Log24

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Death Working Backwards —
“A Man, a Plan, a Canal, Panama!”

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:07 am
 
"George R. Goethals was born at West Point, the son of Major General George W. Goethals, who was known as builder of the Panama Canal. In 1908, he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and was assigned to develop fortifications for the Pacific side of the canal. In 1919, he retired from the United States Army and was employed by an engineering firm. He returned to active duty in 1940. During World War II he served as assistant chief of the Army Corps of Engineers in the District of Columbia. In 1946, he retired from the United States Army for a second time and became a professor of mathematics at the University of New Mexico. He retired from the university in 1958. He died at age 87 on Thursday, June 28, 1973 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Jamaica Plains section of Boston, Massachusetts. Interment was at the United States Academy with a military funeral. Survivors included one son, George W.L. Goethals of Watertown, Massachusetts."
— Source: Springfield Union, Springfield Massachusetts,
Saturday, June 30, 1973.
 

Obit from Harvard College –

Psychology Lecturer Goethals Dead at 74

Retired Senior Lecturer of Psychology Dr. George W. Goethals II '43 died in his home Monday after a brief illness. He was 74.

Goethals, a Watertown native, graduated from the College after serving in the army during World War II. He taught high school in Edgartown, Mass, and returned to Harvard to earn his masters and doctorate degrees in education, the Boston Globe reported yesterday.

Goethals taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1952 to 1956 and joined the Harvard faculty, where he taught in the School of Education, the departments of Social Relations and Psychology and the Extension School from 1956 to 1992.

In the 1970s he became a lecturer on psychology and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and principal psychologist at Cambridge Hospital. In 1992 he received the Petra Shattuck Teaching Award at the Extension School.

Goethals continued to teach at the Extension School until December, when he became sick and had to be admitted to the hospital.

An avid baseball player, he pitched for a semi-pro baseball team during his years as a graduate student, according to the Globe report.

Goethals was the author of "The Role of Schools in Mental Health" and "Experiencing Youth." His teaching and research focused on adolescents.

— The Harvard Crimson, February 3, 1995

Dr. Goethals led a Harvard Freshman Seminar at 8 Prescott St., Cambridge,
in the academic year 1960-1961.

Vide  "Prescott Street" in this journal.

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

“Pray together, stay together”
A version for Prescott Street

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 12:28 pm

There are, of course, purely secular  forms of prayer . . .

The above remarks were suggested by the award today of a Nobel Prize
for Hopfield networks, and by the Hebbian theory I learned
in a 1960-1961 Harvard Freshman Seminar on Prescott Street.

Updates:

Monday, September 23, 2024

Kaleidoscopic Succession, Lines of Cleavage:
Metaphors from a Jewel Box

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:38 am

 "The personalities come and go in kaleidoscopic succession,
many changes often being made in the course of twenty-four hours."

"By a breaking up of the original personality at different moments
along different lines of cleavage, there may be formed several different
secondary personalities which may take turns with one another."

— Morton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality ,
Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906, pages 2 and 3.

Related reading . . .

Sunday, September 22, 2024

The Portable Divinity Box

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 9:48 am

In 1978, Harvard moved a structure known as the Morton Prince House
from Divinity Avenue to Prescott Street, where it occupies the former Hurlbut
Parking Lot, which was the vista from my 1960-61 freshman room.

From the Log24 post "Very Stable Kool-Aid"

A Letter from Timothy Leary, Ph.D., July 17, 1961

Harvard University
Department of Social Relations
Center for Research in Personality
Morton Prince House
5 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

July 17, 1961

Dr. Thomas S. Szasz
c/o Upstate Medical School
Irving Avenue
Syracuse 10, New York

Dear Dr. Szasz:

Your book arrived several days ago. I've spent eight hours on it and realize the task (and joy) of reading it has just begun.

The Myth of Mental Illness is the most important book in the history of psychiatry.

I know it is rash and premature to make this earlier judgment. I reserve the right later to revise and perhaps suggest it is the most important book published in the twentieth century.

It is great in so many ways–scholarship, clinical insight, political savvy, common sense, historical sweep, human concern– and most of all for its compassionate, shattering honesty.

. . . .

 

Morton Prince, a Boston neurologist, founded the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1906 as an outlet especially for those who took a psychogenic view of neurotic disorders. Through experiments with hypnotism, he added appreciably to knowledge of subconscious and coconscious mental processes; The Dissociation of a Personality (Prince, 1905) still ranks as a classic. He early saw that studying normal people in the depth and detail with which one studied patients could make significant contributions to our whole understanding of human nature. Before his death he established and briefly directed the Harvard Psychological Clinic, devising the research environment out of which presently sprang major contributions to the study of personality.

— "Who Was Morton Prince?," by R. W. White,
Journal of Abnormal Psychology  1992 November;
101(4):604-6.  doi: 10.1037//0021-843x.101.4.604.

See as well Who Was R. W. White?

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

In Memoriam . . .

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:13 am

"Rage, rage, against the dying of the light"
— Dylan Thomas, quoted in the final episode of "Blacklist"

Related material, in memory of Raymond Reddington and
Harry G. Frankfurt

Monday, July 17, 2023

Harry G. Frankfurt, May 29, 1929 – July 16, 2023

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 12:38 pm

See as well this  journal on the morning of July 16,
and also "Cartoon Graveyard."

“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

Sunday, July 16, 2023

Getting to Wow

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:34 am

A screenshot today of a May 31 NY Times  review of a book on hacking —

Saturday, June 10, 2023

News for Prescott Street

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:57 pm

See also Prescott Street in this  journal.

Saturday, January 8, 2022

In Memoriam:  Lyricist Marilyn Bergman

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 2:25 pm

Bergman reportedly died today at 93.

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

The Twelve Steps of Christmas

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:31 am

See as well "Prescott Street" in this journal.

Monday, January 3, 2022

Nine Perfect Coordinates:  Ex Fano Continues.

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 11:44 am

Update of Jan. 4, 2022 —

"Nine Perfect Strangers was certainly not helped by premiering
just days after HBO aired the finale of The White Lotus,
the summer’s word-of-mouth TV hit that’s also a stacked
ensemble of strangers gathering at a lush hotel, and a much more
scathing, focused and riveting satire . . . ."

Adrian Horton in The Guardian , Aug. 25, 2021

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Raiders of the Lost Coordinates . . .

Continues.

From other posts tagged Tetrahedron vs. Square —

"There is  such a thing as a 4-set."
— Saying adapted from a 1962 young-adult novel.

Illustration (central detail  a  from the above tetrahedral figure) —

A Harvard Variation
from Timothy Leary —

The topics of Harvard and Leary suggest some other cultural
history, from The Coasters"Poison Ivy" and "Yakety Yak."

Sunday, November 29, 2020

Sunday Morning in a Cartoon Graveyard

For the Dr. Seuss School of
Neuropsychopharmacology —

From the school itself —

Related material — Pilgrim's Progress  in this  journal and . . .

an image from Log24 on December 8, 2012

IMAGE- Cover image for a free mixtape, 'Lawrence Class - The Diamond Theory,' that contains images from Steven H. Cullinane's 'Diamond Theory.'

See as well "To Think That It Happened on Prescott Street"
and related posts.

Thursday, November 26, 2020

Harvard Psychedelic Club vs. Harvard Alcoholic Club

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 10:47 pm

For the title, see the previous post  as well as Prescott Street
and Psychedelic Club in this journal.

Some related art —

Saturday, November 14, 2020

To Think That It Happened on Prescott Street

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:04 am

Or:   Geometric Logic Continued

Part I: Mystic Twaddle

Part II:  Meanwhile, on that same date —

Part III: Back at Harvard — 

A link from the above post, infra —

“Some Harvard-related material — See Leary and 6 Prescott .”

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Plan 9 from Prescott Street*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:22 am

Plan 9 deals with the resurrection of the dead.” 

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

* See the previous post‘s link to the phrase
“Turn on, tune in, drop dead.”

Monday, June 22, 2020

The Long Hello…

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 1:51 am

Continues.

"In July, 1960, having just received a doctorate from Harvard
and a research and training fellowship from the National Institute
of Mental Health, I drove, together with my wife, Sandylee,
from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Cuernavaca, Mexico."

Michael Maccoby, June 26, 2014,
"Building on Erich Fromm's Scientific Contributions"

This is the Michael Maccoby of . . .

First published, with a less lurid cover,  in 1958 by Arlington Books
of Cambridge, Mass.

What appears to be that 1958 edition, with the Maccoby introduction,
is available as a PDF —

http://paragoninspects.com/articles/pdfs/temp/operators_and_things.pdf .

Some Harvard-related material — See Leary and 6 Prescott .

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Adventures on Prescott Street…

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:03 pm

Continue.

For a member of a 1960-1961 Harvard Freshman Seminar
at 8 Prescott Street —

Dusenbury’s study of color  was published on June 9, 2015.

This  journal on that date —

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Very Stable Kool-Aid

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 2:16 pm

Two of the thumbnail previews
from yesterday's 1 AM  post

"Hum a few bars"

"For 6 Prescott Street"

Further down in the "6 Prescott St." post, the link 5 Divinity Avenue
leads to

A Letter from Timothy Leary, Ph.D., July 17, 1961

Harvard University
Department of Social Relations
Center for Research in Personality
Morton Prince House
5 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

July 17, 1961

Dr. Thomas S. Szasz
c/o Upstate Medical School
Irving Avenue
Syracuse 10, New York

Dear Dr. Szasz:

Your book arrived several days ago. I've spent eight hours on it and realize the task (and joy) of reading it has just begun.

The Myth of Mental Illness is the most important book in the history of psychiatry.

I know it is rash and premature to make this earlier judgment. I reserve the right later to revise and perhaps suggest it is the most important book published in the twentieth century.

It is great in so many ways–scholarship, clinical insight, political savvy, common sense, historical sweep, human concern– and most of all for its compassionate, shattering honesty.

. . . .

The small Morton Prince House in the above letter might, according to
the above-quoted remarks by Corinna S. Rohse, be called a "jewel box."
Harvard moved it in 1978 from Divinity Avenue to its current location at
6 Prescott Street.

Related "jewel box" material for those who
prefer narrative to mathematics —

"In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test , Tom Wolfe writes about encountering 
'a young psychologist,' 'Clifton Fadiman’s nephew, it turned out,' in the
waiting room of the San Mateo County jail. Fadiman and his wife were
'happily stuffing three I-Ching coins into some interminable dense volume*
of Oriental mysticism' that they planned to give Ken Kesey, the Prankster-
in-Chief whom the FBI had just nabbed after eight months on the lam.
Wolfe had been granted an interview with Kesey, and they wanted him to
tell their friend about the hidden coins. During this difficult time, they
explained, Kesey needed oracular advice."

— Tim Doody in The Morning News  web 'zine on July 26, 2012**

Oracular advice related to yesterday evening's
"jewel box" post …

A 4-dimensional hypercube H (a tesseract ) has 24 square
2-dimensional faces
.  In its incarnation as a Galois  tesseract
(a 4×4 square array of points for which the appropriate transformations
are those of the affine 4-space over the finite (i.e., Galois) two-element
field GF(2)), the 24 faces transform into 140 4-point "facets." The Galois 
version of H has a group of 322,560 automorphisms. Therefore, by the
orbit-stabilizer theorem, each of the 140 facets of the Galois version has
a stabilizer group of  2,304 affine transformations.

Similar remarks apply to the I Ching  In its incarnation as  
a Galois hexaract , for which the symmetry group — the group of
affine transformations of the 6-dimensional affine space over GF(2) —
has not 322,560 elements, but rather 1,290,157,424,640.

* The volume Wolfe mentions was, according to Fadiman, the I Ching.

** See also this  journal on that date — July 26, 2012.

Monday, January 27, 2020

A Line for Rose the Hat

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:00 am

"Hum a few bars, Steely Dan."

Related material — "For 6 Prescott Street" and "SAT."
_________________________________________________________________

Links' thumbnail previews —

"Hum a few bars"

"For 6 Prescott Street"

"SAT"

Sunday, January 19, 2020

For 6 Prescott Street*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:01 pm

"Freshman Seminar Program Department Administrator Corinna S. Rohse
described the program’s courses, which allow students to study subjects
that vary from Sanskrit to the mathematical basis for chess, as
'jewel-like:  small and incredibly well-cut.' "

The Harvard Crimson , Dec. 10, 2008

For remarks related to Sanskrit, chessboard structure, and "jewel-like" 
mathematics, see A Prince of Darkness (Log24, March 28, 2006).

See also Walsh Functions in this journal and

Lecture notes on dyadic harmonic analysis
(Cuernavaca, 2000)

Dr. Maria Cristina Pereyra

Compare and contrast these remarks of Pereyra with the following
remarks, apparently by the same Corinna S. Rohse quoted above.

* Location of the Harvard Freshman Seminar program in the 2008
article above. The building at 6 Prescott was moved there from 
5 Divinity Avenue in 1978. When the seminar program was started
in the fall of 1959, it was located in a house at 8 Prescott St. (In 
1958-1959 this was a freshman dorm, the home of Ted Kaczynski.)

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