Log24

A remark by Esther Dyson on Jan. 19:

See as well the above group-theory author here  on Jan. 19.

Related material:  "Same Staircase, DIfferent Day."

Detail of a photograph from 1954 —

A related tale —

See also the home page of Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz:

Strogatz is the author of "Why Pi Matters."

Backstory —

Today's sermon is for Martha B. Helfer, author of
the treatise on Darstellung  in today's previous post
and of the following—

(Click for clearer image.)

Helfer's The Word Unheard  was published by Northwestern University Press
on St. Andrew's Day, 2011. Log24 posts on that day—

Lines, Grids, and Fatuity for St. Andrew's Day.

The last of these warned of an upcoming Jewish Book Week event
on February 22, 2012.

That date turned out to be Ash Wednesday. See a Log24 post on that topic
that quotes a poet, T.S. Eliot, with anti-Semitic proclivities—

"And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word."

— T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"

This is perhaps not entirely irrelevant to Helfer's title, The Word Unheard .

* A concept of Schopenhauer and Hitler, and the first name of
   a fictional Boston mathematician.

The title of yesterday's post Will and Representation is of course
a reference to Schopenhauer's philosophical work of that name.

As the post itself indicates, the title is also a punning reference to
mathematical representation theory . 

To avoid confusion, it should be noted that Schopenhauer's
representation , in the original German, was Vorstellung .

The German for mathematical  representation theory is,
on the other hand, Darstellungstheorie . (The mathematical
use of Vorstellung  is non-technical, referring to concepts
of pedagogy. (A group presentation  is a Präsentation .))

For a discussion of the Vorstellung-Darstellung  distinction
in philosophy, not mathematics, see… 

The Retreat of Representation: The Concept of  Darstellung
in German Critical Discourse , by Martha B. Helfer,
State University of New York Press, 1996, esp. pp. 24-26.

"The 'one' with whom the reader has identified himself
has now become 'the listener, who listens in the snow';
he has become the snow man, and he knows winter
with a mind of winter, knows it in its strictest reality,
stripped of all imagination and human feeling.
But at that point when he sees the winter scene
reduced to absolute fact, as the object not of the mind,
but of the perfect perceptual eye that sees
'nothing that is not there,' then the scene,
devoid of  its imaginative correspondences,
has become 'the nothing that is.'"

—Robert Pack, Wallace Stevens:
An Approach to His Poetry and Thought.
New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1958.

It’s Not Easy
Being Green



Don Imus, 1974 album

Rutgers women’s basketball
coach C. Vivian Stringer:

“It’s about us as people– black, white, purple or green. And as much as I speak about that, it’s not even black and white– the color is green.”

Imus flap about
black, white, and green

David Lieberman, Laura Petrecca and Gary Strauss in USA Today:

“So amid all the uproar over Imus’ remarks and the national discussion over race relations that they ignited, why wasn’t he fired?

Stringer and others think that has less to do with relations between blacks and whites than it does with another color.

‘The color is green– if we can tolerate as a society what’s just taken place,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how anyone could have heard this and not been offended.’

As one of the country’s most popular radio talk show hosts, Imus is the centerpiece of a multimillion-dollar business that would collapse without him.

To get a sense of its size: Advertisers spent $11.3 million last year on his show at just one station, New York’s WFAN, according to Nielsen. That accounted for nearly 24% of all the station’s ad sales.

Sponsors paid MSNBC an additional $8.4 million last year for spots on Imus’ show, according to TNS Media Intelligence.”

Mike Lupica in the
New York Daily News,
April 11, 2007:

“Essence Carson talked about what Imus had said about her and her teammates, and about everything that has happened since.

‘It has stolen a moment of pure grace from us,’ she said.

The moment of pure grace was Essence Carson….”

From ESSENCE.com:

“Essence Communications Inc. (ECI) was founded in 1968. In October 2000, ECI signed an agreement with Time Inc., a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., to form a joint venture known as Essence Communications Partners. ESSENCE was the majority owner of the venture. In March 2005, Time Inc. acquired the portion it did not already own. The company’s name changed back to Essence Communications Inc. The ECI corporate headquarters are in New York City, with offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Detroit.

During the past 36 years, the company has grown into a vital business of diverse media properties and communications systems that include ESSENCE, its flagship magazine launched in 1970. Its success is linked to its unique relationship with the readers of ESSENCE magazine and the strong alliances it has forged with America’s leading corporations and financial institutions.”

Ig Nobel
Geography Prize

Background from David Brooks (NYT Magazine, Aug. 29, 2004):

“The war on Islamic extremism….
This has been miscast as a war on terror, but terror is just the means our enemies use. In reality, we’re fighting a war against a specific brand of Islamic extremism, a loose federation of ideologues who seek to dominate the Middle East and return it to the days of the caliphate.

We are in the beginning of this war, where we were against Bolshevism around 1905 or Fascism in the early 1930’s, with enemies that will continue to gain strength, thanks to the demographic bulge in the Middle East….”

On last night’s Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard:

“Coming a week before their more noble cousins are announced in Stockholm, the awards have become a keenly contested, globally reported event.”

— The Guardian, Oct. 1 

From the Bush-Kerry debate last night:

“Kerry: The president just talked about Iraq as a center of the war on terror. Iraq was not even close to the center of the war on terror before the president invaded it.”

As David Brooks has pointed out, the so-called war on terror is actually a war on an Islamic extremism that seeks to dominate the Middle East.  The United States government may deny, and Kerry may decry, the strategy of building permanent bases at the very center of the Middle East, Iraq (shown above), but such a strategy seems not without merit if the long-term strategic interests of the United States are placed ahead of political considerations.

Kerry’s apparent ignorance of such a strategy’s merits entitles him to this year’s Ig Nobel prize in geography– the above map.

Death of a Holy Man

Part I:  An American Religion

Hiroshima Mayor Says
US Worships Nukes

“HIROSHIMA — Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba warned that the world is moving toward war and accused Washington of ‘worshipping’ nuclear weapons during Wednesday’s ceremony marking the 58th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city….

… the Hiroshima mayor blamed the United States for making the world a more uncertain place through its policy of undermining the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

‘A world without nuclear weapons and war that the victims of the atomic bomb have long sought for is slipping into the shadows of growing black clouds that could turn into mushroom clouds at any moment,’ Akiba said. ‘The chief cause of this is the United States’ nuclear policy which, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear strike and by starting research into small ‘useable’ nuclear weapons, appears to worship nuclear weapons as God.’ “

— Mainichi Shimbun, Aug. 6, 2003

Part II: Holy Men and
             Sons of Bitches

“I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

— Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer,
    Director of Los Alamos

John Steinbeck describing Cannery Row in Monterey:

“Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,’ by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,’ and he would have meant the same thing.”  

“Now we are all sons of bitches.”

— Dr. Kenneth Bainbridge,
    Director of Trinity Test

Part III: Death of a Holy Man

From a review of The Atomic Scientists:

“… the authors try to add a personal element that can excite the reader about science.”

For more excitement, see Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Holiday Affair

From a site recommended by oOMisfitOo:

In The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi (Rutgers University Press, 1999), Michael R. Molnar explains how the purchase of a $50 Roman coin led him to discover the real date of Jesus’s birth.

The coin that provided the clue portrayed Aries the Ram looking back at a star.

From Molnar’s own site, Star of Bethlehem:

“On April 17, 6 BC, two years before King Herod died, Jupiter emerged in the east as a morning star in the sign of the Jews, Aries the Ram.”

Therefore, according to Molnar, today is Christmas.  Accordingly, let us sing a (slightly improved) carol in memory of the late Murray L. Bob (see April 15 entries):

God rest ye, merry gentleman.

Let us also voice a rousing chorus of one of my personal all-time favorites, in memory of a film director (see previous entry), who gave us a vision of Robert Mitchum (Ram) and Sarah Miles (“Lady Caroline Lamb“) united in marriage (Ding-Dong):

Who put the Ram in the
Ram-a-Lamb-a Ding-Dong?

Why, David Lean, of course.

Update of April 21, 2003:

When You Care Enough
to Send the Very Best

“Jan Scott, 88, a television art director and production designer who had won 11 Emmy Awards, died April 17 at her home in Hollywood Hills, Calif. The cause of death was not reported.

She started working in television in the 1950s and earned her first Emmy nomination in 1956 for a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” production. Her first Emmy Award came in 1968 for her work as an art director for “Kismet,” which appeared on ABC. Her last Emmy was awarded in 1989 for “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” on NBC.”

— The Washington Post, April 21, 2003

Inaugural Address for Cullinane College (undelivered):

The Prisoner

Cullinane College was scheduled to open its doors officially on January 29, 2003.  The following might have been an appropriate inaugural address.

From The Prisoner: Comments
 on the Final Episode, “Fall Out”:

“When the President asks for a vote, he says: ‘All in favor.’ But he never asks for those opposed. (Though it appears that none will be opposed — and though he says its a democratic assembly, it is hardly that. The President even says that the society is in a ‘democratic crisis,’ though without democracy present, it’s just a sham.)

#48/Young Man sings ‘Dry Bones,’, which is his rebellion (notice its chaotic effect on ‘society’). But then the song gets taken over, ‘polished,’ and sung by a voice-over (presumably set up by #1). Does this mean that society is stealing the thunder (i.e. the creative energy) of youth, and cheapening it, or does it mean that youth is just rebelling in the same way that their fathers did (with equal ineffectiveness)? Perhaps it is simply a comment on the ease with which society can deal with the real rebellion of the 1960’s, which purported to be led by musicians; one that even the Beatles said was impossible in ‘Revolution.'”

President: Guilty! Read the Charge!

#48 is guilty, of something, and then the society pins something on him.”

The Other Side of the Coin

Excerpt from the poem that Robert Frost (who died on this date in 1963) meant to read at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy:

It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.

I greatly prefer Robinson Jeffers’s “Shine, Perishing Republic“:

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
    heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, 
    and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember….

See also the thoughts on Republic vs. Empire in the work of Alec Guinness (as Marcus Aurelius and as Obi-Wan Kenobi).