Log24

See a Haaretz  story commemorating the Feb. 14,
1917, birthday of a crystallographer.

Related material in this journal —

At the Still Point (June 15, 2013):

The illustration is for those who, like Andy Magid and
Steven Strogatz in the March 2014 AMS Notices,
enjoy the vulgarization of mathematics.

Backstory: Group Actions (November 14, 2012).

Track listing

1. "Dirty Laundry" (Henley, Danny Kortchmar) – 5:36
2. "The Boys of Summer" (Mike Campbell, Henley) – 4:45
3. "All She Wants to Do Is Dance" (Kortchmar) – 4:28
4. "Not Enough Love in the World" (Henley, Kortchmar, Benmont Tench) – 3:54
5. "Sunset Grill" (Henley, Kortchmar, Tench) – 6:22
6. "The End of the Innocence" (Henley, Bruce Hornsby) – 5:14
7. "The Last Worthless Evening" (John Corey, Henley, Stan Lynch) – 6:05
8. "New York Minute" (Henley, Kortchmar, Jai Winding) – 6:34
9. "I Will Not Go Quietly" (Henley, Kortchmar) – 5:41
10. "The Heart of the Matter" (Campbell, Henley, J.D. Souther) – 5:21
11. "The Garden of Allah" (Corey, Paul Gurian, Henley, Lynch) – 7:02
12. "You Don't Know Me at All" (Corey, Henley, Lynch) – 5:36
13. "Everybody Knows" (Leonard Cohen, Sharon Robinson) – 6:10

"The first credential
 we should demand of a critic
 is his ideograph of the good."

– Ezra Pound,
  How to Read

A spoiler from the 1974 novel in last night's post
"Last Year's Valentine"—

I prefer Sinatra's version.

Death and
the Apple Tree

Today's New York Times on the late "fifth Beatle" Neil Aspinall, who died Easter night in Manhattan:

"… he played tambura (an Indian drone instrument) on 'Within You Without You'."

Related material:

Also in today’s online Times:

“Mstislav Rostropovich, a cellist and conductor who was renowned not only as one of the great instrumentalists of the 20th century, but also as an outspoken champion of artistic freedom in Russia during the final decades of the Cold War, died in Moscow today. He was 80 and lived in Paris, with homes in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London and Lausanne, Switzerland….

Mr. Rostropovich… was widely known by his diminutive, Slava (which means glory in Russian)….”

Related material:

I. “Established on 8 November 1943, the Order of Glory (Orden Slavy – Орден Славы) was an Order (decoration) of the Soviet Union…. The Order of Glory… was modelled closely upon the Tsarist Cross of St. George….” —Wikipedia

II. Also on the 8th of November, in 2006 and 2002: Grave Matters and Religious Symbolism at Princeton.

III. “Mr. Rostropovich will be buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery, where on Wednesday his friend, Boris Yeltsin, post-Soviet Russia’s first president, was laid to rest.” —New York Times

IV. “A graveyard smash.” –Bobby (Boris) Pickett, who died Wednesday.

From “Music and Lyrics” (2007)

Yesterday, Valentine’s Day, Hollywood released a romantic comedy, “Music and Lyrics,” based on a fictional reality-TV show called “Battle of the 80’s Has-Beens.”

This, along with the Feb. 13 Log24 entry touching on both pop science and pop music, and the fact that today is the anniversary of the 1988 death of physicist Richard Feynman, suggests the following exercise:

Compare and contrast the lives and works of Feynman (May 11, 1918 – Feb. 15, 1988) and the late Carl Sagan (Nov. 9, 1934 – Dec. 20, 1996).

(Being dead, both are, in a sense, has-beens, and both were popular in the 1980’s.)

I personally regard Feynman as one of science’s saints, and Sagan as, shall we say, a non-saint.  For some related reflections on pop science and pop music, see the five Log24 entries ending on Michaelmas 2002.  And then there is popcorn–

Click on picture for details.

From James A. Michener‘s The Source:

“Trouble started in a quarter that neither Uriel nor Zadok could have foreseen.  For many generations the wiser men of Zadok’s clan had worshipped El-Shaddai with the understanding that whereas Canaanites and Egyptians could see their gods directly, El-Shaddai was invisible and inhabited no specific place.  Unequivocally the Hebrew patriarchs had preached this concept and the sager men of the clans accepted it, but to the average Hebrew who was not a philosopher the theory of a god who lived nowhere, who did not even exist in corporeal form, was not easy to comprehend.  Such people were willing to agree with Zadok that their god did not live on this mountain– the one directly ahead– but they suspected that he did live on some mountain nearby, and when they said this they pictured an elderly man with a white beard who lived in a proper tent and whom they might one day see and touch.  If questioned, they would have said that they expected El-Shaddai to look much like their father Zadok, but with a longer beard, a stronger voice, and more penetrating eyes.

Now, as these simpler-minded Hebrews settled down outside the walls of Makor, they began to see Canaanite processions leave the main gate and climb the mountain to the north, seeking the high place where Baal lived, and they witnessed the joy which men experienced when visiting their god, and the Hebrews began in subtle ways and easy steps to evolve the idea that Baal, who obviously lived in a mountain, and El-Shaddai, who was reported to do so, must have much in common.  Furtively at first, and then openly, they began to climb the footpath to the place of Baal, where they found a monolith rising from the highest point of rock.  Here was a tangible thing they could comprehend, and after much searching along the face of the mountain, a group of Hebrew men found a straight rock of size equal to the one accorded Baal, and with much effort they dragged it one starless night to the mountain top, where they installed it not far from the home of Baal….”

Rabbi Chitrik died on
Valentine’s Day, 2006,
having had a heart attack
on Feb. 8, 2006–

Grammy Night.

The above monolith is perhaps more
closely related to El-Shaddai than to
Madonna, Grammy Night, and Baal.
It reflects my own interests
(Mathematics and Narrative)
and those of Martin Buber
(Jews on Fiction):
 

“Among Buber’s early philosophical influences were Kant’s Prolegomena, which he read at the age of fourteen, and Nietzsche’s Zarathustra.  Whereas Kant had a calming influence on the young mind troubled by the aporia of infinite versus finite time, Nietzsche’s doctrine of ‘the eternal recurrence of the same’ constituted a powerful negative seduction.  By the time Buber graduated from Gymnasium he felt he had overcome this seduction, but Nietzsche’s prophetic tone and aphoristic style are evident in Buber’s subsequent writings.”

— Plato.stanford.edu

Martin Buber

Rabbi Chitrik