See also "Where Madness Lies."
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Xmas with Moriarty: Big Little Ideas
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Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Plan 9 From Moriarty
Some related mathematical windmills —
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For the eight-limbed star at the top of the quaternion array She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a delicate branding iron—especially when its tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire. “The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing. “Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth dimension or only die in it.” — Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959 |
See as well . . .
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Friday, November 18, 2022
A Little Theatre for Aaron Sorkin
… and a little night music —
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Saturday, January 8, 2022
In Memoriam: Lyricist Marilyn Bergman
Bergman reportedly died today at 93.
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Saturday, January 26, 2019
In Memory of a Composer
who reportedly died early today in Paris, a tribute from
those who wrote the English lyrics for "Windmills of Your Mind" —
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Thursday, December 14, 2017
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Interlacing, Interweaving
The above title should be sung to the following tune —
"Right through hell
there is a path…."
— Malcolm Lowry,
Under the Volcano
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Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Hook
"Like the circles that you find
in the windmills of your mind"
See also, in this journal, "An Awfully Big Adventure."
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Monday, August 19, 2013
Noon
Last midnight's post quoted poet John Hollander
on Cervantes—
"… the Don’s view of the world is correct at midnight,
and Sancho’s at noon."
The post concluded with a figure that might, if
rotated slightly, be regarded as a sort of Star of
David or Solomon's Seal. The figure's six vertices
may be viewed as an illustration of Pascal's
"mystic hexagram."
Pacal's hexagram is usually described
as a hexagon inscribed in a conic
(such as a circle). Clearly the hexagon
above may be so inscribed.
The figure suggests that last midnight's Don be
played by the nineteenth-century mathematician
James Joseph Sylvester. His 1854 remarks on
the nature of geometry describe a different approach
to the Pascal hexagram—
| "… the celebrated theorem of Pascal known under the name of the Mystic Hexagram, which is, that if you take two straight lines in a plane, and draw at random other straight lines traversing in a zigzag fashion between them, from A in the first to B in the second, from B in the second to C in the first, from C in the first to D in the second, from D in the second to E in the first, from E in the first to F in the second and finally from F in the second back again to A the starting point in the first, so as to obtain ABCDEF a twisted hexagon, or sort of cat's-cradle figure and if you arrange the six lines so drawn symmetrically in three couples: viz. the 1st and 4th in one couple, the 2nd and 5th in a second couple, the 3rd and 6th in a third couple; then (no matter how the points ACE have been selected upon one of the given lines, and BDF upon the other) the three points through which these three couples of lines respectively pass, or to which they converge (as the case may be) will lie all in one and the same straight line." |
For a Sancho view of Sylvester's "cat's cradle," see some twentieth-century
remarks on "the most important configuration of all geometry"—
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho,
"what you see over there aren't giants,
but windmills, and what seems to be arms
are just their sails, that go around in the wind
and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quijote,
"you don't know much about adventures.”
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Thursday, May 8, 2008
Thursday May 8, 2008
Synchronicity,
Part Deux
Part Deux
From
“On the Holy Trinity,”
the entry in the 3:20 PM
French footprint:
“…while the scientist sees
everything that happens
in one point of space,
the poet feels
everything that happens
in one point of time…
all forming an
instantaneous and transparent
organism of events….”
From
“Angel in the Details,”
the entry in the 3:59 PM
French footprint:
“I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose”
These, along with this afternoon’s
earlier entry, suggest a review
of a third Log24 item, Windmills,
with an actress from France as…
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Changing Woman: “Kaleidoscope turning…
Shifting pattern |
“When life itself seems lunatic,
who knows where madness lies?”
— For the source, see
Joyce’s Nightmare Continues.
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Sunday, February 18, 2007
Sunday February 18, 2007
Further Adventures
in Harvard Iconology
in Harvard Iconology
The next novel starring
Robert Langdon, Harvard author
of "the renowned collegiate
texbook Religious Iconology"
is said to be titled
The Solomon Key.
Related material–
The Harvard Crimson online:
| Fishburne To Receive Honors at Cultural Rhythms Acclaimed actor and humanitarian chosen as the Harvard Foundation's Artist of the Year By DORIS A. HERNANDEZ Friday, February 16, 2007 9:37 PM Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Laurence Fishburne will take the stage later this month as the 2007 Artist of the Year during the 22nd annual Cultural Rhythms festival, the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations announced Friday afternoon. |
Fishburne
as Morpheus
"Metaphor for Morphean morphosis,
Dreams that wake, transform, and die,
Calm and lucid this psychosis,
Joyce's nightmare in Escher's eye….
Dabo claves regni caelorum. By silent shore
Ripples spread from castle rock. The metaphor
For metamorphosis no keys unlock."
— Steven H. Cullinane,
November 7, 1986,
"Endgame"
More on metamorphosis–
Cat's Yarn
(Log24, June 20, 2006):
"The end is where
we start from."
plus.maths.org
and
Garfield 2003-06-24
See also:
Zen Koan
and
Blue Dream.
Update of 5:24 PM
Feb. 18, 2007:
A Xanga footprint from France
this afternoon (3:47 PM EST)
indicates that someone there
may be interested in the above
poem's "claves regni caelorum."
The visitor from France viewed
"Windmills" (Nov. 15, 2005).
Material related to that entry
may be found in various places
at Log24.com. See particularly
"Shine On, Hermann Weyl," and
entries for Women's History
Month last year that include
"Christ at the Lapin Agile."
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Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Wednesday November 16, 2005
Images
"Lewis began with a number of haunted images…."
"The best of the books are the ones… where the allegory is at a minimum and the images just flow."
"'Everything began with images,' Lewis wrote…."
"We go to the writing of the marvellous, and to children’s books, for stories, certainly, and for the epic possibilities of good and evil in confrontation, not yet so mixed as they are in life. But we go, above all, for imagery: it is the force of imagery that carries us forward. We have a longing for inexplicable sublime imagery…."
"The religious believer finds consolation, and relief, too, in the world of magic exactly because it is at odds with the necessarily straitened and punitive morality of organized worship, even if the believer is, like Lewis, reluctant to admit it. The irrational images– the street lamp in the snow and the silver chair and the speaking horse– are as much an escape for the Christian imagination as for the rationalist, and we sense a deeper joy in Lewis’s prose as it escapes from the demands of Christian belief into the darker realm of magic. As for faith, well, a handful of images is as good as an armful of arguments, as the old apostles always knew."
Related material:
Click on pictures for details.
See also Windmills and
Verbum sat sapienti?
as well as
at Calvin College
on Simone Weil,
Charles Williams,
Dante, and
"the way of images."
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Tuesday November 15, 2005
Windmills
Upper part of above picture–
From today’s New York Times,
Seeing Mountains in
Starry Clouds of Creation.
Lower part of above picture–
Pilgrimage to Spider Rock:
“This magical place, according to Navajo Legend, was the home of Spider Woman, who gave the gift of weaving to the Dineh’ People. Today’s Navajos trace the excellence of their finest textiles to this time of legends, when their patron, Changing Woman, met Spider Woman, the first Weaver.”
Vine Deloria Jr.,
Evolution, Creationism,
and Other Modern Myths:
“The continuing struggle between evolutionists and creationists, a hot political topic for the past four decades, took a new turn in the summer of 1999 when the Kansas Board of Education voted to omit the mention of evolution in its newly approved curriculum, setting off outraged cries of foul by the scientific establishment. Don Quixotes on both sides mounted their chargers and went searching for windmills.”
Related material–
A figure from
last night’s entry,
Spider Woman:
From Sunday, the day
of Vine Deloria’s death,
a picture that might be
called Changing Woman:
Kaleidoscope turning…
Shifting pattern
within unalterable structure…
— Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat
See also the windmill figure
in Time and Eternity
(Log 24, Feb. 1, 2003)
and
a review
of Fritz Leiber’s
The Big Time,
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Monday, February 24, 2003
Monday February 24, 2003
Moulins Rouges
Today is the birthday of composer Michel Legrand (“The Windmills of Your Mind”) and of philologist Wilhelm Grimm (Grimms’ Fairy Tales).
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See the following past entries:
October 6, 2002: “Twenty-first Century Fox”
November 7, 2002: “Endgame”
November 8, 2002: “Religious Symbolism at Princeton”
January 5, 2003: “Whirligig”
January 5, 2003: “Culinary Theology”
January 6, 2003: “Dead Poet in the City of Angels”
January 31, 2003: “Irish Fourplay”
February 1, 2003; “Time and Eternity”
February 5, 2003: “Release Date”
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