Rick’s « Log24

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Caballo Blanco

Filed under: General — Tags: Caballo Blanco, Geometry of Even Subsets, Knight Move, Rick's — m759 @ 9:02 am

“The key is the cocktail that begins the proceedings.”

“Just as these lines that merge to form a key
Are as chess squares . . . .” — Katherine Neville, The Eight

“The complete projective group of collineations and dualities of the
[projective] 3-space is shown to be of order [in modern notation] 8! ….
To every transformation of the 3-space there corresponds
a transformation of the [projective] 5-space. In the 5-space, there are
determined 8 sets of 7 points each, ‘heptads’ ….”

— George M. Conwell, “The 3-space PG (3, 2) and Its Group,”
The Annals of Mathematics , Second Series, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Jan., 1910),
pp. 60-76.

“It must be remarked that these 8 heptads are the key to an elegant proof….”

— Philippe Cara, “RWPRI Geometries for the Alternating Group A₈,” in
Finite Geometries: Proceedings of the Fourth Isle of Thorns Conference
(July 16-21, 2000), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001, ed. Aart Blokhuis,
James W. P. Hirschfeld, Dieter Jungnickel, and Joseph A. Thas, pp. 61-97.

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Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Dead Reckoning

Filed under: General — Tags: Rick's, Yale Art Notes — m759 @ 5:28 pm

Continued from yesterday evening

IMAGE- Bogart in 'Casablanca' with chessboard

Today's mathematical birthday —

Claude Chevalley, 11 Feb. 1909 – 28 June 1984.

From MacTutor —

Chevalley's daughter, Catherine Chevalley, wrote about
her father in "Claude Chevalley described by his daughter"
(1988):—

For him it was important to see questions as a whole, to see the necessity of a proof, its global implications. As to rigour, all the members of Bourbaki cared about it: the Bourbaki movement was started essentially because rigour was lacking among French mathematicians, by comparison with the Germans, that is the Hilbertians. Rigour consisted in getting rid of an accretion of superfluous details. Conversely, lack of rigour gave my father an impression of a proof where one was walking in mud, where one had to pick up some sort of filth in order to get ahead. Once that filth was taken away, one could get at the mathematical object, a sort of crystallized body whose essence is its structure. When that structure had been constructed, he would say it was an object which interested him, something to look at, to admire, perhaps to turn around, but certainly not to transform. For him, rigour in mathematics consisted in making a new object which could thereafter remain unchanged.

The way my father worked, it seems that this was what counted most, this production of an object which then became inert— dead, really. It was no longer to be altered or transformed. Not that there was any negative connotation to this. But I must add that my father was probably the only member of Bourbaki who thought of mathematics as a way to put objects to death for aesthetic reasons.

Recent scholarly news suggests a search for Chapel Hill
in this journal. That search leads to Transformative Hermeneutics.
Those who, like Professor Eucalyptus of Wallace Stevens's
New Haven, seek God "in the object itself" may contemplate
yesterday's afternoon post on Eightfold Design in light of the
Transformative post and of yesterday's New Haven remarks and
Chapel Hill events.

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Tuesday, February 10, 2015

En Masse

Filed under: General — Tags: Doctor Sleep, Rick's, Yale Art Notes — m759 @ 7:00 pm

Yale Daily News staff columnist Scott Greenberg today,
in a piece titled "Filling Religion's Void" —

"The secularization of college students in America
has seemed a foregone conclusion for some time,
yet it represents a momentous shift for our university
and society at large that we have not yet
come to grips with….

Is the solution for our society and our University
to return to religion en masse?"

So to speak.

A Midrash for Greenberg:

An Ordinary Evening in New Haven
Meets an Evening in the Garden of Allah —

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Sunday, June 1, 2014

Black Key

Filed under: General — Tags: Rick's — m759 @ 11:00 am

The title was suggested by a post on The Piano
and by the dimensions of an image in this morning’s
previous post: 404 x 211 pixels, suggesting
4/04, a date significant to author Katherine Neville,
and 2/11, the date of a Log24 post from 2014.

These dates are both related to the post…

Everybody Comes to Rick’s
(original title of Casablanca ).

Whimsical, yes, but see Iris Murdoch
on the contingent in literature and the word
“whimsical” in a post of January 26, 2004
(in a series of posts involving Michael Sprinker).

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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Everybody Comes to Rick’s

Filed under: General — Tags: Rick's — m759 @ 8:00 am

Continued from a post of January 28 —
In Memory of Pete Seeger.

The spiritual tribute link in that post suggests a review
of the following page from a pop-philosophy novel —

"Turn, turn, turn." — Pete Seeger. See also this morning's news.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

Chapman’s Homer

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Grothendieck Mutants, Rick's — m759 @ 9:48 am

Louis Sahagun in today's Los Angeles Times—

The late Professor Marvin W. Meyer

"was our Indiana Jones," said James L. Doti,
president of Chapman University in Orange,
where Meyer held the Griset Chair in Bible
and Christian Studies and was director of
the Albert Schweitzer Institute.

Meyer reportedly died on August 16.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Semiotics

m759 @ 4:00 AM

"Two clichés make us laugh, but
a hundred clichés move us
because we sense dimly that the clichés
are talking among themselves and
celebrating a reunion."

— Umberto Eco

"'Casablanca': Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage,"
by Umberto Eco in SubStance , Vol. 14, No. 2, Issue 47:
In Search of Eco's Roses (1985), pp. 3-12.
(This paper was presented at a symposium,
"Semiotics of the Cinema: The State of the Art,"
in Toronto on June 18, 1984.)
Journal article published by U. of Wisconsin Press.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685047.

Click image for some related material.

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Thursday, May 3, 2012

Everybody Comes to Rick’s

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Rick's — m759 @ 11:30 am

(Continued)

Bogart and Lorre in 'Casablanca' with chessboard and cocktail

“The key is the cocktail that begins the proceedings.”

– Brian Harley, Mate in Two Moves

See also yesterday's Endgame , as well as Play and Interplay
from April 28… and, as a key, the following passage from
an earlier April 28 post—

Euclidean geometry has long been applied
to physics; Galois geometry has not.
The cited webpage describes the interplay
of both sorts of geometry— Euclidean
and Galois, continuous and discrete—
within physical space— if not within
the space of physics .

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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Thursday January 15, 2009

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Rick's — m759 @ 2:45 am

Gate
or, Everybody
Comes to Rick’s
(abstract version)

For Mary Gaitskill,
continued from
June 21, 2008:

Designer's grid-- 6x4 array of squares, each with 4 symmetry axes

This minimal art
is the basis of the
chess set image
from Tuesday:

Chess set design by F. Lanier Graham, 1967

Related images:

Doors of Rick's Cafe Americain in 'Casablanca'

Bogart and Lorre in 'Casablanca' with chessboard and cocktail

“The key is the
cocktail that begins
the proceedings.”

— Brian Harley,
Mate in Two Moves

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Saturday, June 28, 2008

Saturday June 28, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: bigrock, Rick's — m759 @ 8:07 am

The Cocktail

Bogart and Lorre in 'Casablanca' with chessboard and cocktail

G. H. Hardy on chess problems–

"… the key-move should be followed by a good many variations, each requiring its own individual answer."

(A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge at the University Press, first edition, 1940)

Brian Harley on chess problems–

"It is quite true that variation play is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the soul of a problem, or (to put it more materially) the main course of the solver's banquet, but the Key is the cocktail that begins the proceedings, and if it fails in piquancy the following dinner is not so satisfactory as it should be."

(Mate in Two Moves, London, Bell & Sons, first edition, 1931)

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

Saturday June 21, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: Rick's, Symmetry Framed — m759 @ 8:00 pm

For Mary Gaitskill

(See Eight is a Gate and
Faith, Doubt, Art, and
The New Yorker.)

A sructure from
today's previous entry:

September 2, 2006:

From Notre-Dame de Paris:

"Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar."

"A coffer of great richness
In a pillar's heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound."

For some further details, see
the brief Log24 narrative
"Indiana Jones and
the Hidden Coffer" as well as
Symmetry Framed and
the design of the doors
to Rick's Cafe Americain:

Everyone comes to Rick's.

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Saturday, September 2, 2006

Saturday September 2, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: Rick's, Symmetry Framed — m759 @ 7:31 am

Today's birthdays:

Salma Hayek
("Frida")

Salma Hayek and Julie Taymor

"Shinin' like a diamond
she had tombstones
in her eyes."

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060902-StarAndDiamond2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(For the above figures,
see Log24, 5/17/06,
"Tombstone," and
Log24, 9/13/03,
"For the Man in Black.")

and Keanu Reeves
("Constantine")

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050218-Highwater.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(For the above figure,
see Log24, 2/18/05,
"In Hoc Signo.")

Related material:

From Notre-Dame de Paris:

"Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar."

"A coffer of great richness
In a pillar's heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound."

For some further details, see
the brief Log24 narrative
"Indiana Jones and
the Hidden Coffer" as well as
Symmetry Framed and
the design of the doors
to Rick's Cafe Americain:

Comments (2)

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Tuesday August 29, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: Rick's — m759 @ 7:21 pm

For the Feast of St. Ingrid:

The Hand of Grace

"Only the hand of grace
can end the race"

— Mary Gauthier

"Have you tried 22 tonight?"

— Rick in Casablanca

Today's lottery in Pennsylvania
(state of Grace):

Mid-day 229, evening 119.

Related material: 2/29, 1/19.

"… God to a nation
dealt that day's dear chance.
To man, that needs would worship
block or barren stone…."

— "To what serves Mortal Beauty?,"
by Gerard Manley Hopkins, S. J.

"Cash it in, and don't come back."

— Rick in Casablanca

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Friday, July 11, 2003

Friday July 11, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: Rick's — m759 @ 6:00 pm

Las Manos de Gershwin

Today is the feast day of St. George Gershwin.

The hands of
George Gershwin,
by Al Hirschfeld

For related material, see

Saint Nicholas vs. Mount Doom and

Leadbelly Under the Volcano.

See also related material on Judaism and on Lord of the Rings in this morning’s links to the Conference of Catholic Bishops and to Stormfront.org.

More on the film “Las Manos de Orlac” discussed briefly in the Under the Volcano link above:

Facetious: Digits of Death

Serious: Under the Volcano: A Dissertation.

From the latter —

“The ubiquitous posters advertising the 1935 MGM film Mad Love,

advertised in Spanish as Las Manos de Orlac [The Hands of Orlac]… reiterates this theme. … Moreover, the current showings of Las Manos de Orlac represent a revival, the film having been shown in Quauhnahuac a year or so before. A ‘revival’ is literally a return to life….”

Recall where the letters of transit in Casablanca were hidden.

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Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Wednesday September 11, 2002

Filed under: General — Tags: Maltese V, Rick's — m759 @ 2:56 pm

Double Cross

From the New York Times obituaries of 9/11, 2002:

"Henri Rol-Tanguy, one of France's most decorated Resistance heroes, who organized the popular uprising against the German occupation of Paris… died Sunday [Sept. 8, 2002]. He was 94."

Sunday was V-day in Malta. See my log24.net notes below:

The Maltese Cross,
The Maltese V,
A Birthday Song, and
The Boys from Uruguay.

For another sort of victory, see my log24.net note of August 24,

Cruciatus in Crucem.

The Cruciatus note describes what might be called the "Red" cross, or Croix de Guerre. The Maltese Cross note describes a cross more properly associated with intelligence than with courage. (Both qualities are, of course, needed… courage and a brain, as well as a heart.) More from the Rol-Tanguy obituary:

"From 1964 to 1987, he was a member of the central committee of the French Communist Party… Mr. Rol-Tanguy received most of France's medals of valor, including the Croix de Guerre and the Grand-Croix de la Légion de l'Honneur."

The following quotations are not without relevance.

Ernest Hemingway:

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

Rick Blaine:

We'll always have Paris.

Here's looking at you, kid.

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