Log24

"… the essence of what has come to be known as film noir …." —

Related viewing —

See as well Aesthetics in Academia.

Meanwhile . . .

The above post is from the date of the Hollywood premiere of
"Looney Tunes: Back in Action." See also tonight's previous post
and . . .

"Directed by Joe Dante" . . . See also "The Harrowing."

Related reading:  Blue Monkey.

See Maniac Monday in this journal and .…

Related reading:  "Where credit is due."

(Continued)

For Trotsky's Birthday (Old Style), 2009—

Related material:

• The Lone Pine Film History Museum,
   
• Desert Quest Video—

• Lone Pine Death—

(Click for further details.)

See also St. Stephen's Day, 2011.

(Continued from 6:08 AM EDT yesterday and the day before)

"Richard Elster was seventy-three, I was less than half his age. He’d invited me to join him here, old house, under-furnished, somewhere south of nowhere in the Sonoran Desert or maybe it was the Mojave Desert or another desert altogether.* Not a long visit, he’d said."

— Don DeLillo, Point Omega

Maybe it was the desert near Twentynine Palms.

"Sometimes a wind comes before the rain
and sends birds sailing past the window,
spirit birds that ride the night,
stranger than dreams."

— Ending of Point Omega

* Update of Sept. 2, 2012— A different passage yields a more precise location.

"Translation in the direction
conceptual -> concrete and symbolic
is much easier than
translation in the reverse direction…."

— The late William P. Thurston

(See also "Atlas to the Text," Harvard Crimson , March 8, 2011).

Related cinematic imagery

Conceptual  (thanks to Don DeLillo and The New York Times )—

Concrete and symbolic (thanks to Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, as well as
Frederick Seidel in the September 3, 2012, New Yorker )—

"Biddies still cleaned the student rooms."

Last night's 10 PM post linked to an April 7, 2012,
post that through a series of further links leads
to Columbia Film Theory .

For other film-related remarks, by a
Columbia alumnus,* see last night's post.

See also the 1.3 MB image from Aug. 16, the night 
of Elvis's Wrap Party. An excerpt from that image
stars Amy Adams—

For Amy, from the current New Yorker—

The Master—

* N.O.C.D.

Do you know where your children are?

Continued from Plan 9 , a Log24 post of  9 PM Monday—

See another weblog's April 7, 2012, post on
God and Horror Movies.

See also this  weblog's post on that date.

(Continued from June 14, 2007)

The late William P. Thurston on how mathematical knowledge may decay:

"There are several obvious mechanisms of decay. The experts in a subject retire and die, or simply move on to other subjects and forget. Mathematics is commonly explained and recorded in symbolic and concrete forms that are easy to communicate, rather than in conceptual forms that are easy to understand once communicated. Translation in the direction conceptual -> concrete and symbolic is much easier than translation in the reverse direction, and symbolic forms often replaces [sic ] the conceptual forms of understanding. And mathematical conventions and taken-for-granted knowledge change, so older texts may become hard to understand.

In short, mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths [sic ] life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary. Revolutionary change does matter, but revolutions are few, and they are not self-sustaining — they depend very heavily on the community of mathematicians."

— At mathoverflow.net, October 30, 2010.
     The discussion has been "closed as no longer relevant."
     For another Thurston quote of interest, see a more recent
     mathoverflow discussion "closed as not a real question."

Click image for some related material.