Log24

Thursday, October 21, 2010

St. Ursula’s Day

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:07 pm

Mathematics and Narrative continued

A search for Ursula in this journal yields a story…

“The main character is a slave woman who discovers new patterns in the mosaics.”

Other such stories: Plato’s Meno  and Changing Woman

Changing Woman:

“Kaleidoscope turning…

Juliette Binoche in 'Blue'  The 24 2x2 Cullinane Kaleidoscope animated images

Shifting pattern within
unalterable structure…”

— Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat  

Philosophical postscript—

“That Lévi-Strauss should have been able to transmute the romantic passion of Tristes Tropiques  into the hypermodern intellectualism of La Pensée Sauvage  is surely a startling achievement. But there remain the questions one cannot help but ask. Is this transmutation science or alchemy? Is the ‘very simple transformation’ which produced a general theory out of a personal disappointment real or a sleight of hand? Is it a genuine demolition of the walls which seem to separate mind from mind by showing that the walls are surface structures only, or is it an elaborately disguised evasion necessitated by a failure to breach them when they were directly encountered? Is Lévi-Strauss writing, as he seems to be claiming in the confident pages of La Pensée Sauvage,  a prolegomenon to all future anthropology? Or is he, like some uprooted neolithic intelligence cast away on a reservation, shuffling the debris of old traditions in a vain attempt to revivify a primitive faith whose moral beauty is still apparent but from which both relevance and credibility have long since departed?”

— Clifford Geertz, conclusion of “The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Lévi-Strauss

Line

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:57 am

The NY Times recently discussed "Longing for the Lines That Had Us at Hello"

and  “We land in Albuquerque at 4 a.m. That’s strictly a 9 o’clock town.”

And so…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101021-AlbuquerqueMathSm.jpg

Click to enlarge.

"How much story do you want?" — George Balanchine

Problem Picture

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 3:24 am

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101021-CelebrationOf.jpg

The above image was suggested by yesterday's
Celebration of Mind and by Plan 9 From Outer Space
in yesterday's New York Times  and in this journal.

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