Log24

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

“Midnight Sun” Link

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:01 am

See http://m759.net/wordpress/?tag=on051101.

Related material —

Monday, October 23, 2023

Another Maniac Monday

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 2:12 pm

See as well other posts now tagged Maniac Series Begins.

Related reading:  A Sept. 29 review of The MANIAC , a novel.
 

J. Robert Oppenheimer and John von Neumann in 1952.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Combinatorial Matrix Classes

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:59 pm

A book by this title, Richard A. Brualdi’s  Combinatorial Matrix Classes ,
was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006:

For some related remarks, see The Counter (March 13, 2011).

My own work deals with combinatorial properties of matrices
of 0’s and 1’s, but in the context of Galois  (i.e., finite) fields,
not the real or complex fields. Despite the generality of
their titles, Combinatorial Matrix Theory  and Combinatorial
Matrix Classes  do not deal with Galois  matrices.

Matching Theory

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Some mathematical background for yesterday's
remarks "For the Bregnans" and "Lost in Translation"—

"Matching Theory: A Sampler, from Dénes König
to the Present
," by Michael D. Plummer, 1991.

See also Matching Theory  by Plummer and Lovász.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Lost in Translation

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:45 pm

IMAGE- Original French of text from 'The Shining of May 29'

Translation by Barbara Johnson:

"The minimum number of rows— lines or columns—
that contain all the zeros in a matrix is equal to
the maximum number of zeros
located in any individual line or column ."

In the original:

"situés sur des lignes ou des colonnes distinctes "

Update of 11:30 PM ET May 29, 2014:

Derrida in 1972 was quoting Philippe Sollers, Nombres
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil , 1968).  Sollers in turn was
perhaps quoting A. Kaufmann, Méthodes et Modèles
de la Recherche Opérationnelle , Paris, Dunod , 1964,
L'Économie d'Entreprise 10 , vol. 2, page 305:

"Le nombre minimal de rangées
(lignes et/ou colonnes) contenant
tous les zéros d'une matrice, est égal
au nombre maximal de zéros
situés 
sur des lignes et des colonnes distinctes."

For the Bregnans*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:25 am

The Shining of May 29…

The original note and references to it here.

* As opposed to the Monicans . See previous post.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

For the Monicans

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:48 pm

“Aeon Flux  suffered a decline of 63.97% in box office earnings, going down to No. 6 the following week. On 9 February 2006, it completed its theatrical run, grossing a domestic take of $25,874,337 and a worldwide box office total of $52,304,001. It failed to recoup its $62 million budget.” — Wikipedia

See also posts on the above date, 9 February 2006, and posts on Aeon Flux .

For Harvard’s Class Day

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:01 pm

Deep Talk

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:29 pm

The late Maya Angelou in The Paris Review , Fall 1990:

“There’s a phrase in West Africa, in Ghana; it’s called ‘deep talk.’
For instance, there’s a saying: ‘The trouble for the thief is not
how to steal the chief’s bugle but where to blow it.’
Now, on the face of it, one understands that. But when you really
think about it, it takes you deeper. In West Africa they call that
‘deep talk.’ I’d like to think I write ‘deep talk.'”

“Where to blow it” … Perhaps Truman State University?

See a theatrical production there on Sept. 26, 2012,
and a talk by the author there on the following day.

See also an apparently more amusing play by the same author.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Design

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm

In memory of a graphic designer
who reportedly died this morning:

IMAGE- Massimo Vignelli, his wife Lella, and cube

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Tuesday November 1, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:00 pm
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051101-Seal.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

The above seal is from an ad (pdf) for an Oct. 21 lecture, "The Nature of Space," by Sir Michael Atiyah, sponsored by the American Mathematical Society.

The picture in the seal is of Plato's Academy.

"The great philosopher Plato excluded from his Academy anyone who had not studied geometry.  He would have been delighted to admit Sir Michael Atiyah, who was for a time Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford…"


Would he?

Sir Michael Atiyah's
Anti-Platonism

"Mathematics is an evolution from the human brain, which is responding to outside influences, creating the machinery with which it then attacks the outside world. It is our way of trying to reduce complexity into simplicity, beauty and elegance….

I tend to think that science and mathematics are ways the human mind looks and experiences– you cannot divorce the human mind from it. Mathematics is part of the human mind. The question whether there is a reality independent of the human mind, has no meaning– at least, we cannot answer it."

— Sir Michael Atiyah, interview in Oslo, May 2004

"For Plato, the Forms represent truth, or reality…. these Forms are independent of the mind: they are eternal, unchanging and perfect."

—  Roy Jackson (pdf)

Atiyah's denial of a reality independent of the human mind may have something to do with religion:

"Socrates and Plato were considered 'Christians before Christ'; they paved the way for the coming of Christianity by providing it with philosophical and theoretical foundations that would be acceptable to the western mind.
    In the analogy of the cave, the sun represents the Form of the Good. In the same way that the sun is the source of all things and gives light to them, the Form of the Good is over and above the other Forms, giving them light and allowing us to perceive them. Therefore, when you have awareness of the Form of the Good you have achieved true enlightenment. In Christianity, the Form of the Good becomes God: the source of all things."

— Roy Jackson, The God of Philosophy (pdf)

See also the previous entry.

Tuesday November 1, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Antidote to Atiyah

In a recent talk, "The Nature of Space," Sir Michael Atiyah gave a misleading description of Plato's doctrine of "ideas," or "idealism."  Atiyah said that according to Plato, ideas reside in  "an imaginary world–  the world of the mind," and that what we see in the external world is "some pale reflection" of ideas in the mind.

An antidote to Atiyah's nonsense may be found in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"So it came to pass that the word idea in various languages took on more and more the meaning of 'representation,' 'mental image,' and the like. Hence too, there was gradually introduced the terminology which we find in the writings of Berkeley, and according to which idealism is the doctrine that ascribes reality to our ideas, i.e. our representations, but denies the reality of the physical world. This sort of idealism is just the reverse of that which was held by the philosophers of antiquity and their Christian successors; it does away with the reality of ideal principles by confining them exclusively to the thinking subject; it is a spurious idealism…."

Atiyah contrasts his mistaken view of Plato with what he calls the "realism" of Hume.  He does not mention that Plato's doctrine of ideas is also known as "realism."  For details, see, again, the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"The conciliation of the one and the many, the changing and the permanent, was a favourite problem with the Greeks; it leads to the problem of universals. The typical affirmation of Exaggerated Realism, the most outspoken ever made, appears in Plato's philosophy; the real must possess the attributes of necessity, universality, unity, and immutability which are found in our intellectual representations. And as the sensible world contains only the contingent, the particular, the unstable, it follows that the real exists outside and above the sensible world. Plato calls it eîdos, idea. The idea is absolutely stable and exists by itself (ontos on; auta kath' auta), isolated from the phenomenal world, distinct from the Divine and human intellect…. The exaggerated Realism of Plato… is the principal doctrine of his metaphysics."
 
Atiyah's misleading remarks may appeal to believers in the contemptible religion of Scientism, but they have little to do with either historical reality or authentic philosophy.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Saturday October 29, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm

For Kate Jackson on her birthday:
 
Drop-Dead Gorgeous

I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard
— Paul Simon

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051029-Cameron2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"The idea that this Sad Geezer may fancy a cartoon character is, of course, ludicrous (even if she is drop-dead gorgeous…)."

Aeon Flux – An Introduction

"Dr. Cameron was also interested in how chemical elements are formed inside stars, a field known as nucleosynthesis."

Today's New York Times.

We are stardust
    (billion year-old carbon)
We are golden
    (caught in the Devil's bargain)

Joni Mitchell,
lyrics on the album
"Ladies of the Canyon"

Related material:

The upcoming film
of Aeon Flux

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051029-Flux1.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

and

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051029-Laurel.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

as well as…

Dark Ladies

and

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051029-Kate12.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Kate Jackson in
Satan's School
for Girls
.

"The association
is the idea. "

The Third Word War

Saturday October 29, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:23 am
Flux Redux

"I remember how the darkness doubled
I recall lightning struck itself
I was listening, listening to the rain
I was hearing, hearing something else

Life in the hive puckered up my night
The kiss of death, the embrace of life
There I stand neath the Marquee Moon
Just waiting"

Tom Verlaine, "Marquee Moon"

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051029-NYTobits.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

In memory of Michael Gill,
producer and director of the
1969 TV series "Civilisation,"
who died on October 20:

Two descriptions of "Aeon Flux,"
a story featured in the Log24 entry
 on the day that Gill died —

"The title character is a tall, sexy, scantily-clad secret agent from the country of Monica…. Her mission is to infiltrate the strongholds of the neighboring country of Bregna, which is led by her sworn enemy, and sometimes lover, Trevor Goodchild.  Monica represents a dynamic anarchist society while Bregna embodies a centralized scientific planned state."

Wikipedia

"After Aeon is done, Trevor decides that she knows too much, so he has a underling propose a plan to kill her. The plan, quite strangely, is to implant a bunch of nanites (microscopic robots) in Trevors seminal duct so he has sex with Aeon and the nanites tear her apart from the inside.  But Aeon was prepared because she had some weird, mean, spiky, device in her uterus(!?!!) that eats the nanites (that part is kinda weak), she blows up a wall then and escapes leaving Trevor standing there naked and confused."

The Sad Geezers Guide
    to Aeon Flux Cultures

In memory of Richard Smalley,
advocate of nanotechnology,
who died yesterday at 62:

The Incredible Shrinking Man
(Wired Magazine, October 2004)

See also yesterday's entry on Scientism.

In memory of
Thomas Wootton Masland,
brother of
Richard Harry Masland, Harvard '64,
the Log24 entries of October 25.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051029-TomMasland2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Tom Masland

Funeral services for Masland will be held Sunday, Oct. 30, at 5 p.m. at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 113 Engle Street, Englewood, N.J. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, a donation be made to the Jazz Foundation of America, 322 West 48th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. The group helps elderly and ailing jazz and blues musicians with medical care, housing and other services.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Thursday October 20, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:25 pm

North Country Flux

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051020-duo.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"The story centers on
Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron),
the top operative in the underground
'Monican' rebellion– led by
The Handler (Frances McDormand)."

— http://www.aeonflux.com

"She once was a true love of mine."

— "Girl of the North Country,"
by Robert Zimmerman
of Hibbing, Minnesota

Sure she was, Bob.

Powered by WordPress