Log24

From Oscars La La —

See also this journal on Feb. 15, 2017 —

"For Your Consideration."

Related item from Arts & Letters Daily today —

(Continued)

Plato at Stanford:
Lacan and the Matheme of Fantasy

“… [in] the matheme of fantasy ($ ◊ a ),
the diamond-shaped “lozenge” (poinçon ) ◊
can be read as a condensation of four symbols:
one, ∧ (the logical symbol for conjunction [“and”]);
two, ∨ (the logical symbol for disjunction [“or”]);
three, > (the mathematical symbol for “greater than”); and,
four, < (the mathematical symbol for “less than”). As per
Lacan’s matheme, the subject’s desires are scripted and
orchestrated by an unconscious fundamental fantasy
in which the desiring subject ($) is positioned in relation to
its corresponding object-cause of desire ( a ).”

— plato.stanford.edu, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Stanford author: 

The author is a professor in Albuquerque.
For other perspectives, see that city in this journal.

For the film  authors, see IMDb.

(Continued)

See Shadowlands in this journal.
The film so titled was directed by Richard Attenborough,
President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,
who reportedly died on Sunday, August 24, 2014.

From "Plato Thanks the Academy," March 19, 2014 —

“Click on fanciful .”

A possible result —

See also "Triple Cross."

Academy Awards
for Cambridge

“First of all, I’d like
 to thank the Academy.”
— Remark attributed to Plato

“A poem cannot exhaust reality,
  but it can arrest it.“

— At War with the Word:
   Literary Theory and
   Liberal Education,
   by R. V. Young,
   Chapter One

For one such poem, see

“Life and Death United:
An Intimate Portrait of
a Man Named Miles Davis,”
from a seminar’s weblog
at DePauw University on
Sunday, November 21, 2004.

See also the four Log24
entries on that date as well
as yesterday’s entry on Davis
and the entries preceding it.

McGee Thanks the Academy:

“The ulterior motive behind this essay [“Reading Authority,” above], the purpose for which I seize this occasion, concerns the question or problem of authority. I stress at the outset my understanding of authority as the constructed repository of value or foundation of a system of values, the final effect of fetishism– in this case, literary fetishism. [Cf. Marx, Das Kapital] Reading– as in the phrase ‘reading authority’– should be grasped as the institutionally determined act of constructing authority….”

Wikipedia:

“[In Peter Pan] Smee is Captain Hook’s right-hand man… Barrie describes him as ‘Irish’ and ‘a man who stabbed without offence‘….”

Background: In yesterday’s morning entry, James Joyce as Jesuit, with “Dagger Definitions.”

A different Smee appears as an art critic in yesterday’s afternoon entry “Design Theory.”–

Smee Stabs Without Offence:

“Brock, who has a brisk mind, is a man on a mission. He read mathematical economics and political philosophy at Princeton (he has five degrees in all) and is the founder and president of Strategic Economic Decisions Inc., a think tank specializing in applying the economics of uncertainty to forecasting and risk assessment.

But phooey to all that; Brock has deeper things to think about. He believes he has cracked the secret of beautiful design. He even has equations and graphs to prove it.”

A Jesuit in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

“When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question?”

Beckett Bethicketted:

“Our entanglement in the wilderness of Finnegans Wake is exemplified by the neologism ‘Bethicket.’ This word condenses a range of possible meanings and reinforces a diversity of possible syntactic interpretations. Joyce seems to allude to Beckett, creating a portmanteau word that melds ‘Beckett’ with ‘thicket’ (continuing the undergrowth metaphor), ‘thick’ (adding mental density to floral density)…. As a single word ‘Bethicket’ contains the confusion that its context suggests. On the one hand, ‘Bethicket me for a stump of a beech’ has the sound of a proverbial expletive that might mean something like ‘I’ll be damned’ or ‘Well, I’ll be a son of a gun.’….”

— Stephen Dilks

At the Oscars, 2009

Related material:

Frame Tales and Dickung

Orwell’s question, according to
an admirer of leftist Noam Chomsky:

“When so much of the BS is right out in the open,
why is it that we know so little about it?
Why don’t we see what’s right in front of our eyes?”

Oscar

Deep Chomsky: Lying, Truth-Telling, and the Social Order

Michael  Moore

“First of all, I’d like to thank the Academy….”
— Quotation attributed to Plato

The New Yorker of March 31, 2003, discusses leftist academic Noam Chomsky.  The online edition provides a web page listing pro-Chomsky links.

Chomsky’s influence is based in part on the popularity of his half-baked theories on linguistics, starting in the 1950’s with “deep structure” and “transformational,” or “generative,” grammar.

Chomsky has abandoned many of his previous ideas and currently touts what he calls The Minimalist Program.

For some background on Chomsky’s recent linguistic notions, see the expository essay “Syntactic Theory,” by Elly van Gelderen of the Arizona State University English Department.  Van Gelderen lists her leftist political agenda on her “Other Interests” page.  Her department may serve as an example of how leftists have converted many English departments in American universities to propaganda factories.

Some attacks on Chomsky’s scholarship:

The Emperor’s New Linguistics

The New Grammarians’ Funeral

Beyond Chomsky

Could Chomsky Be Wrong? 

Forty-four Reasons Why the Chomskians Are Mistaken

Call for Papers, Chomsky 2003

Chomsky’s (Mis)Understanding of Human Thinking

Anatomy of a Revolution… Chomsky in 1962

…Linguistic Theory: The Rationality of Noam Chomsky

A Bibliography

Some attacks on Chomsky’s propaganda:

LeftWatch.com Chomsky page

Destructive Generation excerpt

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky

Partners in Hate: Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust Deniers

Chomsky and Plato’s Diamond

Like another purveyor of leftist nonsense, Jacques Derrida, Chomsky is fond of citing Plato as a precedent.  In particular, what Chomsky calls “Plato’s problem” is discussed in Plato’s Meno.  For a look at the diamond figure that plays a central role in that dialogue, see Diamond Theory.  For an excellent overview of related material in Plato, see Theory of Forms.

Arrow in the Blue

A description by Arthur Koestler (born Sept. 5, 1905) of a

close encounter with the divine:

“…a wordless essence, a fragrance of eternity, a quiver of the arrow in the blue.”

Koestler also mentions the “blue Andalusian sky.” 

Some thoughts suggested by the above and by the Sept. 5, 2002, New York Times story on the first anniversary of the murder of the Mexican lawyer

María de los Angeles Tames….

1. The blue of the Andalusian sky is essentially the same as the blue of the sky above Baja California.  See photographs of the last Jesuit mission in Mexico,

Santa María de los Angeles. 

2.  A Google search for “blue Andalusian sky” yielded two results: the Koestler page quoted above, and a page on the Gypsy film “Vengo.”  For a reasonable likeness of St. Sara, patron saint of the Gypsies, also known as The Dark Lady, also known as Kali, see the poster of dancer

Sara Baras at Flamenco-world.com. 

For the music Sara dances to, composed and played by Jesús de Rosario, listen to audio clips at

Juana la Loca: Vivir por Amor.

3. For an American version of The Dark Lady, see an homage from Catalonia to

Emmy Lou Harris. 

For a Harris song that seems appropriate to the blue-sky theme above, see

Thanks to You.