thursday, August 14, 2003  3:45 AM

Famous Last Words

The ending of an Aug. 14 Salon.com article on Mel Gibson’s new film, “The Passion”:

” ‘The Passion’ will most likely offer up the familiar puerile, stereotypical view of the evil Jew calling for Jesus’ blood and the clueless Pilate begging him to reconsider. It is a view guaranteed to stir anew the passions of the rabid Christian, and one that will send the Jews scurrying back to the dark corners of history.”

— Christopher Orlet

“Scurrying”?!  The ghost of Joseph Goebbels, who famously portrayed Jews as sewer rats doing just that, must be laughing — perhaps along with the ghost of Lady Diana Mosley (née Mitford), who died Monday.

This goes well with a story that Orlet tells at his website:

“… to me, the most genuine last words are those that arise naturally from the moment, such as

 

Joseph Goebbels

 

Voltaire’s response to a request that he foreswear Satan: ‘This is no time to make new enemies.’ ”

For a view of Satan as an old, familiar, acquaintance, see the link to Prince Ombra in my entry last October 29 for Goebbels’s birthday.


Wednesday, August 13, 2003  3:00 PM

Best Picture

For some reflections inspired in part by

click here.


Tuesday, August 12, 2003  4:44 PM

Atonement:

A sequel to my entry “Catholic Tastes” of July 27, 2003.

Some remarks of Wallace Stevens that seem appropriate on this date:

“It may be that one life is a punishment
For another, as the son’s life for the father’s.”

—  Esthétique du Mal, Wallace Stevens

Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr.

“Unless we believe in the hero, what is there
To believe? ….
Devise, devise, and make him of winter’s
Iciest core, a north star, central
In our oblivion, of summer’s
Imagination, the golden rescue:
The bread and wine of the mind….”

Examination of the Hero in a Time of War, Wallace Stevens

Etymology of “Atonement”:

Middle English atonen, to be reconciled, from at one, in agreement

At One

“… We found,
If we found the central evil, the central good….
… we and the diamond globe at last were one.”

Asides on the Oboe, Wallace Stevens


Tuesday, August 12, 2003  1:52 PM

Franken & ‘Stein,
Attorneys at Law

Tue August 12, 2003 04:10 AM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fox News Network is suing humor writer Al Franken for trademark infringement over the phrase ‘fair and balanced’ on the cover of his upcoming book, saying it has been ‘a signature slogan’ of the network since 1996.”

Franken:
Fair?

‘Stein:
Balanced?

For answers, click on the pictures
of Franken and ‘Stein.


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