"… as if into a crimson abyss …." —
Saturday, February 10, 2024
Gilded Cage Meets Crimson Abyss
Sunday, December 17, 2023
Sternwürfel 101 — “A Full Course of Instruction”
See also . . .
https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/todtnauberg.html
and Sternwürfel in this journal.
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Director’s Exit
For St. Lucy's Day . . . Vide another post now tagged "Cube School."
Chaos and Boundaries
Another approach to chaos within boundaries: The I Ching —
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Wrestling
This afternoon's New York Times requiem by Ari L. Goldman for
"a scholar who wrestled with the interplay of tradition and modernity"
suggests a link to another such scholar I personally find more interesting . . .
Erin’s Barron’s: Skye High
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Red Skull and the Tesseract Box
Related art by Basquiat —
Click on the above image for an Instagram description of its source.
See also related artistic remarks in this journal on the date of that
Instagram description — October 17, 2022.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Friday, November 24, 2023
Pioneering Pedagogy
Wednesday, November 22, 2023
For E. Lily Yu* — Devs Setting
Friday, July 11, 2014
|
* Author of Jewel Box: Stories ( Erewhon Books, Oct. 24, 2023).
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Saturday, September 16, 2023
Sunday, May 14, 2023
“The Structure of Space”
The above title. by one Lee E. Mosley, is from
"CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform;
1st edition (June 4, 2017)."
From the preface —
"So simple . . . ."
"Building blocks"? — See the literature of pop physics.
Natural companions to building blocks, are, of course,
"permutation groups."
See the oeuvre of physics writer John Baez —
For instance, in a Log24 post from the above Mosley
publication date — June 4, 2017 —
Friday, May 5, 2023
For St. Corky Lee
Today's Google Doodle honors a Chinese-American photographer
who reportedly died on January 27, 2021.
From his dies natalis (birth into heaven, in the Catholic tradition) —
See as well some background on a Chinese-related cube.
Saturday, April 8, 2023
Annals of Journalism
Update of 12:31 PM ET —
The time of this post, 12:27 PM ET,
suggests a 12/27 flashback:
Click the above image for a related Log24 post of 15 years ago today.
A related literary remark —
"Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark set in 20th-century London, and then
imagine it written by a man steeped not in Hollywood movies but in Dante
and the things of the spirit, and you might begin to get a picture…."
— Doug Thorpe in an Amazon.com book review, not of Dark Materials.
Saturday, March 18, 2023
Zu diesem Themenkreis
From last night's update to the previous post —
The use of binary coordinate systems
Natural physical transformations of square or cubical arrays See "The Thing and I." |
From a post of May 1, 2016 —
Mathematische Appetithäppchen: Autor: Erickson, Martin —
"Weitere Informationen zu diesem Themenkreis finden sich |
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
The Forms of Being
"If the window is this matrix of ambi- or multivalence,
and the bars of the windows-the grid-are what help us
to see, to focus on, this matrix, they are themselves
the symbol of the symbolist work of art. They function as
the multilevel representation through which the work of art
can allude, and even reconstitute, the forms of Being."
— Page 59, Rosalind Krauss, "Grids," MIT Press,
October , Vol. 9 (Summer, 1979), pp. 50-64
Related material —
Click the above image for a related Log24 post of 15 years ago today.
A related literary remark —
"Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark set in 20th-century London, and then
imagine it written by a man steeped not in Hollywood movies but in Dante
and the things of the spirit, and you might begin to get a picture…."
— Doug Thorpe in an Amazon.com book review, not of Dark Materials.
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Three Representations
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Mere Synchronology
The date — January 9, 2010 — of the Guardian book review
in the previous post was noted here by a top 40 music list
from that same date in an earlier year.
Update of 4:07 AM ET the same morning:
Fans of Cormac McCarthy's recent adventures in unreality
might enjoy interpreting the time — 3:25 AM ET — of this post
as the date 3/25, and comparing the logos, both revisited
and new, in a Log24 post from 3/25 . . .
Helen Mirren with plastic Gankyil .
. . . with the logo of a venue whose motto is
"Reality is not enough."
Monday, November 28, 2022
Groups, Spaces, and Ripoffs
"Rubik's Cube, and the simpler [2x2x2] Super Cube, represent
one form of mathematical and physical reality."
— Solomon W. Golomb, "Rubik's Cube and Quarks:
Twists on the eight corner cells of Rubik's Cube
provide a model for many aspects of quark behavior,"
American Scientist , Vol. 70, No. 3 (May-June 1982), pp. 257-259
From the last (Nov. 14, 2022) of the Log24 posts now tagged Groups and Spaces —
From the first (June 21, 2010) of the Log24 posts now tagged Groups and Spaces —
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Monday, October 17, 2022
Sunday, October 16, 2022
The Demianova Epiphany
Images for Siri
For Broomsday: Turning Eight
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
Physicality
"Battles argues that 'the experience of the physicality
of the book is strongest in large libraries,' and stand
among the glass cube at the center of the British Library,
the stacks upon stacks in Harvard’s Widener Library, or
the domed portico of the Library of Congress and tell me
any differently."
— Ed Simon, Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and
the Transcendence of Literature. Hardcover – April 19, 2022.
… And back to cube:
Related meditation: Beer Summit.
Sunday, September 4, 2022
Dice and the Eightfold Cube
At Hiroshima on March 9, 2018, Aitchison discussed another
"hexagonal array" with two added points… not at the center, but
rather at the ends of a cube's diagonal axis of symmetry.
See some related illustrations below.
Fans of the fictional "Transfiguration College" in the play
"Heroes of the Fourth Turning" may recall that August 6,
another Hiroshima date, was the Feast of the Transfiguration.
The exceptional role of 0 and ∞ in Aitchison's diagram is echoed
by the occurence of these symbols in the "knight" labeling of a
Miracle Octad Generator octad —
Transposition of 0 and ∞ in the knight coordinatization
induces the symplectic polarity of PG(3,2) discussed by
(for instance) Anne Duncan in 1968.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Saturday, April 2, 2022
Friday, March 18, 2022
Found† in Space*
Monday, September 13, 2021
“What a Swell Party This Is” — Cole Porter
Using the Dreidel*
The date of the Rubber Ducky article in the previous post was . . .
November 11, 2019.
Synchronology check:
* A phrase by Woody Allen (NY Times , May 5, 2011).
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Monday, March 29, 2021
Sunday, March 21, 2021
Mathematics and Narrative: The Unity
“To conquer, three boxes* have to synchronize and join together into the Unity.”
―Wonder Woman in Zack Snyder’s Justice League
See also The Unity of Combinatorics and The Miracle Octad Generator.
* Cf. Aitchison’s Octads —
Mind the Gaps…
Continues from March 17.
See as well some remarks on Chinese perspective
in the Log24 post “Gate” of June 13, 2013.
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Annals of Dim Antiquity
“Twenty-four glyphs, each one representing not a letter, not a word,
but a concept, arranged into four groups, written in Boris’s own hand,
an artifact that seemed to have resurrected him from the dead. It was
as if he were sitting across from Bourne now, in the dim antiquity of
the museum library.
This was what Bourne was staring at now, written on the unfolded
bit of onionskin.”
— The Bourne Enigma , published on June 21, 2016
Passing, on June 21, 2016, into a higher dimension —
For those who prefer Borges to Bourne —
Sunday, February 21, 2021
Cube Woo
Monday, February 15, 2021
Raiders of the Lost Building Blocks
In memory of a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar who
reportedly died on December 29, 2020, here are
links to two Log24 posts from that date:
I Ching Geometry and Raiders of the Lost Coordinates.
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Knight Move for Trevanian
“Knight move” remark from The Eiger Sanction —
“I like to put people on myself by skipping logical steps
in the conversation until they’re dizzy.”
The following logical step — a check of the date Nov. 18, 2017 —
was omitted in the post Futon Dream on this year’s St. Stephen’s Day.
For further context, see James Propp in this journal.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Geometry of Even Subsets
Various posts here on the geometry underlying the Mathieu group M24
are now tagged with the phrase “Geometry of Even Subsets.”
For example, a post with this diagram . . .
Monday, September 21, 2020
Zelig-Like?
“On their way to obscurity, the Simulmatics people
played minor parts in major events, appearing Zelig-like
at crucial moments of 1960s history.”
— James Gleick reviewing a new book by Jill Lepore
Saturday, September 19, 2020
The Summerfield Prize
Cube School
The new domain http://cube.school
points to posts tagged Cube School here.
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Structure and Mutability . . .
Continues in The New York Times :
“One day — ‘I don’t know exactly why,’ he writes — he tried to
put together eight cubes so that they could stick together but
also move around, exchanging places. He made the cubes out
of wood, then drilled a hole in the corners of the cubes to link
them together. The object quickly fell apart.
Many iterations later, Rubik figured out the unique design
that allowed him to build something paradoxical:
a solid, static object that is also fluid….” — Alexandra Alter
Another such object: the eightfold cube .
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Portrait with Holocron
Thursday, July 9, 2020
The Enigma Glyphs
For those who prefer fiction —
“Twenty-four glyphs, each one representing not a letter, not a word,
but a concept, arranged into four groups, written in Boris’s own hand,
an artifact that seemed to have resurrected him from the dead. It was
as if he were sitting across from Bourne now, in the dim antiquity of
the museum library.
This was what Bourne was staring at now, written on the unfolded
bit of onionskin.”
— “Robert Ludlum’s” The Bourne Enigma , published on June 21, 2016
Passing, on June 21, 2016, into a higher dimension —
Sunday, July 5, 2020
It’s Still the Same Old Story …
“He recounted the story of Adam and Eve, who were banished
from paradise because of their curiosity. Their inability to resist
the temptation of the forbidden fruit. Which itself was a metaphorical
stand-in for knowledge and power. He urged us to find the restraint
needed to resist the temptation of the cube—the biblical apple
in modern garb. He urged us to remain in Eden until we were able
to work out the knowledge the apple offered, all by ourselves.”
— Richards, Douglas E.. The Enigma Cube (Alien Artifact Book 1)
(pp. 160-161). Paragon Press, 2020. Kindle Edition.
The biblical apple also appears in the game, and film, Assassin’s Creed .
Related material —
See the cartoon version of Alfred North Whitehead in the previous post,
and some Whitehead-related projective geometry —
Enigma Variations
The previous post reported, perhaps inaccurately, a publication
date of February 13, 2020, for the novel The Enigma Cube .
A variant publication date, Jan. 21, 2020, is reported below.
This journal on that date —
The Enigma Cube
Promotional material —
“Did you buckle up?” — Harlan Kane
The publication date of The Enigma Cube reported above was February 13, 2020.
Related material — Log24 posts around that date now tagged The Reality Bond.
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Eightfold Geometry: A Surface Code “Unit Cell”
The resemblance to the eightfold cube is, of course,
completely coincidental.
Some background from the literature —
Friday, May 22, 2020
Surface Code News
From a paper cited in the above story:
“Fig. 4 A lattice geometry for a surface code.” —
The above figure suggests a search for “surface code” cube :
Related poetic remarks — “Illumination of a surface.”
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Pythagorean Letter Meets Box of Chocolates
Friday, July 11, 2014Spiegel-Spiel des GeviertsFiled under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 12:00 PM See Cube Symbology. |
Monday, February 24, 2020
For “Time Cube” Fans
Friday, February 21, 2020
To and Fro, Back and …
Also on January 27, 2017 . . .
For other appearances of John Hurt here,
see 1984 Cubes.
Update of 12:45 AM Feb. 22 —
A check of later obituaries reveals that Hurt may well
have died on January 25, 2017, not January 27 as above.
Thus the following remarks may be more appropriate:
Not to mention what, why, who, and how.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Stage Direction: “Comments Off.”
The previous post dealt with “magic” cubes, so called because of the
analogous “magic” squares. Douglas Hofstadter has written about a
different, physical , object, promoted as “the Magic Cube,” that Hofstadter
felt embodied “a deep invariant”:
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
Artifice* of Eternity …
… and Schoolgirl Space
"This poem contrasts the prosaic and sensual world of the here and now
with the transcendent and timeless world of beauty in art, and the first line,
'That is no country for old men,' refers to an artless world of impermanence
and sensual pleasure."
— "Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium' and McCarthy's No Country for Old Men :
Art and Artifice in the New Novel,"
Steven Frye in The Cormac McCarthy Journal ,
Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 14-20.
See also Schoolgirl Space in this journal.
* See, for instance, Lewis Hyde on the word "artifice" and . . .
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Schoolgirl Space: 1984 Revisited
Cube Bricks 1984 —
From "Tomorrowland" (2015) —
From John Baez (2018) —
See also this morning's post Perception of Space
and yesterday's Exploring Schoolgirl Space.
Perception of Space
The three previous posts have now been tagged . . .
Tetrahedron vs. Square and Triangle vs. Cube.
Related material —
Tetrahedron vs. Square:
Labeling the Tetrahedral Model (Click to enlarge) —
Triangle vs. Cube:
… and, from the date of the above John Baez remark —
Dreamtimes
“I am always the figure in someone else’s dream. I would really rather
sometimes make my own figures and make my own dreams.”
— John Malkovich at squarespace.com, January 10, 2017
Also on that date . . .
Monday, July 8, 2019
Exploring Schoolgirl Space
See also "Quantum Tesseract Theorem" and "The Crosswicks Curse."
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Schoolgirl Problem
Anonymous remarks on the schoolgirl problem at Wikipedia —
"This solution has a geometric interpretation in connection with
Galois geometry and PG(3,2). Take a tetrahedron and label its
vertices as 0001, 0010, 0100 and 1000. Label its six edge centers
as the XOR of the vertices of that edge. Label the four face centers
as the XOR of the three vertices of that face, and the body center
gets the label 1111. Then the 35 triads of the XOR solution correspond
exactly to the 35 lines of PG(3,2). Each day corresponds to a spread
and each week to a packing."
See also Polster + Tetrahedron in this journal.
There is a different "geometric interpretation in connection with
Galois geometry and PG(3,2)" that uses a square model rather
than a tetrahedral model. The square model of PG(3,2) last
appeared in the schoolgirl-problem article on Feb. 11, 2017, just
before a revision that removed it.
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Art Object, continued and continued
See as well posts mentioning "An Object of Beauty."
Update of 12 AM June 11 — A screenshot of this post
is now available at http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/hqk7-nx97 .
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Monday, May 13, 2019
Doris Day at the Hudson Rock
" 'My public image is unshakably that of
America’s wholesome virgin, the girl next door,
carefree and brimming with happiness,'
she said in Doris Day: Her Own Story ,
a 1976 book . . . ."
From "Angels & Demons Meet Hudson Hawk" (March 19, 2013) —
From the March 1 post "Solomon and the Image," a related figure —
Friday, March 1, 2019
Solomon and the Image
"Maybe an image is too strong
Or maybe is not strong enough."
— "Solomon and the Witch,"
by William Butler Yeats
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Shadowlands
The previous post suggests a review.
Following the above reference to March 30, 2016 —
Following the above reference to Lovasz —
Saturday, August 25, 2018
“Waugh, Orwell. Orwell, Waugh.”
Suggested by a review of Curl on Modernism —
Related material —
Waugh + Orwell in this journal and …
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Taken In
A passage that may or may not have influenced Madeleine L'Engle's
writings about the tesseract :
From Mere Christianity , by C. S. Lewis (1952) —
"Book IV – Beyond Personality: I warned you that Theology is practical. The whole purpose for which we exist is to be thus taken into the life of God. Wrong ideas about what that life is, will make it harder. And now, for a few minutes, I must ask you to follow rather carefully. You know that in space you can move in three ways—to left or right, backwards or forwards, up or down. Every direction is either one of these three or a compromise between them. They are called the three Dimensions. Now notice this. If you are using only one dimension, you could draw only a straight line. If you are using two, you could draw a figure: say, a square. And a square is made up of four straight lines. Now a step further. If you have three dimensions, you can then build what we call a solid body, say, a cube—a thing like a dice or a lump of sugar. And a cube is made up of six squares. Do you see the point? A world of one dimension would be a straight line. In a two-dimensional world, you still get straight lines, but many lines make one figure. In a three-dimensional world, you still get figures but many figures make one solid body. In other words, as you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you do not leave behind you the things you found on the simpler levels: you still have them, but combined in new ways—in ways you could not imagine if you knew only the simpler levels. Now the Christian account of God involves just the same principle. The human level is a simple and rather empty level. On the human level one person is one being, and any two persons are two separate beings—just as, in two dimensions (say on a flat sheet of paper) one square is one figure, and any two squares are two separate figures. On the Divine level you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God's dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube. Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube. But we can get a sort of faint notion of it. And when we do, we are then, for the first time in our lives, getting some positive idea, however faint, of something super-personal—something more than a person. It is something we could never have guessed, and yet, once we have been told, one almost feels one ought to have been able to guess it because it fits in so well with all the things we know already. You may ask, "If we cannot imagine a three-personal Being, what is the good of talking about Him?" Well, there isn't any good talking about Him. The thing that matters is being actually drawn into that three-personal life, and that may begin any time —tonight, if you like. . . . . |
But beware of being drawn into the personal life of the Happy Family .
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24966339 —
"The colorful story of this undertaking begins with a bang."
And ends with …
"Galois was a thoroughly obnoxious nerd,
suffering from what today would be called
a 'personality disorder.' His anger was
paranoid and unremitting."
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
Geometry for Goyim
Mystery box merchandise from the 2011 J. J. Abrams film Super 8 —
A mystery box that I prefer —
Click image for some background.
See also Nicht Spielerei .
Thursday, March 29, 2018
“Before Creation Itself . . .”
From the Diamond Theorem Facebook page —
A question three hours ago at that page —
“Is this Time Cube?”
Notes toward an answer —
And from Six-Set Geometry in this journal . . .
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Sure, Whatever.
The search for Langlands in the previous post
yields the following Toronto Star illustration —
From a review of the recent film "Justice League" —
"Now all they need is to resurrect Superman (Henry Cavill),
stop Steppenwolf from reuniting his three Mother Cubes
(sure, whatever) and wrap things up in under two cinematic
hours (God bless)."
For other cubic adventures, see yesterday's post on A Piece of Justice
and the block patterns in posts tagged Design Cube.
Friday, March 23, 2018
Reciprocity
Copy editing — From Wikipedia
"Copy editing (also copy-editing or copyediting, sometimes abbreviated ce)
is the process of reviewing and correcting written material to improve accuracy,
readability, and fitness for its purpose, and to ensure that it is free of error,
omission, inconsistency, and repetition. . . ."
An example of the need for copy editing:
Related material: Langlands and Reciprocity in this journal.
From the Personal to the Platonic
On the Oslo artist Josefine Lyche —
"Josefine has taken me through beautiful stories,
ranging from the personal to the platonic
explaining the extensive use of geometry in her art.
I now know that she bursts into laughter when reading
Dostoyevsky, and that she has a weird connection
with a retired mathematician."
— Ann Cathrin Andersen,
http://bryggmagasin.no/2017/behind-the-glitter/
Personal —
The Rushkoff Logo
— From a 2016 graphic novel by Douglas Rushkoff.
See also Rushkoff and Talisman in this journal.
Platonic —
Compare and contrast the shifting hexagon logo in the Rushkoff novel above
with the hexagon-inside-a-cube in my "Diamonds and Whirls" note (1984).
Thursday, March 22, 2018
The Diamond Cube
The Java applets at the webpage "Diamonds and Whirls"
that illustrate Cullinane cubes may be difficult to display.
Here instead is an animated GIF that shows the basic unit
for the "design cube" pages at finitegeometry.org.
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Unite the Seven.
Related material —
The seven points of the Fano plane within
"Before time began . . . ."
— Optimus Prime
Monday, January 22, 2018
Hollywood Moment
A death on the date of the above symmetry chat,
Wednesday, August 17, 2016 —
An Hispanic Hollywood moment:
Ojo de Dios —
Click for related material.
For further Hispanic entertainment,
see Ben Affleck sing
"Aquellos Ojos Verdes "
in "Hollywoodland."
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Cube Space Continued
James Propp in the current Math Horizons on the eightfold cube —
For another puerile approach to the eightfold cube,
see Cube Space, 1984-2003 (Oct. 24, 2008).
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Summer of 1984
The previous two posts dealt, rather indirectly, with
the notion of "cube bricks" (Cullinane, 1984) —
Group actions on partitions —
Cube Bricks 1984 —
Another mathematical remark from 1984 —
For further details, see Triangles Are Square.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Think Different
The New York Times online this evening —
"Mr. Jobs, who died in 2011, loomed over Tuesday’s
nostalgic presentation. The Apple C.E.O., Tim Cook,
paid tribute, his voice cracking with emotion, Mr. Jobs’s
steeple-fingered image looming as big onstage as
Big Brother’s face in the classic Macintosh '1984' commercial."
Review —
Thursday, September 1, 2011
How It Works
|
See also 1984 Bricks in this journal.
Chin Music
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Epic
Continuing the previous post's theme …
Group actions on partitions —
Cube Bricks 1984 —
Related material — Posts now tagged Device Narratives.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Sunday, June 4, 2017
In Memory of the Time Cube Page*
From this journal on August 18, 2015, "A Wrinkle in Terms" —
For two misuses by John Baez of the phrase “permutation group”
at the n-Category Café, see “A Wrinkle in the Mathematical Universe”
and “Re: A Wrinkle…” —
“There is such a thing as a permutation group.”
— Adapted from A Wrinkle in Time , by Madeleine L’Engle
* See RIP, Time Cube at gizmodo.com (September 1, 2015).
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Contracting the Spielraum
The contraction of the title is from group actions on
the ninefold square (with the center subsquare fixed)
to group actions on the eightfold cube.
From a post of June 4, 2014 …
At math.stackexchange.com on March 1-12, 2013:
“Is there a geometric realization of the Quaternion group?” —
The above illustration, though neatly drawn, appeared under the
cloak of anonymity. No source was given for the illustrated group actions.
Possibly they stem from my Log24 posts or notes such as the Jan. 4, 2012,
note on quaternion actions at finitegeometry.org/sc (hence ultimately
from my note “GL(2,3) actions on a cube” of April 5, 1985).
Tuesday, April 4, 2017
White Cube
“We have now reached
a point where we see
not the art but the space first….
An image comes to mind
of a white, ideal space
that, more than any single picture,
may be the archetypal image
of 20th-century art.”
“Space: what you
damn well have to see.”
— James Joyce, Ulysses
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Westworld
The title refers to a Log24 post of 9:45 AM ET Sunday, Oct. 2.
From the "Westworld" post of Sunday, Oct. 2 —
"It was rather like watching a play."
QED.
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Westworld
On a new HBO series that opens at 9 PM ET tonight —
Watching Westworld , you can sense a grand mythology unfolding before your eyes. The show’s biggest strength is its world-building, an aspect of screenwriting that many television series have botched before. Often shows will rush viewers into plot, forgetting to instill a sense of place and of history, that you’re watching something that doesn’t just exist in a vacuum but rather is part of some larger ecosystem. Not since Lost can I remember a TV show so committed to immersing its audience into the physical space it inhabits. (Indeed, Westworld can also be viewed as a meta commentary on the art of screenwriting itself: brainstorming narratives, building characters, all for the amusement of other people.) Westworld is especially impressive because it builds two worlds at once: the Western theme park and the futuristic workplace. The Western half of Westworld might be the more purely entertaining of the two, with its shootouts and heists and chases through sublime desert vistas. Behind the scenes, the theme park’s workers show how the robot sausage is made. And as a dystopian office drama, the show does something truly original. — Adam Epstein at QUARTZ, October 1, 2016 |
"… committed to immersing its audience
into the physical space it inhabits…."
See also, in this journal, the Mimsy Cube —
"Mimsy Were the Borogoves," "… he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm– much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people, for example– They moved. Like clockwork automatons, though much more smoothly. It was rather like watching a play." |
Friday, September 30, 2016
Desmic Midrash
The author of the review in the previous post, Dara Horn, supplies
below a midrash on "desmic," a term derived from the Greek desmé
( δέσμη: bundle, sheaf , or, in the mathematical sense, pencil —
French faisceau ), which is related to the term desmos , bond …
(The term "desmic," as noted earlier, is relevant to the structure of
Heidegger's Sternwürfel .)
The Horn midrash —
(The "medieval philosopher" here is not the remembered pre-Christian
Ben Sirah (Ecclesiasticus ) but the philosopher being read — Maimonides:
Guide for the Perplexed , 3:51.)
Here of course "that bond" may be interpreted as corresponding to the
Greek desmos above, thus also to the desmic structure of the
stellated octahedron, a sort of three-dimensional Star of David.
See "desmic" in this journal.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Articulation
Cassirer vs. Heidegger at Harvard —
A remembrance for Michaelmas —
A version of Heidegger’s “Sternwürfel ” —
From Log24 on the upload date for the above figure —
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Star Wars
See also in this journal "desmic," a term related
to the structure of Heidegger's Sternwürfel .
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
“Puzzle Cube of a Novel”
Monday, April 4, 2016
Cube for Berlin
Foreword by Sir Michael Atiyah —
"Poincaré said that science is no more a collection of facts
than a house is a collection of bricks. The facts have to be
ordered or structured, they have to fit a theory, a construct
(often mathematical) in the human mind. . . .
… Mathematics may be art, but to the general public it is
a black art, more akin to magic and mystery. This presents
a constant challenge to the mathematical community: to
explain how art fits into our subject and what we mean by beauty.
In attempting to bridge this divide I have always found that
architecture is the best of the arts to compare with mathematics.
The analogy between the two subjects is not hard to describe
and enables abstract ideas to be exemplified by bricks and mortar,
in the spirit of the Poincaré quotation I used earlier."
— Sir Michael Atiyah, "The Art of Mathematics"
in the AMS Notices , January 2010
Judy Bass, Los Angeles Times , March 12, 1989 —
"Like Rubik's Cube, The Eight demands to be pondered."
As does a figure from 1984, Cullinane's Cube —
For natural group actions on the Cullinane cube,
see "The Eightfold Cube" and
"A Simple Reflection Group of Order 168."
See also the recent post Cube Bricks 1984 —
Related remark from the literature —
Note that only the static structure is described by Felsner, not the
168 group actions discussed by Cullinane. For remarks on such
group actions in the literature, see "Cube Space, 1984-2003."
(From Anatomy of a Cube, Sept. 18, 2011.)
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Hungarian Algorithm
“Of all the Hungarian friends I’ve ever had…
I can’t remember one who didn’t want me to think of him…
as a king of con men.”
” ‘The omelet, you know that, don’t you? Sure. It’s a classic.
An omelet, it’s in our Hungarian cookbook.
“To make an omelet,” it says… “first, steal an egg.” ‘ ”
— Orson Welles, in his last completed film.
See also Lovasz in this journal.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Hint of Reality
From an article* in Proceedings of Bridges 2014 —
As artists, we are particularly interested in the symmetries of real world physical objects. Three natural questions arise: 1. Which groups can be represented as the group of symmetries of some real-world physical object? 2. Which groups have actually been represented as the group of symmetries of some real-world physical object? 3. Are there any glaring gaps – small, beautiful groups that should have a physical representation in a symmetric object but up until now have not? |
The article was cited by Evelyn Lamb in her Scientific American
weblog on May 19, 2014.
The above three questions from the article are relevant to a more
recent (Oct. 24, 2015) remark by Lamb:
"… finite projective planes [in particular, the 7-point Fano plane,
about which Lamb is writing] seem like a triumph of purely
axiomatic thinking over any hint of reality…."
For related hints of reality, see Eightfold Cube in this journal.
* "The Quaternion Group as a Symmetry Group," by Vi Hart and Henry Segerman
Friday, August 7, 2015
Parts
Spielerei —
"On the most recent visit, Arthur had given him
a brightly colored cube, with sides you could twist
in all directions, a new toy that had just come onto
the market."
— Daniel Kehlmann, F: A Novel (2014),
translated from the German by
Carol Brown Janeway
Nicht Spielerei —
A figure from this journal at 2 AM ET
on Monday, August 3, 2015
Also on August 3 —
FRANKFURT — "Johanna Quandt, the matriarch of the family
that controls the automaker BMW and one of the wealthiest
people in Germany, died on Monday in Bad Homburg, Germany.
She was 89."
MANHATTAN — "Carol Brown Janeway, a Scottish-born
publishing executive, editor and award-winning translator who
introduced American readers to dozens of international authors,
died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 71."
Related material — Heisenberg on beauty, Munich, 1970
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Paradigm for Pedagogues
Illustrations from a post of Feb. 17, 2011:
Plato’s paradigm in the Meno —
Changed paradigm in the diamond theorem (2×2 case) —
Ultron: By the Book
If The New York Times interviewed Ultron for its
Sunday Book Review "By the Book" column —
What books are currently on your night stand?
Steve Fuller's Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times
Gerald Holton's Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought
John Gray's The Soul of the Marionette
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Soul
Nonsense…
See Gary Zukav, Harvard ’64, in this journal.
and damned nonsense —
“Every institution has a soul.”
— Gerald Holton in Harvard Gazette today
Commentary —
“The Ferris wheel came into view again….”
— Malcom Lowry, Under the Volcano
See also Holton in a Jan. 1977 interview:
“If people have souls, and I think a few have, it shows….”
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Würfel-Märchen
Continued from yesterday, the date of death for German
billionaire philanthropist Klaus Tschira —
For Tschira in this journal, see Stiftung .
For some Würfel illustrations, see this morning's post
Manifest O. A related webpage —
Manifest O
The title was suggested by
http://benmarcus.com/smallwork/manifesto/.
The "O" of the title stands for the octahedral group.
See the following, from http://finitegeometry.org/sc/map.html —
|
An invariance of symmetry The diamond theorem on a 4x4x4 cube, and a sketch of the proof. |
83-10-01 | Portrait of O A table of the octahedral group O using the 24 patterns from the 2×2 case of the diamond theorem. |
83-10-16 | Study of O A different way of looking at the octahedral group, using cubes that illustrate the 2x2x2 case of the diamond theorem. |
84-09-15 | Diamonds and whirls Block designs of a different sort — graphic figures on cubes. See also the University of Exeter page on the octahedral group O. |
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Cube of Ultron
The Blacklist “Pilot” Review
"There is an element of camp to this series though. Spader is
quite gleefully channeling Anthony Hopkins, complete with being
a well educated, elegant man locked away in a super-cell.
Speaking of that super-cell, it’s kind of ridiculous. They’ve got him
locked up in an abandoned post office warehouse on a little
platform with a chair inside a giant metal cube that looks like
it could have been built by Tony Stark. And as Liz approaches
to talk to him, the entire front of the cube opens and the whole
thing slides back to leave just the platform and chair. Really?
FUCKING REALLY ? "
— Kate Reilly at Geekenstein.com (Sept. 27, 2013)
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Raiders of the Lost Articulation
Tom Hanks as Indiana Langdon in Raiders of the Lost Articulation :
An unarticulated (but colored) cube:
A 2x2x2 articulated cube:
A 4x4x4 articulated cube built from subcubes like
the one viewed by Tom Hanks above:
Friday, August 29, 2014
Raum
A possible answer to the 1923 question of Walter Gropius, “Was ist Raum?“—
See also yesterday’s Source of the Finite and the image search
on the Gropius question in last night’s post.