From the Feast of St. Nicholas, 2022 —
"Does the phrase 'vinegar and brown paper'
mean anything to you?"
See also other posts tagged Up the Hill.
Monday, May 29, 2023
The Story Theory of Truth
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Mashup
"When the men on the chessboard
get up and tell you where to go . . . ."
Don't take the Brown acid!
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Friday, September 16, 2022
Symmetric Generation
The above is about a subspace of the
24-dimensional vector space over GF(2)
. . . "An entire world of just 24 squares,"
to adapt a phrase from other Log24
posts tagged "Promises."
Update of 1:45 AM ET Sept. 18, 2022 —
It seems* from a Magma calculation that
the resemblance of the above extended
cube-motif code to the Golay code is only
superficial.
Without the highly symmetric generating codewords that were added
to extend its dimension from 8 to 12, the cube-motifs code apparently
does , like the Golay code, have nonzero weights of only 8, 12, 16, and 24 —
Perhaps someone can prove there is no way that adding more generating
codewords can turn the cube-motif code into the Golay code.
* The "seems" is because I have not yet encountered any of these
relatively rare (42 out of 4096) purported weight-4 codewords. Their
apparent existence may be due to an error in my typing of 0's and 1's.
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Thursday, April 7, 2022
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Monday, November 29, 2021
Apophenia for Woit
Peter Woit is quoted in the previous post as saying that
"Deluding oneself by seeing deep connections
in unrelated events is a common human problem."
Namely . . .
The term occurred in a recent miniseries, "The Queen's Gambit,"
in dialogue by screenwriter Scott Frank. "Apophenia" is not in the
book of the same title, by the much better writer Walter Tevis.
The original version of the fictional LIFE Magazine interview —
The version by Scott Frank —
As for the phrase "an entire world of just 64 squares," also not in the book,
some mathematicians may recall the definition of impolite numbers .
The reader may supply his or her own impolite commentary.
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Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Women in Mathematics
This book was not in the original novel, and its title is plagiarized.
Blame screenwriter Scott Frank, not Gambit author Walter Tevis.
Related material:
The previous post, and Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy
in The Witch: A New England Folktale (2015).
See as well, from the late-October Strogatz date above —
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Thursday, January 21, 2021
Cock Tale for Rikki
With apologies to those readers unable to follow knight moves .
The Queen's Gambit , by Walter Tevis,
published Feb. 1983 —
“Would you care for a cocktail?” he asked pleasantly.
She looked around her at the quiet restaurant,
at the people eating lunch, at the table with desserts
near the velvet rope at the entrance to the dining room.
“A Gibson,” she said. “On the rocks.”
"A silver tide of phosphenes boiled across my field of vision
as the matrix began to unfold in my head, a 3-D chessboard,
infinite and perfectly transparent."
"'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' is a single
released in 1974 by rock/jazz rock group Steely Dan
and the opening track of their third album Pretzel Logic .
It was the most successful single of the group's career,
peaking at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in
the summer of 1974." — Wikipedia
Brian Harley, Mate in Two Moves , 1931—
“The key is the cocktail that begins the proceedings.”
See as well my post "Introduction to Cyberspace" (May 26, 2020).
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Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Key
An image from the opening of the Netflix series “Locke & Key” —
See also Omega in this journal.
“The key is the cocktail that begins the proceedings.”
– Brian Harley, Mate in Two Moves
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Monday, January 4, 2021
The Purloined Title
"When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead . . . ."
See as well "Symmetric Generation" in this journal.
"Feed your head." — Grace Slick
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Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Introduction to Cyberspace
Or approaching.
On the Threshold:
Click the search result above for the July 1982 Omni
story that introduced into fiction the term "cyberspace."
Part of a page from the original Omni version —
For some other kinds of space, see my notes from the 1980's.
Some related remarks on space (and illustrated clams) —
— George Steiner, "A Death of Kings," The New Yorker ,
September 7, 1968, pp. 130 ff. The above is from p. 133.
See also Steiner on space, algebra, and Galois.
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Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Analogies Between Analogies
On the new Netflix series "Maniac" —
"The treatment Owen and Annie sign up for promises to fix
its subjects’ brains with just three little pills—A, B, and C—
administered one after another over the span of three days.
The first forces you to relive your trauma;
the second exposes your blind spots; and
the third pill forces a confrontation."
— Kara Weisenstein at vice.com, Sept. 26, 2018, 12:19 PM
See also, from Log24 earlier …
A. Monday — Mathematics as Art
B. Tuesday — Trinity and Denkraum Revisited
C. Wednesday — Trinity Tale
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Tuesday August 23, 2005
1:06:55
PM
"I had an epiphany."
— Apostolos Doxiadis
Related material:
Log24 March 11:
Lucas Promises a
Darker Star Wars
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Friday, March 11, 2005
Friday March 11, 2005
See too:
Click on picture for details.
For some theological background
to this and the previous 8 entries,
see log24 Sept. 1-15, 2003,
which contains the following passage:
“I would like to say something more to you about cheerful serenity, the serenity of the stars and of the mind…. neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses; it is a virtue of saints and of knights; it is indestructible and only increases with age and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art.”
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Monday, November 17, 2003
Monday November 17, 2003
Total Recall:
in which Philip K. Dick
meets Joan Didion yet again
From Joan Didion’s new work on California history, Where I Was From:
“There was never just the golden dream of riches and bountiful nature, but always a scene of exploitation and false promises, indifference and ruthlessness, a kind of hollow core.”
 |
 |
Hollow no more.