Excerpts from this journal on the dies natalis weekend of the author's late husband,
a UC Berkeley "environmental design" professor —
Saturday, October 8, 2022
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Friday, December 19, 2025
Who’s Afraid of the Red Lighthouse?
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Today’s Science Sermon
"Before time began . . ." — Optimus Prime
Sunday, October 13, 2024
Cubehenge Review
Song lyric — "Somewhere . . ."
Real estate motto— Location, Location, Location.
Illustration— The fire leap scene from Wicker Man
Monday, September 23, 2024
Design History for a Guy Fawkes Day
Sunday, September 22, 2024
The Portable Divinity Box
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" —
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A Letter from Timothy Leary, Ph.D., July 17, 1961
Harvard University July 17, 1961
Dr. Thomas S. Szasz 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. . . . . |
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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, |
See as well Who Was R. W. White?
Saturday, September 21, 2024
The Squarespace Gray Cube
"Before time began . . . ." — Optimus Prime
I noticed this favicon on Sept. 18 (see post) at a publisher's webpage.
It turns out that it is not specific to the publisher, but rather to sites
hosted by Squarespace.com. For instance . . .
See also a post on Christmas Day, 2013.
Related material from the Sept. 18 post mentioned above —
Friday, September 20, 2024
Adapter Becomes Transformer
"When things go bonkers, you have to adapt."
— Chris Hemsworth as Dementus in "Furiosa" (2024)
"Before time began, there was the Cube."
— Optimus Prime in "Transformers" (2007)
Today, an animated Transformers opens, with
Chris Hemsworth as the voice of Optimus Prime.
Also today: The new tag "Cubehenge" in this journal.
Ring and Stone
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The Ring and the Stone
From Many Dimensions, a novel "This Holy Thing has been kept in seclusion," Ibrahim answered, "through many centuries, and in all that time none of its keepers have approached or touched it. And since Giles Tumulty stole it men have grasped at it in their own wisdom. But this woman has put her will at its disposal, and between it and her the union may be achieved by which the other Hiddenness is made manifest." "What is the other Hiddenness?" Lord Arglay asked. The Hajji hesitated, then he turned his eyes back to Chloe and seemed to ask a question of her. What answer he saw on the forehead at which he gazed she could not guess, but he spoke then in a low and careful voice. "In the Crown of Suleiman the Wise-the Peace be upon him!-" he said, "there was a Stone, and this Stone was that which is the First Matter of Creation, holy and terrible. But on the hand of the King there was a Ring and in the Ring was another secret, more holy and terrible than the Stone. For within the Ring there was a point of that Light which is the Spirit of Creation, the Adornment of the Unity, the Knowledge of the Loveliness, the Divine Image in the mirror of the worlds just and true. This was the justice and the Wisdom of Suleiman, by which all souls were made manifest to him and all causes rightly determined. Also when within the Holy of Holies in the Temple that the King made he laid his crown upon the Ark and between the wings of the Cherubim, and held his hand over it, the Light of the Ring shone upon the Stone and all things had peace. But when the King erred, building altars to strange gods, he dared no longer let the Light fall upon the Stone; also he put aside the Ring and it is told that Asmodeus sat upon his throne seven years. But I think that perhaps the King himself had not all that time parted from his throne, how closely soever Asmodeus dwelt within his soul. And of the hiding place of the Ring I do not know, nor any of my house; if it is on earth it is very secret. But the Light of it is in the Stone and all the Types of the Stone-and the Power of it is in the soul and body of any who have sought the union with the Stone, so that whoever touches them in anger or hatred or evil desire is subjected to the Light and Power of the Adornment of the Unity. And this I think my nephew did, and this is the cause of his blasting and hurling out." He looked straight at Chloe. "But woe, woe, woe to you," he said, "if from this time forth for ever you forget that you gave your will to the Will of That which is behind the Stone." |
This post was suggested by a Friday the Thirteenth death.
Thursday, September 19, 2024
For Case Study Films: Compare and Contrast
From August 10 —
Earlier . . .
Still earlier . . .
Verhexung Illustrated
"Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung
unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache."
— Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), Section 109
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Flatiron Building Timelessness . . .
Directed by Quine, not Hitchcock
Click the "timelessness" quote below for the "Bell, Book and Candle" scene
with Kim Novak and James Stewart atop the Flatiron Building.
"Before time began . . . ." — Optimus Prime
Directed by Quine, not Hitchcock
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Notes on a Friday the 13th Death
A passage accessed via the new URL Starbrick.art* —
Thursday, February 25, 2021
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A related cultural note suggested by the New York Times obituary today
of fashion designer Mary McFadden, who reportedly died yesterday
(a Friday the Thirteenth) and is described by the Times as a late-life
partner of "eightfold-way" physicist Murray Gell-Mann —
* A reference to the 2-column 4-row matrix (a "brick") that underlies
the patterns in the Miracle Octad Generator of R. T. Curtis. The only
connection of this eight-part matrix to Gell-Mann's "Eightfold Way"
that I know of is simply the number 8 itself.
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
For Rubik Worshippers
The above is six-dimensional as an affine space, but only five-dimensional
as a projective space . . . the space PG(5, 2).
As the domain of the smallest model of the Klein correspondence and the
Klein quadric, PG (5,2) is not without mathematical importance.
See Chess Bricks and Ovid.group.
This post was suggested by the date July 6, 2024 in a Warren, PA obituary
and by that date in this journal.
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Transformer Problems (Before the Pretrained Ones)
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Summer Solstice Entertainment, 2019
Related Helen Mirren image . . .
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Library Note: Chicago Exposition
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"Chang noted that 'the story starts slowly, for
1. Chang, Margaret A. "The King in the Window". |
Some will prefer exposition more closely related to Chicago.
From a Log24 search for that word . . .
The above phrase "the intersection of storytelling and visual arts"
suggests a review . . .
Some exposition that does not go back thousands of years —
The Cross Section
Addendum for Christopher Nolan — Dice and the Eightfold Cube.
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Belgian Puzzle Art
From the Belgian artist of the March 25 New Yorker cover —
“There comes a time when the learner has identified
the abstract content of a number of different games
and is practically crying out for some sort of picture
by means of which to represent that which has been
gleaned as the common core of the various activities.”
— Article at Zoltan Dienes’s website
Monday, January 29, 2024
Self as Imago Dei: Hofstadter vs. Valéry
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Google search result: Saint Anselm College https://www.anselm.edu › Documents › Brown by M Brown · 2014 · Cited by 14 — Thomas insists that the image of God exists most perfectly in the acts of the soul, for the soul is that which is most perfect in us and so best images God, and … 11 pages |
For a Douglas Hofstadter version of the Imago Dei , see the
"Gödel, Escher, Bach" illustration in the Jan. 15 screenshot below —
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
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Tuesday, October 24, 2023
A Bond with Reality: The Geometry of Cuts
Illustrations of object and gestures
from finitegeometry.org/sc/ —
Object
Gestures
An earlier presentation of the above
seven partitions of the eightfold cube:
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Related mathematics:
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The use of binary coordinate systems
Natural physical transformations of square or cubical arrays See "The Thing and I." |
and . . .
Related entertainment:
Or Matt Helm by way of a Jedi cube.
Sunday, June 4, 2023
The Galois Core
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Saving the Appearances
“… I realized that to me,
Gödel and Escher and Bach
were only shadows
cast in different directions by
some central solid essence.
I tried to reconstruct
the central object, and
came up with this book.”
Related images —
Friday, January 27, 2023
The Stone
Here stands the mean, uncomely stone,
’Tis very cheap in price!
The more it is despised by fools,
The more loved by the wise.
— https://jungcurrents.com/
the-story-of-the-stone-at-bollingen
Not so cheap:
Identical copies of the above image are being offered for sale
on three websites as representing a Masonic "cubic stone."
None of the three sites say where, exactly, the image originated.
Image searches for "Masonic stone," "Masonic cube," etc.,
fail to yield any other pictures that look like the above image —
that of a 2x2x2 array of eight identical subcubes.
For purely mathematical — not Masonic — properties of such
an array, see "eightfold cube" in this journal.
The websites offering to sell the questionable image —
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Getty —
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Alamy —
https://www.alamy.com/
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Photo12 —
https://www.photo12.com/en/image/
No price quoted on public page:
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Monday, November 28, 2022
Groups, Spaces, and Ripoffs
"Rubik's Cube, and the simpler [2x2x2] Super Cube, represent
one form of mathematical and physical reality."
— Solomon W. Golomb, "Rubik's Cube and Quarks:
Twists on the eight corner cells of Rubik's Cube
provide a model for many aspects of quark behavior,"
American Scientist , Vol. 70, No. 3 (May-June 1982), pp. 257-259
From the last (Nov. 14, 2022) of the Log24 posts now tagged Groups and Spaces —
From the first (June 21, 2010) of the Log24 posts now tagged Groups and Spaces —
Saturday, October 8, 2022
For Fans of Religious Lunacy … The Firebird Date
("Raiders of the Lost Spell" continues.)
The above flashback to a 2002 post was suggested by a search in
this journal for "Firebird" that yielded, as the only result . . .
http://www.amazon.com/
Witch-Seldom-Firebird-Nancy-Springer/dp/0142302201/.
That URL connects to The Hex Witch of Seldom at Amazon.com.
That book was reportedly published by Firebird on September 16, 2002,
the date of the above Log24 post.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Box Geometry: Space, Group, Art (Work in Progress)
| Name Tag | .Space | .Group | .Art |
|---|---|---|---|
| Box4 |
2×2 square representing the four-point finite affine geometry AG(2,2). (Box4.space) |
S4 = AGL(2,2) (Box4.group) |
(Box4.art) |
| Box6 |
3×2 (3-row, 2-column) rectangular array representing the elements of an arbitrary 6-set. |
S6 | |
| Box8 | 2x2x2 cube or 4×2 (4-row, 2-column) array. | S8 or A8 or AGL(3,2) of order 1344, or GL(3,2) of order 168 | |
| Box9 | The 3×3 square. | AGL(2,3) or GL(2,3) | |
| Box12 | The 12 edges of a cube, or a 4×3 array for picturing the actions of the Mathieu group M12. | Symmetries of the cube or elements of the group M12 | |
| Box13 | The 13 symmetry axes of the cube. | Symmetries of the cube. | |
| Box15 |
The 15 points of PG(3,2), the projective geometry of 3 dimensions over the 2-element Galois field. |
Collineations of PG(3,2) | |
| Box16 |
The 16 points of AG(4,2), the affine geometry of 4 dimensions over the 2-element Galois field. |
AGL(4,2), the affine group of |
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| Box20 | The configuration representing Desargues's theorem. | ||
| Box21 | The 21 points and 21 lines of PG(2,4). | ||
| Box24 | The 24 points of the Steiner system S(5, 8, 24). | ||
| Box25 | A 5×5 array representing PG(2,5). | ||
| Box27 |
The 3-dimensional Galois affine space over the 3-element Galois field GF(3). |
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| Box28 | The 28 bitangents of a plane quartic curve. | ||
| Box32 |
Pair of 4×4 arrays representing orthogonal Latin squares. |
Used to represent elements of AGL(4,2) |
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| Box35 |
A 5-row-by-7-column array representing the 35 lines in the finite projective space PG(3,2) |
PGL(3,2), order 20,160 | |
| Box36 | Eurler's 36-officer problem. | ||
| Box45 | The 45 Pascal points of the Pascal configuration. | ||
| Box48 | The 48 elements of the group AGL(2,3). | AGL(2,3). | |
| Box56 |
The 56 three-sets within an 8-set or |
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| Box60 | The Klein configuration. | ||
| Box64 | Solomon's cube. |
— Steven H. Cullinane, March 26-27, 2022
Friday, February 11, 2022
De Beer’s Consolidated Mine
The misleading image at right above is from the cover of
an edition of Charles Williams's classic 1931 novel
Many Dimensions published in 1993 by Wm. B. Eerdmans.
But seriously . . .
Friday, December 31, 2021
Aesthetics in Academia
Related art — The non-Rubik 3x3x3 cube —
The above structure illustrates the affine space of three dimensions
over the three-element finite (i.e., Galois) field, GF(3). Enthusiasts
of Judith Brown's nihilistic philosophy may note the "radiance" of the
13 axes of symmetry within the "central, structuring" subcube.
I prefer the radiance (in the sense of Aquinas) of the central, structuring
eightfold cube at the center of the affine space of six dimensions over
the two-element field GF(2).
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Solomon’s Super* Cube…
Geometry for Jews continues.
The conclusion of Solomon Golomb's
"Rubik's Cube and Quarks,"
American Scientist , May-June 1982 —
Related geometric meditation —
Archimedes at Hiroshima
in posts tagged Aitchison.
* As opposed to Solomon's Cube .