Log24

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Immerse Yourself

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:01 pm

(Continued)

From the Wikipedia article (with links altered) on Mormon baptism of the dead

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that baptism is a prerequisite for entry into the kingdom of God as stated by Jesus in John 3:5: "Except that a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (KJV).

From The Painted Word  (with link added), by Tom Wolfe—

PEOPLE DON’T READ THE MORNING NEWSPAPER, Marshall McLuhan once said, they slip into it like a warm bath. Too true, Marshall! Imagine being in New York City on the morning of Sunday, April 28, 1974, like I was, slipping into that great public bath, that vat, that spa, that regional physiotherapy tank, that White Sulphur Springs, that Marienbad, that Ganges, that River Jordan for a million souls which is the Sunday New York Times . Soon I was submerged, weightless, suspended in the tepid depths of the thing, in Arts & Leisure, Section 2, page 19, in a state of perfect sensory deprivation, when all at once an extraordinary thing happened:

I noticed something!

This Just In

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 am

Update of 11:22 AM ET— A job for Mitt—

Friday, September 28, 2012

Empty Chair at B.U.*

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 pm

Below: A New York Times  "Fashion Week: Immerse Yourself" ad
with obituary of former Boston University president John Silber—
"a philosopher by training but a fighter by instinct"—

IMAGE- NY Times obit of former B.U. president with ad-- 'Fashion Week: Immerse Yourself.'

"I can't do that to myself ." — Clint Eastwood

* See a Sept. 1st CNN piece by Boston University
   religion scholar Stephen Prothero—
  "Give Me Bali's Empty Chair over Eastwood's"—

  See also Prothero in this journal.

Classic Nothing

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:17 pm

Click to enlarge:

IMAGE- Harvard president Drew Faust sums up the work of Joan Didion

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Flow

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

Duelle

"a 'non-existent myth' of a battle between
goddesses of the sun and the moon
for a mysterious blue diamond
that has the power to make
mortals immortal and vice versa"

"Moon River, wider than a mile…"

The most damaging and obstructive
cluster of ideas you face as a writer
are nearly all related to the idea of “flow.”

Like “genius.”

And “sincerity.”

And “inspiration.”

Distrust these words.

They stand for cherished myths,
but myths nonetheless.

— Verlyn Klinkenborg, 
"Several Short Sentences About Writing"       

"All she had to do was kick off and flow."

The Gameplayers of Zan

"I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay."

Finnegans Wake

Monday, September 24, 2012

Nice Job, Jimmy

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:29 am

"… and now thanks to Philo T. Farnsworth,
we have 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.'"

Jimmy Kimmel at last night's Emmy Awards

Related material—

Aldous Huxley in last evening's Log24 post—

"Embraced, the lovers desperately try
to fuse their insulated ecstasies into
a single self-transcendence…."

From an anonymous author at the website Kill Devil Hill

"This little story… has that climactic moment of
heightened awareness….  This is a moment where
two individuals become one, empowering them
to transcend the limitations of their own individual
frailty and society. It's an epiphany, an almost
divine spark. It is an experience when one plus one
don't equal two, but something far greater."

Kill Devil Hills also appears in a 1983 film

"Suppose it were possible to transfer
from one mind to another
the experience of another person."

Trailer for "Brainstorm" (1983),
     the last film of Natalie Wood

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Hook

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:20 pm

( Or: Occupy Space The Prequel  )

From this journal last year on November 19 and 18—

IMAGE- 'It frequently happens that the object offers a hook to the projection....' --Jung, with Natalie Wood in 'Brainstorm'

Friday, September 21, 2012

Trouble with the Curve

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 pm

The Harvard Crimson  on last night's Ig Nobel Prize ceremony:

"The theme of the evening was 'The Universe,' a catchword
that had the audience cheering any time it was mentioned
throughout the night. Throughout the ceremony, a mini opera
entitled 'The Intelligent Designer and the Universe'* premiered
in four acts.

The opera’s final line was “This is how the Universe decays
into insanity.”

* An opera "about an insane wealthy man who bequeaths his
  fortune to have someone design a beautiful dress for the
  universe." —Mark Pratt, Associated Press

In related news…

"Most mysteries begin in confusion and end in certainty;
Pynchon likes to change this trajectory, so that what begins
a mystery ends as pure chaos. (Well aware how frustrating
some readers find this, Pynchon sets up a running gag in
Inherent Vice  about a class action suit brought against MGM
by audiences who don't like the way its stories end.)"

— Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian , Sunday, July 26, 2009

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Immersion

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:29 am

      Part of a New York Times  banner ad last night—

IMAGE- 'Fashion Week: Immerse Yourself'

     (Fashion week dates 2012 — 
     New York Sept. 6-13, London Sept. 14-18,
     Milan Sept. 19-25, Paris Sept. 25-Oct. 3.)

     Some related prose suggested by a link in
     last night's Log24 post

The theory, he had explained, was that the persona
was a four-dimensional figure, a tessaract in space,
the elementals Fire, Earth, Air, and Water permutating
and pervolving upon themselves, making a cruciform
(in three-space projection) figure of equal lines and
ninety degree angles.

The Gameplayers of Zan , a novel by M. A. Foster

IMAGE- Immersion in a fictional vision of resurrection within a tesseract

      See also, if you can find a copy, Jeff Riggenbach's 
      "Science Fiction as Will and Idea," Riverside Quarterly 
       Vol. 5, No. 3 (whole number 19, August 1972, ed. by
       Leland Sapiro et al.), 168-177.

      Some background—
      Tuesday's Simple Skill and 4D Ambassador,
      as well as Now What? from May 23, 2012.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

4D Ambassador

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

IMAGE- '4D Ambassador (Hypercube), 2012' by Josefine Lyche at The Boiler Room Gallery in Oslo

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Grid Compass

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 pm

IMAGE- Grid Systems designer of 'Grid Compass,' first laptop, dies at 69.

Related material:  The Empty Chair Award.

For a different sort of grid compass, see February 3, 2011.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Up to Date

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:29 pm

"Plato's cave was brought up to date in 1978…."

— Keith Devlin in Mathematics: The Science of Patterns

Related material from yesterday: Touchy-Feely and Plan 9.

"Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead.

IMAGE- Bill Murray explains Ed Wood's 'Plan 9 from Outer Space'

For a rather different approach to Plato, see three posts of August 16, 2012—

Hope and Pope

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:59 am

IMAGE- 'Hope of Heaven,' by John O'Hara, 1947 Avon paperback

Hope of Heaven , by John O'Hara
Avon paperback edition, 1947

   Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle, marked by Heaven:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
   Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore.
What future bliss, He gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

— Alexander Pope in An Essay on Man

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