Log24

See Saddle in this journal. 
See also Szell Game.

Click for a related elegy.

Peter Parker : How could you do all of this?
Quentin Beck : You'll see, Peter. People… need to believe.

From Sunday morning, a "green vault" hyperbolic paraboloid —

"A characteristic property of hyperbolic geometry
is that the angles of a triangle add to less
than a straight angle (half circle)." — Wikipedia

A related image —

Mot Juste?

From today’s New York Times, on the effort of Paris to be chosen as the host of the 2012 Olympics:

“‘To have the games would bring a little fun, as you say, a breath of fresh air,’ said Benoît Génuini, president of the French operation of Accenture, a global consulting company, on a balcony of the Louvre last week during an event to highlight the city’s cultural attractions as an Olympic host. He remarked that the country was morose and that the city itself had become a sort of museum. ‘The games would put Paris back in the saddle and lead it into the 21st century,’ he said, ‘get it out of its stupor.'”

Attributed to Dominique de Villepin, the new Prime Minister of France: words about his book on poetry–

“It tries to penetrate the heart of the poetic ferment, this secret place where words are made and unmade, where language is fashioned.”

Villepin (l.) with President Chirac

Project for the
New Century

“A bully can be stopped, and so can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice.”

— Tim Robbins, speech to National Press Club, April 15, 2003

Resoluteness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for such a voice.  Also needed is eloquence.  Here is such a voice:

William Rivers Pitt.

Postscript:

I wrote the above at 3:38 PM today, thinking I had finally found someone to admire whom my left-leaning friends might also admire.

Perhaps resoluteness and eloquence suffice to stop a mob; they are not, however, sufficient to impress professional journalists, who, to be much impressed, require a third quality– truthfulness.

Since today’s major Washington and New York papers indicate that a presidential scandal of Water- or Monica-gate proportions may be in the offing, some minimal fact-checking seems in order.  Hence, at 3:40 PM today, I did a Google search on names Pitt discusses:

“karl rove”  
“robert mosbacher”  
 novak. 

That search indicates that unfortunately, mob-stopper Pitt seems, like many leftists, to be a liar.

Here is an excerpt from Pitt on Karl Rove dated Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2003:

The Most Insidious of Traitors

“Karl Rove, senior political advisor to George W. Bush, is a very powerful man. That is not to say he has never been in trouble. Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush Sr. campaign for trashing Robert Mosbacher, Jr., who was the chief fundraiser for the campaign and an avowed Bush loyalist. Rove accomplished this trashing of Mosbacher by planting a negative story with columnist Bob Novak. The campaign figured out that Karl had done the dirty deed, and he was given his walking papers.

Demonstrably, Rove is back in the saddle again. The January 2003 edition of Esquire magazine carried an article by Ron Suskind…. “

Here is an excerpt from columnist Robert Novak dated December 5, 2002:

Low Political Intrigue

“The article in Esquire’s January edition by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind is actually about Karl Rove, Bush’s powerful political adviser…. 

Unfortunately, I did not escape Suskind’s article, which includes these sentences: ‘Sources close to the former president say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fund-raising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.’  I was called by no fact-checker, who would have learned of multiple errors.

Suskind has confused former Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher Sr., Bush’s 1992 chief fund-raiser, with his son Rob, who headed the Bush campaign in Texas (Victory ’92). Criticism of the younger Mosbacher, a frequent unsuccessful candidate in Texas, was not ‘planted’ with me by Rove but was passed to me by a Bush aide whom I interviewed. Rove was indeed fired by Mosbacher from Victory ’92 but continued as a national Bush-for-president operative.

Three mistakes in two sentences lend credence to claims by White House aides that they were misrepresented in Suskind’s July article…”

I say Pitt seems to be lying because in today’s editorial he never even mentions Novak’s column of December 5, 2002, which is, as noted above, readily available. 

It is, of course, possible that Pitt and Suskind are right and Novak is wrong.  It is also possible that Orwell was wrong, that Stalin was a great man, and that Communism is the wave of the future.

Resurrection

The previous entry, on Christian theology, does not imply that all religion is bad.  Consider, for instance, the following from a memorial web page: 

“Al Grierson’s song Resurrection was sung by Ray Wylie Hubbard, on his outstanding Dangerous Spirits album. The song is awesome, and fits right into Ray Wylie’s spirit ‘and an angel lay on a mattress and spoke of history and death with perfume on her lingerie and whiskey on her breath . . . he’s loading up his saddlebags on the edge of wonder, one is filled with music and the other’s filled with thunder.’ Wow.”

Amen.
Grierson died on November 2, 2000
— All Souls Day, Dia de los Muertos.

My own favorite resurrection story is “Damnation Morning,” by Fritz Leiber; see Why Me? 

For more on the Day of the Dead, see Under the Volcano.

These are, of course, just stories, but may reflect some as yet unknown truth.

By the way, thanks, Joni, for leading me to KHYI.com on the day of the Toronto Stones concert.

Trifecta

Born today: Arthur Koestler,
former Communist and writer on parapsychology

From To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey, 1973: 

“Mary-Molly luv, it’s going to be accomplished in steps, this establishment of the Talented in the scheme of things. Not society, mind you, for we’re the original nonconformists…. and Society will never permit us to integrate.  That’s okay!”  He consigned Society to insignificance with a flick of his fingers.  “The Talented form their own society and that’s as it should be: birds of a feather.  No, not birds.  Winged horses!  Ha!  Yes, indeed. Pegasus… the poetic winged horse of flights of fancy.  A bloody good symbol for us.  You’d see a lot from the back of a winged horse…”

“Yes, an airplane has blind spots.  Where would you put a saddle?”  Molly had her practical side.

He laughed and hugged her.  Henry’s frequent demonstrations of affection were a source of great delight to Molly, whose own strength was in tactile contacts. 

“Don’t know.  Lord, how would you bridle a winged horse?”

“With the heart?”

“Indubitably!”  The notion pleased him.  “Yes, with the heart and the head because Pegasus is too strong a steed to control or subdue by any ordinary method.” 

Born today:  Darryl F. Zanuck,
producer of “Viva Zapata!”

Director Eliza Kazan consults with scriptwriter John Steinbeck about the production of “Viva Zapata!” in Cuernavaca, Mexico:

When John woke, I asked him, “Isn’t the Syndicate of Film Technicians and Workers here Communist-dominated?”

Elia Kazan on Darryl Zanuck’s insistence that Zapata’s white horse be emphasized:

Darryl made only one suggestion that he was insistent on. He’d stolen it, no doubt, from an old Warner western, but he offered it as if it were pristine stuff. “Zapata must have a white horse,” he said, “and after they shoot him, we should show the horse running free in the mountains — get the idea? A great fade-out.” We got the idea, all right. Darryl was innocent about the symbol in his suggestion, but so enthusiastic about the emotion of it that he practically foamed at the mouth. John’s face was without expression. Actually, while I thought it was corny, the idea worked out well in the end. 

Born today: comedian Bob Newhart