Doctor Steam
"Everybody's doin'
a brand new dance now…"
"A corpse will be
transported by express!"
— Under the Volcano
Thursday, March 12, 2015
For Stephen King
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Sunday, December 22, 2013
PSI
From a prequel to The Shining , by Stephen King—
You had to keep an eye on the boiler
because if you didn’t, she would creep on you.
What did that mean, anyway? Or was it just
one of those nonsensical things that sometimes
came to you in dreams, so much gibberish?
Of course there was undoubtedly a boiler
in the basement or somewhere to heat the place,
even summer resorts had to have heat sometimes,
didn’t they (if only to supply hot water)? But creep ?
Would a boiler creep ?
You had to keep an eye on the boiler.
It was like one of those crazy riddles,
why is a mouse when it runs,
when is a raven like a writing desk,
what is a creeping boiler?
See also Steam.
For one answer to the riddle, click here.
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Steam
For Jack and Jill.
The above motivational video is from the web page of a middle school
math teacher who was shot to death yesterday morning.
Related journalism —
See also "S in a Diamond" (here, October 2013)
and "Superman Comes to the Supermarket,"
by Norman Mailer (Esquire , November 1960).
In a recent film, Amy Adams asked Superman,
"What's the S stand for?"
One possible answer, in light of Stephen King's
recent sequel to The Shining and of
the motivational video above—
Steam.
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Friday, September 27, 2002
Friday September 27, 2002
Modern Times
ART WARS September 27, 2002:
From the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, October 2002, p. 563:
"To produce decorations for their weaving, pottery, and other objects, early artists experimented with symmetries and repeating patterns. Later the study of symmetries of patterns led to tilings, group theory, crystallography, finite geometries, and in modern times to security codes and digital picture compactifications. Early artists also explored various methods of representing existing objects and living things. These explorations led to…. [among other things] computer-generated movies (for example, Toy Story)."
— David W. Henderson, Cornell University
From an earlier log24.net note:
|
ART WARS September 12, 2002
John Frankenheimer's film "The Train" —
Und was für ein Bild des Christentums |
From Today in Science History:
Locomotion No. 1
| [On September 27] 1825, the first locomotive to haul a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson's Stockton & Darlington's line in England. The engine "Locomotion No. 1" pulled 34 wagons and 1 solitary coach…. This epic journey was the launchpad for the development of the railways…. |
From Inventors World Magazine:
Some inventions enjoyed no single moment of birth. For the steam engine or the motion-picture, the birth-process was, on close examination, a gradual series of steps. To quote Robert Stevenson: 'The Locomotive is not the invention of one man, but a nation of mechanical engineers.' George Stevenson (no relation) probably built the first decent, workable steam engines… Likewise the motion camera developed into cinema through a line of inventors including Prince, Edison and the Lumière brothers, with others fighting for patents. No consensus exists that one of these was its inventor. The first public display was achieved by the Lumière brothers in Paris.
From my log24.net note of Friday, Sept. 13th:
"Dante compares their dance and song to God’s bride on earth, the Church, when she answers the morning bells to rise from bed and 'woo with matins song her Bridegroom's love.' Some critics consider this passage the most 'spiritually erotic' of all the one hundred cantos of the Comedy."
From my log24.net note of September 12:
Everybody's doin'
a brand new dance now…
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