See as well the previous post
and Psychoshop.
Thursday, February 4, 2021
Prayer Breakfast Day
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Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Rota in a Nutshell
"The proof of Desargues' theorem of projective geometry
comes as close as a proof can to the Zen ideal.
It can be summarized in two words: 'I see!' "
— Gian-Carlo Rota in Indiscrete Thoughts (1997)
Also in that book, originally from a review in Advances in Mathematics,
Vol. 84, Number 1, Nov. 1990, p. 136:
Related material:
Pascal and the Galois nocciolo ,
Conway and the Galois tesseract,
Gardner and Galois.
See also Rota and Psychoshop.
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Thursday, October 14, 2010
Synchronicity
This journal on October 12 (the traditional Columbus day)—
"The text is a two-way mirror
that allows me to look into
the life and times of the reader."
– The French Mathematician
(Galois), by Tom Petsinis
It is not clear how this is supposed to work.
However, there is synchronicity and the New York Lottery—
October 12, 2010—
Midday 765, Evening 365 —
Life and Times.
Life
|
From Log24 on April 21, the date of Mark Twain’s death– Psychoshop, by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny:
The Pennsylvania Lottery
and hence Log24, 9/23 (2007), and page 765 of From Here to Eternity (Delta paperback, 1998):
|
Times
|
See "Seasons of Love" from the musical "Rent." |
See also Mark 15:38— "And the veil of the temple…"
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Wednesday July 29, 2009
Kaleideion
Related material:
“A great deal has been made of the fact that Forbidden Planet is essentially William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) in an science-fiction setting. It is this that transforms Forbidden Planet into far more than a mere pulp science-fiction story” — Richard Scheib
Dialogue from Forbidden Planet —
“… Which makes it a gilt-edged priority that one of us gets into that Krell lab and takes that brain boost.”
Dialogue from another story —
“They thought they were doing a linear magnification, sort of putting me through a magnifying glass.”
“Sizewise?”
“Brainwise, but what they did was multiply me by myself into a quadratic.”
— Psychoshop, by Bester and Zelazny, 1998 paperback, p. 7
“… which would produce a special being– by means of that ‘cloned quadratic crap.’ [P. 75] The proper term sounds something like ‘Kaleideion‘….”
“So Adam is a Kaleideion?”
She shook her head.
“Not a Kaleideion. The Kaleideion….”
— Psychoshop, 1998 paperback, p. 85
See also
|
“Kaleidoscope turning…
Shifting pattern within
|
“When life itself seems lunatic,
who knows where madness lies?”
— For the source, see
Joyce’s Nightmare Continues.
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Friday, May 15, 2009
Friday May 15, 2009
Today is the opening of
Angels & Demons
Angels & Demons
Thanks to Jillian’s Specials for the following quotation:
“… faith is…. validated by individual experience and inspired by epiphanies.”
— “Where Physics Meets Faith,” by , Oct. 21, 2004
Individual Experience:
See, for instance, the link in last Sunday’s entry to a remarkable group-theoretic map.
Epiphanies:
Part I: For Jillian —
(with a nod to Matthew McConaughey and his films Contact and, more recently, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past).
Part II: For a mountaineer–
In this morning’s news:
(with a nod to Tom Hanks and to Gian-Carlo Rota and the Black Hole of Rome (cf. Psychoshop) as well as to the mountains, both real and imagined, in last Sunday’s link “a remarkable group-theoretic map“).
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Saturday, April 25, 2009
Saturday April 25, 2009
April is Awareness Month
for both
Mathematics and Autism.
for both
Mathematics and Autism.
Welcome to the
Black Hole Café
"Our lifelong friendship made me not only an admirer of the depth, scholarship, and sheer energy of his mathematical work (and of his ceaseless activities as an editorial entrepreneur on behalf of mathematics) but one in awe of his status as the ultimate relaxed sophisticate."
|
Psychoshop
by Alfred Bester
|
"After Davis and Hersh,
it will be hard to uphold
the Glasperlenspiel
view of mathematics."
— Gian-Carlo Rota
it will be hard to uphold
the Glasperlenspiel
view of mathematics."
— Gian-Carlo Rota
"For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross."
— Thomas Pynchon
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Tuesday June 17, 2008
Nightmare Alley
"History, Stephen said,
is a nightmare from which
I am trying to awake."
— Ulysses
|
When? Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler. Where?
— Ulysses, conclusion of Chapter 17 |
|
His manner was all charm and grace; pure cafe society…. He purred a chuckle. "Love to. The Luogo Nero? "That's what the locals call it.
— Psychoshop, by |
In memory of
special effects wizard
Stan Winston,
who died Sunday at 62:
"The energetic Winston
was always looking
to the next project."
— Today's LA Times,
story by
Dennis McLellan
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Friday, April 25, 2008
Friday April 25, 2008
Destabilizing
the Locus
the Locus
"It is the intention
of this piece
to destabilize the locus
of that authorial act…."
of this piece
to destabilize the locus
of that authorial act…."
— Yale art student
Aliza Shvarts,
quoted today in
The Harvard Crimson
From Log24 on
March 14:
|
Rite of Spring
From the online
Related material:
A figure from
— and
The center referred
See also Yeats —
Stevens —
and Zelazny —
|
Related material
from Google:
|
JSTOR: Killing Time
|
Other ways
of killing time:
|
From Log24 on April 21, the date of Mark Twain's death–
Psychoshop, by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny:
The Pennsylvania Lottery
and hence Log24, 9/23 (2007), and page 765 of From Here to Eternity (Delta paperback, 1998):
|
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Monday, April 21, 2008
Monday April 21, 2008
A Fresh Perspective
“… if thou bring thy gift
to the altar, and
there rememberest….”
Matthew 5:23-24
The following meditations were inspired by an ad today in the online New York Times obituaries section–
“Been somewhere interesting? Tell us about it for a chance to win a trip for 2 to Paris.”
Country song, quoted here Dec. 17, 2003–
“Give faith a fighting chance.”
Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano–
“I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart.”
From an obituary of mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota linked to here on April 18, the anniversary of Rota’s death:
Gian-Carlo Rota
“He always brought a very fresh
perspective on philosophical issues.”
Final Arrangements, continued–
April 21, 2008:
Odd Couples
Click image to enlarge.
From a novel, Psychoshop, quoted here in an entry on the Pope’s birthday, “The Gates of Hell” —
His manner was all charm and grace; pure cafe society….
He purred a chuckle. “My place. If you want to come, I’ll show you.”
“Love to. The Luogo Nero? The Black Place?”
“That’s what the locals call it. It’s really Buoco Nero, the Black Hole.”
“Like the Black Hole of Calcutta?”
“No. Black Hole as in astronomy. Corpse of a dead star, but also channel between this universe and its next-door neighbor.”
“Here? In Rome?”
“Sure. They drift around in space until they run out of gas and come to a stop. This number happened to park here.”
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Wednesday April 16, 2008
Poetry for Physicists:
The Gates of Hell
From the obituary of physicist John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton:
In the fall of 1967, he was invited to give a talk…. As he spoke, he… [mentioned] something strange… what he called a gravitationally completely collapsed object. But such a phrase was a mouthful, he said, wishing aloud for a better name. "How about black hole?" someone shouted from the audience.
That was it. "I had been searching for just the right term for months, mulling it over in bed, in the bathtub, in my car, wherever I had quiet moments," he later said. "Suddenly this name seemed exactly right." He kept using the term, in lectures and on papers, and it stuck.
From Log24 last year on this date ("Happy Birthday, Benedict XVI"):
"Know the one about the Demiurge and the Abridgment of Hope?"
— Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise, Knopf, 1981, the final page, 439
— Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise, Knopf, 1981, the final page, 439
From Dante, The Inferno, inscription on the gates of Hell:
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter."
From Psychoshop, an unfinished novel by Alfred Bester completed by Roger Zelazny:
His manner was all charm and grace; pure cafe society….
He purred a chuckle. "My place. If you want to come, I'll show you."
"Love to. The Luogo Nero? The Black Place?"
"That's what the locals call it. It's really Buoco Nero, the Black Hole."
"Like the Black Hole of Calcutta?"
"No. Black Hole as in astronomy. Corpse of a dead star, but also channel between this universe and its next-door neighbor."
"Here? In Rome?"
"Sure. They drift around in space until they run out of gas and come to a stop. This number happened to park here."
"How long ago?"
"No one knows," he said. "It was there six centuries before Christ, when the Etruscans took over a small town called Roma and began turning it into the capital of the world."
Related material:
Log24 on
narrative–
Life of the Party
(March 24, 2006),
and
'Nauts
(March 26, 2006)
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Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thursday February 21, 2008
Class
Galore
Galore
The New Yorker's Anthony Lane reviewing the new film "Jumper"–
"I wasn’t expecting Ernst Gombrich, but surely three writers, among them, could inject a touch of class."
The "Jumper" theme, teleportation, has been better developed by three other writers– Bester, Zelazny, and King–
"As a long-time fan of both Alfie Bester and Roger Zelazny, I was delighted to find this posthumous collaboration. Psychoshop is, I think, true to both authors' bodies of work. After all, Bester's influence on Zelazny is evident in a a number of works, most notably Eye of Cat with its dazzling experimental typography so reminiscent of what Bester had done in The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination."
— Amazon.com customer review
"'This is the last call for Jaunt-701,' the pleasant female voice echoed through the Blue Concourse of New York's Port Authority Terminal."
— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
|
From another "Jaunt-701"– Log24, Feb. 7:
The Football
Mandorla New York Lottery, 2008: "He pointed at the football "The |
"What happened?"
one of the scientists shouted….
"It's eternity in there,"
he said, and dropped dead….
— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
As
for Ernst
Gombrich, see
his link in the
Log24 entries
of June 15,
2007.
for Ernst
Gombrich, see
his link in the
Log24 entries
of June 15,
2007.
Related material:
the previous entry.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Sunday March 26, 2006
'Nauts
(continued from
Life of the Party, March 24)
Exhibit A —
From (presumably) a Princeton student
(see Activity, March 24):
Exhibit B —
From today's Sunday comics:
Exhibit C —
From a Smith student with the
same name as the Princeton student
(i.e., Dagwood's "Twisterooni" twin):
Related illustrations
("Visual Stimuli") from
the Smith student's game —
Literary Exercise:
Continuing the Smith student's
Psychonauts theme,
compare and contrast
two novels dealing with
similar topics:
A Wrinkle in Time,
by the Christian author
Madeleine L'Engle,
and
Psychoshop,
by the secular authors
Alfred Bester and
Roger Zelazny.
Presumably the Princeton student
would prefer the Christian fantasy,
the Smith student the secular.
Those who prefer reality to fantasy —
not as numerous as one might think —
may examine what both 4×4 arrays
illustrated above have in common:
their structure.
Both Princeton and Smith might benefit
from an application of Plato's dictum:
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