Log24

Friday, August 11, 2023

Lyrics for Damnation Morning*

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:11 am

"I viewed the morning with much alarm
The British Museum had lost its charm."

* Vide  that phrase in this journal.
"A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one."

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Damnation Morning*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 am

Elemental square by John Opsopaus from 'The Rotation of the Elements'

* See references in this journal to the classic Fritz Leiber story.

Friday, October 30, 2015

For Damnation Morning*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:30 am

The Importance of Being Analytic

* Title of a story by Fritz Leiber.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Damnation Morning*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:24 am

(Continued)

The following is adapted from a 2011 post

IMAGE- Galois vs. Rubik

* The title, that of a Fritz Leiber story, is suggested by
   the above picture of the symmetry axes of the square.
   Click "Continued" above for further details. See also
   last Wednesday's Cuber.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Damnation Morning (continued)

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:24 am

Background— Why Me? and the Fritz Leiber story "Damnation Morning."

The story, about the afterlife of a dead drunk, contains an intriguing dark lady.

Related material — Search for the Spider Woman.

See also Julie Taymor in an interview published last Dec. 12 —

“I’ve got two Broadway shows, a feature film, and Mozart,’’ she said.
“It’s a very interesting place to be and to be able to move back and forth,
but at a certain point you have to be able to step outside and see,’’
and here she dropped her voice to a tranquil whisper, “it’s just theater.
It’s all theater. It’s all theater. The whole thing is theater.’’

— and search for Taymor + Spider in this journal.

Happy Shakespeare's Birthday.

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Family Values for Phil and Lily Collins

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:19 am

"Yes, you'll be goin' loco
  down in Acapulco,

  the magic down there
  is so strong."

This song is from the 1988 film "Buster."

(Wikipedia: "Buster  is a 1988 British
romantic crime comedy-drama
based on events from the Great Train Robbery,
starring Phil Collins….")

For a related religious use of that name —
"Look, Buster, do you want to live?" —
see Fritz Leiber's "Damnation Morning."

Yesterday, January 30, 2024, was Phil Collins's birthday.

Sunday, October 8, 2023

Work and Play

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"All work and no play . . ."

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Backstory

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

See Damnation Morning in this journal.

   See as well "Livingstone" in this  journal.

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Plan 9 From Moriarty

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 am

Some related mathematical windmills —

IMAGE- The eight Galois quaternions

For the eight-limbed star at the top of the quaternion array
above, see "Damnation Morning" in this journal —

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming 
implement that looked by quick turns to me like 
a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a delicate 
branding iron—especially when its tip sprouted 
an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in 
the fourth dimension or only die in it.”

— Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959

See as well . . .

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/12/13/
harvard-psychedelics-club-signet-society-art-show-2022/
.

Saturday, August 13, 2022

At the End

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:44 am

See as well the above eight-ray star in Damnation Morning posts.

Thursday, August 5, 2021

The Dumbing-Down

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:45 am

"How old is  the 'Big Spider Beck' joke?"

From "Blackboard Jungle" (1955) —

Teacher:

– You see, music is based on mathematics,
and it's just that the next class … 
i
s a little more advanced.

Students:

– We're advanced, teach. 
– Two times two is four.
– Are  four. 

See also Damnation Morning  in this journal and . . .

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Linker

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:01 pm

For Bird Day . . .

A tweet from Scott Edelman  on November 12, 2020 —

This  journal on the above tweet date

Damonizing Your Opponent

Excerpt from Fritz Leiber’s “Damnation Morning,” 1959:

“Time traveling . . . is not quite the good clean boyish fun
it’s cracked up to be . . . ."

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Bad Dreams

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"… were it not that I have bad dreams" — Hamlet

See references in this journal to
"Nightmare Alley" and "Damnation Morning."

Monday, June 27, 2016

View from a Member

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:35 pm

See also an adapted AA saying in this evening's previous post
and Mary Karr in  a "Damnation Morning" post.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Eternity (Not by Calvin Klein*)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:18 am

The two symbols on the monolith

Images of time and eternity in a 1x4x9 black monolith

may, if one likes, be interpreted 
as standing for Damnation Morning 
and for the Windmill of Time.

* "Award-winning fashion icon."
Harvard Graduate School of Design

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Backstory

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

See Damnation Morning in this journal.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

She Said Carefully

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:24 pm

A passage suggested by the previous post, Box Office:

From the 1959 Fritz Leiber story "Damnation Morning" —

She looked at me and then nodded. She said carefully, “The person you killed or doomed is still in the room.”

An aching impulse twisted me a little. “Maybe I should try to go back––” I began. “Try to go back and unite the selves . . .”

“It’s too late now,” she repeated.

“But I want to,” I persisted. “There’s something pulling at me, like a chain hooked to my chest.”

She smiled unpleasantly. “Of course there is,” she said. “It’s the vampire in you—the same thing that drew me to your room or would draw any Spider or Snake. The blood scent of the person you killed or doomed.”

Friday, April 17, 2015

For Story Time

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:49 pm

A book first published by Doubleday in 1979:

IMAGE- Octavia Butler, 'Kindred,' 'so many really fascinating times'

From Fritz Leiber's 1959 sci-fi classic "Damnation Morning" —

She drew from her handbag a pale grey
gleaming implement that looked by quick turns
to me like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a
delicate branding iron— especially when its tip
sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the
fourth dimension or only die in it.”

See also Philanthropic Numerology (St. Luke's Day, 2012).

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Visual Structure

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 8:07 pm

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered.”

— The novel The Double , by José Saramago,
on which the recent film "Enemy" was based

For Louise Bourgeois — a post from the date of Galois's death—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110715-GaloisMemorial-Lg.jpg

For Toronto — Scene from a film that premiered there on Sept. 8, 2013:

Related material: This journal on that date, Sept. 8, 2013:

"I still haven't found what I'm looking for." — Bono

"In fact Surrealism found what it had been looking for
from the first in the 1920 collages [by Max Ernst],
which introduced an entirely original scheme of
visual structure…."

— Rosalind Krauss quoting André Breton*
in "The Master's Bedroom"

* "Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism"
(1941),
   in Surrealism and Painting  (New York,
Harper & Row, 1972, p. 64).

See also Damnation Morning in this journal.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Midrash

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am

From today's 3 AM (ET) post "Quote":

“You’ve got to decide which side of the cross you’re on."

Perhaps both? See yesterday morning's Jerusalem Post —

"Although he was one of Israel’s best known
secular, leftwing bohemians, he achieved
some of his greatest success as an actor
playing as ultra-Orthodox and national-religious
characters."

See also a similar ambiguity in Damnation Morning.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Or Only Die

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:59 pm

Serge Lang, Collected Papers, Vol. 4 , p. 179

"I find it appropriate to quote here a historical
comment made by Halberstam…."

This is Heini Halberstam, who reportedly died
on January 25, 2014.

I find it appropriate to quote here an unhistorical
comment made by a fictional character —

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live
in the fourth dimension or only die in it.”

— From Fritz Leiber's classic story
    "Damnation Morning"

The Leiber quote was suggested by the posts
in this journal on the day of Halberstam's death.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Test

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

From Fritz Leiber's 1959 sci-fi classic "Damnation Morning" —

She drew from her handbag a pale grey
gleaming implement that looked by quick turns
to me like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a
delicate branding iron— especially when its tip
sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the
fourth dimension or only die in it.”

Related 1962 drama  from the Twilight Zone —

"He's a physicist, maybe he can help us out."

See also Step.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Release Date

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 pm

The premiere of the Lily Collins film Abduction 
(see previous post) was reportedly in Sydney, Australia,
on August 23, 2011.

From that date in this journal

IMAGE- The eight Galois quaternions

For the eight-limbed star at the top of the quaternion array above,
see "Damnation Morning" in this journal—

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming 
implement that looked by quick turns to me like 
a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a delicate 
branding iron—especially when its tip sprouted 
an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in 
the fourth dimension or only die in it.”

— Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959

Related material from Wikipedia, suggested by the reference quoted
in this morning's post to "a four-dimensionalist (perdurantist) ontology"—

"… perdurantism also applies if one believes there are temporal
but non-spatial abstract entities (like immaterial souls…)."

Monday, September 23, 2013

For Danny Boy

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"… It raced down the gossamer curtain of Its webbing,
a nightmare Spider from beyond time and space,
a Spider from beyond the fevered imaginings of
whatever inmates may live in the deepest depths of hell.
No, Bill thought coldly, not a Spider either, not really,
but this shape isn’t one It picked out of our minds;
it’s just the closest our minds can come to
        (the deadlights)
        whatever It really is.
"

Stephen King, It  (Sept. 15, 1986)

Related horror by Fritz Leiber—

"The Mind Spider" and "Damnation Morning."

Related fiction by Mark Helprin—

In Sunlight and in Shadow .

As a perceptive reviewer has noted, Helprin's title is
almost  a verse from the song "Danny Boy."

See, too, the Danny Boy of The Shining ,
who returns tomorrow in a sequel, Doctor Sleep .

"The summer's gone and all the roses falling…."

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Tribute

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:00 am

From February 24, 2005:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050224-Symbols.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The above three-part image may be viewed as a tribute to
Jerusalem Day (today), to Saul Bass, or to Spider Jerusalem.

(See related posts and Damnation Morning.)

Friday, April 12, 2013

Midnight in Paris

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 6:00 pm

Surreal requiem for the late Jonathan Winters:

"They 'burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars,'
as Jack Kerouac once wrote. It was such a powerful
image that Wal-Mart sells it as a jigsaw puzzle."

— "When the Village Was the Vanguard,"
       by Henry Allen, in today's Wall Street Journal

See also Damnation Morning and the picture in
yesterday evening's remarks on art:

    

Monday, March 25, 2013

Brightness at Noon

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

The two symbols on the monolith from yesterday

Images of time and eternity in a 1x4x9 black monolith

— may, if one likes, be interpreted as standing for
Damnation Morning and for the Windmill of Time
(alternately, as motifs for a ukara cloth).

The above explanation may help those confused by
knight's-move discourse like that described by
Jemima in The Eiger Sanction .

The Dante Prize

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 am

(Damnation Morning, continued)

For the late, great Bebo Valdés, who
reportedly died on Friday in Stockholm:

Trailers from Hell: Joe Dante on 'The Prize'

"Mr. Valdés never returned to Cuba. He played piano
in Stockholm hotel lounges for more than three decades."

— Ben Ratliff in this morning's New York Times

"Heaven for climate, Hell for company."

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Star Wars

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:01 am

IMAGE- Rudolf Koch's version of the 'double cross' symbol

  Source: Rudolf KochThe Book of Signs

The American Mathematical Society
(AMS) yesterday:

Lars Hörmander (1931-2012)
Friday November 30th 2012

Hörmander, who received a Fields Medal in 1962,
died November 25 at the age of 81. …

more »

Some related material:

See also posts on Damnation Morning and, from the
date of Hörmander's death,

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Backstory

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 am

Yesterday's online Los Angeles Times  
on a film that inspired recent protests in Cairo—

The film… was shown on June 23
to an audience of less than 10
at a theater on Hollywood Boulevard,
a source familiar with the screening said….
The screening was at The Vine Theater,
which rents itself out for private screenings,
said one person involved in the theater.

An image from this journal on that same day, June 23

IMAGE- Rudolf Koch's version of the 'double cross' symbol

    Source: Rudolf KochThe Book of Signs

For some background on the symbol, see Damnation Morning.

See also Don Henley's Hollywood hymn "Garden of Allah."

Update of 8 PM Sept. 13, 2012—

Other sources give the film's screening date not as June 23,
2012, but rather as June 30, 2012. (BBC News, LAWEEKLY blogs)

The following post from this journal on that  date may or
may not have some religious relevance.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Snares

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 7:20 PM

"… to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic"

— The aim of the artist, according to Thomas Wolfe

Related entertainment—

High-minded— Many Dimensions .

Not so high-minded— The Cosmic Cube .

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Dark, Dark, Dark

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Damnation Morning

From her left arm hung a black handbag that closed with a drawstring and from which protruded the tip of a silvery object about which I found myself apprehensively curious.

Her right arm was raised and bent, the elbow touching the door frame, the hand brushing back the very dark bangs from her forehead to show me the sigil, as if that had a bearing on her question.

The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines and about as big as a silver dollar. An X superimposed on a plus sign. It looked permanent.


IMAGE- 'Eight-limbed asterisk' of Fritz Leiber (square version)

Except for the bangs she wore her hair pinned up. Her ears were flat, thin-edged, and nicely shaped, with the long lobes that in Chinese art mark the philosopher. Small square silver flats with rounded corners ornamented them.

Her face might have been painted by Toulouse-Lautrec or Degas. The skin was webbed with very fine lines; the eyes were darkly shadowed and there was a touch of green on the lids (Egyptian?—I asked myself); her mouth was wide, tolerant, but realistic. Yes, beyond all else, she seemed realistic.

Mary Karr

You’re not afraid to show yourself at your lowest ebb. In Lit, you stop breast-feeding because you’ve started drinking again. You describe yourself hiding in a closet with a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of Listerine, and a spit bowl.

It’s not a proud moment. The temptation in Lit was to either make myself seedy or show some glamour. But there wasn’t any. It was just dark, dark, dark for days. Ugly.

Were you surprised by how deeply people related to this dark stuff?

If I’m doing my job then I’m able to make the strange seem familiar. Bad memoirs try to make the strange stranger, to provide something for people to gawk at. I try to create an experience where no matter how bizarre something is, it seems normal. I don’t want readers to balk, I want them to be in the experience. My goal isn’t for people to go, “Oh, poor little Mary Karr,” but rather to have the reader go, “I can be an asshole too,” or just to have enthusiasm for the possibility for change.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Midnight in Paris– The Morning After

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am

(Continued from yesterday evening)

On Max Bialystock's Spider-Man Godspell Seminar

"… for surrealism to be entertaining
onstage, it must be shaped into
some kind of satisfying form."

— Charles Isherwood
    in today's New York Times

(RSS:  Wed, 16  May  2012  00:37:17 GMT)

From Fritz Leiber's 1959 story "Damnation Morning" —

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming
implement that looked by quick turns to me
like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a delicate
branding iron— especially when its tip sprouted
an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live
in the fourth dimension or only die in it.”

Monday, September 12, 2011

Spider Flagship

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:48 pm

Microsoft plans Windows 8 compatibility with mobile devices

"This won't be just another upgrade. Windows 8 is nothing less than the linchpin to Microsoft's strategy for keeping Windows relevant— if not resurgent— as the shift to the post-PC computing era unfolds.

'The stakes are huge,' says Charles King, principal analyst at research firm Pund-IT. 'The company must play outside its comfort zone, but if Microsoft succeeds, the potential opportunities could be significant.'"

Byron Acohido in USA TODAY this evening

Yesterday's 7:20 AM Google News—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110911-88and8-720AM.jpg

From Cliff Robertson's 1958 TV classic "Days of Wine and Roses"—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110912-WineAndRoses.jpg

From Fritz Leiber's 1959 sci-fi classic "Damnation Morning" —

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement
that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun,
a slim sceptre, and a delicate branding iron— especially when
its tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth dimension or only die in it.”

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Four Winds

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:07 am

A Quilt Version

IMAGE- Four Winds quilt block

A Mathematical Version

IMAGE- The eight Galois quaternions

Related remarks —

For the eight-limbed star at the top of the quaternion array above,
see "Damnation Morning" in this journal—

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement
that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun, a slim
sceptre, and a delicate branding iron—especially when its
tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth
dimension or only die in it.”

— Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959

See also Feb. 19, 2011.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Banderas*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:30 pm

For Ms. Julie and the Pope

For Ms. Julie:

Nuevas Banderas in this journal…

Click on image
for details.

See also Balakrishnan's Last Problem

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110818-Balakrishnan-Banners-500w.jpg

For the Pope:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110818-Legend.jpg

Now playing; click poster for details.

See also "Damnation Morning" in this journal—

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement
that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun, a slim
sceptre, and a delicate branding iron—especially when its
tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth
dimension or only die in it.”

— Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959

* For a time-leap from Leiber's 1959 to Hollywood's 2011, see yesterday's
  Marginal Remarks,  "The God particle ?" and a different Banderas.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Catechisms

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 am

Q— Why is this night different from all other nights?

A—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110419-Shachath.jpg

Click on Hebrew for commentary.

See also a simpler Christian midrash—

"Who Was the Mysterious Death Angel?"

Q— Why is Leaving Las Vegas  different from all other movies?

A—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110419-Cage.jpg

Hotel bedroom in Leaving Las Vegas  (1995)

Midrash— Romancing the Junction and Damnation Morning

"… this woman with the sigil on her forehead looked in on me from the open doorway of the hotel bedroom where I'd hidden myself and the bottles and asked me, 'Look, Buster, do you want to live?'"

Friday, April 15, 2011

Spider Notes

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110415-Symm-axes.jpg

Some connotations of the word "eightfold" —

IMAGE- Google search for 'eightfold geometry,' April 15, 2011

See also Damnation Morning and today's New York Times

A Final Bow for Julie Taymor's 'Spider-Man' Vision.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Time Travel Poem

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:11 pm

From “This Week’s Hype II,” a post at Peter Woit’s physics weblog this afternoon, a comment—

TedUnger says:
March 17, 2011 at 5:34 pm

“… there’s been nothing from these CERN scientists
except some lousy boring data on physics!
They better at least give us some time travel or else!

You know that is what Joe Public is thinking.”

The commenter’s identity is not clear. Even less clear is the identity of his subject, Joe Public.

For some remarks on time travel from literature rather than science, see “Damnation Morning” in this journal.

Erin O’Connor’s St. Patrick’s Day post this morning says,

“[Roddy] Doyle’s take on the Irish struggle for independence,
A Star Called Henry , has a lovely touch of magical realism.”

Note that the remarks by Henry Baker in this morning’s post here  were dated Thursday, 11 September 1913.

Related material—

Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

William Butler Yeats, “September 1913

Friday, March 11, 2011

Evening Star

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 pm

The following link was suggested by
this morning's Now Lens and noon's Citizen Julie

The Citizen Kane of Horror.

Related material— Damnation Morning and Punch Line.

Monday, January 31, 2011

Darkness at Noon

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

In today's Wall Street Journal , Peter Woit reviews a new book on dark matter and dark energy.

For a more literary approach, see "dark materials" in this  journal.

Before thir eyes in sudden view appear
The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark
Illimitable Ocean without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth,
And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise
Of endless warrs and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring amidst the noise
Thir embryon Atoms....
                                ... Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage....

-- John Milton, Paradise Lost , Book II

Related material:

1. The “spider” symbol of Fritz Leiber’s short story “Damnation Morning”—

2. Angels and demons here and in the Catholic Church.

3. The following diagram by one “John Opsopaus”—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09/090312-OpsopausSquare.jpg

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Mind Spider*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:29 pm

On a conference at the New School for Social Research on Friday and Saturday, December 3rd and 4th, 2010—

"This conference is part of the early stages in the formation of a lexicon of political concepts. It will be the 5th in a series of conferences started in Tel Aviv University. The project is guided by one formal principle: we pose the Socratic question "what is x?", and by one theatrical principle: the concepts defined should be relevant to political thought…."

[The conference is not unrelated to the New York Times  philosophy series "The Stone." Connoisseurs of coincidence— or, as Pynchon would have it, "chums of chance"— may read the conclusion of this series, titled "Stoned," in the light of the death on December 26th (St. Stephen's Day) of Matthew Lipman, creator of the "philosophy for children" movement. Many New York Times  readers will, of course, be ignorant of the death by stoning of St. Stephen

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110116-BeloitStoningSm.jpg

   Beloit College Nuremberg Chronicle

commemorated on December 26th. They should study Acts of the ApostlesChapter  6 and Chapter 7.]

Meanwhile, in this  journal—

Click to enlarge

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110116-ManhattanStarWarsSm.jpg

For some background on the Dec. 4th link to "Damnation Morning," see "Why Me?"

For some political background, see "Bright Star"+"Dark Lady" in this journal.

* The title refers to a story by Fritz Leiber.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Big Time*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

(True Grid continued)

"They're gonna put me in the movies,
They're gonna make a big star out of me…"

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110110-CrazyHeart.jpg

“Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.”  
Twelfth Night ,
Act V, Sc. I  [text]

See also this journal on Twelfth Night, 2011.

* Background:

   The Changewar stories of Fritz Leiber, including Big Time  and "Damnation Morning."

   The Shakespearean fool of Dec. 30 is also not without relevance.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Damnation on 42nd Street

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:24 am

Yesterday's New York Lottery— Midday 042, Evening 919.

Here 042 may be seen as referring to New York's 42nd Street…

Below, West 42nd St., facing north, from yesterday's New York Times

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101204-42ndStDetail.jpg

Related material —

That story is part of the Change War  saga by Fritz Leiber, notably represented by Leiber's 1957 novel The Big Time.

See also Comic Book Resources on the new comic-book  series Spider-Man: Big Time

CBR: “Big Time” is this title of this new era of “Amazing Spider-Man.” Why choose that title? What exactly is it referring to?

DAN SLOTT: “Big Time” refers to more than “Amazing Spider-Man,” it also refers to other Spider-Projects: “Astonishing Spider-Man/Iron Man,” the new Norman Osborn mini, and the all-new “Spider-Girl!” With “Amazing,” “Big Time” takes on a lot of meanings. In this book, everything is bigger: bigger stakes for Peter Parker, bigger threats for Spider-Man, and a much bigger comic. We are expanding to 30 pages of material, twice a month!

As for yesterday's evening NY lottery number 919, see 9/19.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

A Tale for Dickens

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:31 am

From a Spider:

Criss Angel Celebrates His Birthday,

Long Story, and

Short Story

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070107-Story.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

From the Web:

http://www.log24.com/log09/saved/091219-ShopNow.jpg

From a Spider Web:

Damnation Morning
(the complete story),

Hitler Plans Burning Man
("What the hell is next?"),

NEXT,

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/091219-NextSched.jpg

and Vegas Angel.

There must be…
50 ways to leave Las Vegas.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Friday July 3, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:00 am
Damnation Morning
continued

“The tigers of wrath are wiser
    than the horses of instruction.”

Blake

“… the moment is not
properly an atom of time
 but an atom of eternity.
 It is the first reflection
 of eternity in time, its first
attempt, as it were, at
       stopping time….”
 
Kierkegaard

Symmetry Axes
of the Square:

Symmetry axes of the square

(Damnation Morning)

From the cover of the
 Martin Cruz Smith novel
Stallion Gate:

Image of an atom from the cover of the novel 'Stallion Gate'

A Monolith
for Kierkegaard:


Images of time and eternity in memory of Michelangelo


Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte.

Rubén Darío

Related material:

The deaths of
 Ernest Hemingway
on the morning of
Sunday, July 2, 1961,
and of Alexis Arguello
on the morning of
Wednesday, July 1, 2009.
See also philosophy professor
Clancy Martin in the
London Review of Books
(issue dated July 9, 2009)
 on AA members as losers
“the ‘last men,’ the nihilists,
 the hopeless ones.”

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Wednesday June 3, 2009

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 4:00 am
Epigraphs
to Four Quartets:

Epigraphs to Eliot's 'Four Quartets'-- Heraclitus on the common logos and on the way up and the way down


The Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor, printed by C. Whittingham, London, for the translator, 1804, Vol. II, p. 55:

"You see the mutation of bodies, and the transition of generation, a path upwards and downwards according to Heraclitus; and again, as he says, one thing living the death, but dying the life of another. Thus fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth lives the death of water. You see a succession of life, and a mutation of bodies, both of which are the renovation of the whole."

Eight-rayed star of Venus (also the symmetry axes of the square)

 

For an interpretation
of the above figure
in terms of the classical
four elements discussed
in Four Quartets,
in Dissertations, and
in Angels & Demons,
see
Notes on Mathematics
 and Narrative.

For a more entertaining
interpretation, see Fritz Leiber's
classic story "Damnation Morning."

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tuesday March 24, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

The Child Trap

See E! Online, March 18 — Lindsay Lohan Remembers Parent Trap Mum

See also
 
http://www.log24.com/log/pix09/090324-ChildTrap.jpg

For those who like such things, an excellent Marxist analysis of Watchmen from another fan:

Whitson, Roger. “Panelling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of Alan Moore and William Blake.” ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies Vol. 3 No. 2 (2007). Dept. of English, University of Florida.

Whitson’s subject, Alan Moore, is the author of the Watchmen graphic novel. Moore’s style seems less suited to the Forth family pictured above than to Lindsay Lohan fans– who may also enjoy another graphic novel by Moore, Lost Girls.

More Lohan material related to her role in “Georgia Rule“–

Damnation Morning Continued (March 16).

Further background:

“The film realizes that if people actually fought crime, they’d most likely be crazy. Take The Comedian for an example. He fights crime, sure. He’s also a raging alcoholic.” –“‘Watchmen’ a flawed masterpiece,” by Ryan Michaels

See also the following expanded version of a link from Sunday morning, March 22:

Watchman, what of the night?

Monday, March 16, 2009

Monday March 16, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm
Damnation Morning
continued

Annals of Prose Style

  Film Review

“No offense to either of them, but ‘Georgia Rule’ suggests an Ingmar Bergman script as directed by Jerry Lewis. The subject matter is grim, the relationships are gnarled, the worldview is bleak, and, at any given moment, you suspect someone’s going to be hit with a pie.” –John Anderson at Variety.com, May 8, 2007

Sounds perfect to me.


Through a Glass Darkly

“Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman’s decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island. It is the first part of the trilogy that comprises Winter Light and The Silence, films which are generally seen as addressing Bergman’s increasing disillusionment with the emotional coldness of his inherited Lutheran religion. In particular here, Bergman focuses on the absence of familial love which might perhaps have pulled Karin (Andersson) back from the brink; while Karin’s mental disintegration manifests itself in the belief that God is a spider. As she slips inexorably into madness, she is observed with terrifying objectivity by her emotionally paralyzed father (Björnstrand) and seemingly helpless husband (von Sydow).”

— Nigel Floyd, Time Out, quoted at Bergmanorama

Related material:

1. The “spider” symbol of Fritz Leiber’s short story “Damnation Morning”–

2. Hollywood’s “Angels & Demons” (to open May 15), and

3. The following diagram by one “John Opsopaus”–

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09/090312-OpsopausSquare.jpg

Monday March 16, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm
Damnation Morning
continued

Annals of Prose Style

  Film Review

“No offense to either of them, but ‘Georgia Rule’ suggests an Ingmar Bergman script as directed by Jerry Lewis. The subject matter is grim, the relationships are gnarled, the worldview is bleak, and, at any given moment, you suspect someone’s going to be hit with a pie.” –John Anderson at Variety.com, May 8, 2007

Sounds perfect to me.


Through a Glass Darkly

“Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman’s decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island. It is the first part of the trilogy

Bergman's trilogy including 'Through a Glass Darkly'

that comprises Winter Light and The Silence, films which are generally seen as addressing Bergman’s increasing disillusionment with the emotional coldness of his inherited Lutheran religion. In particular here, Bergman focuses on the absence of familial love which might perhaps have pulled Karin (Andersson) back from the brink; while Karin’s mental disintegration manifests itself in the belief that God is a spider. As she slips inexorably into madness, she is observed with terrifying objectivity by her emotionally paralyzed father (Björnstrand) and seemingly helpless husband (von Sydow).”

— Nigel Floyd, Time Out, quoted at Bergmanorama

Related material:

1. The “spider” symbol of Fritz Leiber’s short story “Damnation Morning“–

Fritz Leiber's 'spider' figure

2. The Illuminati Diamond of Hollywood’s “Angels & Demons” (to open May 15), and

3. The following diagram by one “John Opsopaus“–

Elemental square by John Opsopaus from 'The Rotation of the Elements'

Friday, November 21, 2008

Friday November 21, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:01 pm
Gatsby Starts Over:
Cleaning Up the
St. Olaf Mess

St. Olaf College,
Northfield, Minnesota —
From The MSCS Mess
(Dept. of Mathematics, Statistics,
and Computer Science)
November 14, 2008
Volume 37, Number 9

Math Film Festival 2008
The MSCS Department is sponsoring the second of two film-discussion evenings this Wednesday, November 19. Come to RNS 390 at 7:00 PM to see watch [sic] two short [sic]Whatchu  Know 'bout Math and Just a Finite Simple Group of Order Two— and our feature film, Good Will Hunting. Will Hunting is a mathematical genius who's living a rough life in South Boston, while being employed at a prestigious college in Boston, he's [sic] discovered by a Fields Medal winning mathematics Professor [sic] who eventually tries to get Will to turn his life around but becomes haunted by his own professional inadequacies when compared with Will. Professor Garrett will explain the “impossible problem” and its solution after the film.

Background:

Log24 entries of Wednesday, November 19, the day "Good Will Hunting" was shown:
Damnation Morning revisited and
Mathematics and Narrative continued
 

From a story in the November 21
 Chronicle of Higher Education
on a recent St. Olaf College
reading of Paradise Lost:

"Of man's first disobedience,
     and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree,
     whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World,
     and all our woe….

A red apple made the rounds,
each reader tempting the next."

________________________

"Do you like apples?"
Good Will Hunting   
 

Friday, November 14, 2008

Friday November 14, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:24 pm
Ballistics and Faith

From a review of José Saramago‘s new novel, Death With Interruptions:

“The church has never been asked to explain anything,” the cardinal assures the prime minister. “Our specialty, along with ballistics, has always been the neutralization of the overly curious mind through faith.”

Related material:

Sept. 7, 2006- Birthday of Elizabeth I
Sept. 7, 2007- Madeleine L’Engle is Dead
Sept. 7, 2008- From the Finland Station

For some mythology relevant to the first two of these three dates, see “Damnation Morning” and The Big Time. For some non-mythology related to ballistics, faith, and the third of these dates, see Rudy Ratzinger vs. Joseph Ratzinger.

As for the main character
  of Saramago’s novel…

V. is whatever lights you to
 the end of the street
:
 she is also the dark annihilation
 waiting at the end of the street.”

— Tony Tanner, page 36,
 “V. and V-2,” in
 Pynchon: A Collection
 of Critical Essays.
 Ed. Edward Mendelson.
 Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:
 Prentice-Hall, 1978. 16-55.

Happy birthday,
Olga Kurylenko.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Thursday October 23, 2008

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:29 am
Along Came
a Spider

Symmetry axes of the square

A phrase from 1959
("Damnation Morning"),
from Monday
("Me and My Shadow"),
and from Sept. 28
("Buffalo Soldier") —

"Look, Buster,
do you want to live?"

A closely related phrase:

… Todo lo sé
por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema

de la Muerte.

Rubén Darío

The link to
"Buffalo Soldier"
in this entry
is in memory of
Vittorio Foa, who

died Monday
at his home
 outside Rome.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Monday October 20, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:06 am
Me and My Shadow

Thoughts suggested by Saturday's entry–

"… with primitives the beginnings of art, science, and religion coalesce in the undifferentiated chaos of the magical mentality…."

— Carl G. Jung, "On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry," Collected Works, Vol. 15, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, Princeton University Press, 1966, excerpted in Twentieth Century Theories of Art, edited by James M. Thompson.

For a video of such undifferentiated chaos, see the Four Tops' "Loco in Acapulco."

"Yes, you'll be goin' loco
  down in Acapulco,

  the magic down there
  is so strong."

This song is from the 1988 film "Buster."

(For a related religious use of that name– "Look, Buster, do you want to live?"– see Fritz Leiber's "Damnation Morning," quoted here on Sept. 28.)

Art, science, and religion are not apparent within the undifferentiated chaos of the Four Tops' Acapulco video, which appears to incorporate time travel in its cross-cutting of scenes that seem to be from the Mexican revolution with contemporary pool-party scenes. Art, science, and religion do, however, appear within my own memories of Acapulco. While staying at a small thatched-roof hostel on a beach at Acapulco in the early 1960's, I read a paperback edition of Three Philosophical Poets, a book by George Santayana on Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe. Here we may regard art as represented by Goethe, science by Lucretius, and religion by Dante. For a more recent and personal combination of these topics, see Juneteenth through Midsummer Night, 2007, which also has references to the "primitives" and "magical mentality" discussed by Jung.

"The major structures of the psyche for Jung include the ego, which is comprised of the persona and the shadow. The persona is the 'mask' which the person presents [to] the world, while the shadow holds the parts of the self which the person feels ashamed and guilty about."

— Brent Dean Robbins, Jung page at Mythos & Logos

As for shame and guilt, see Malcolm Lowry's classic Under the Volcano, a novel dealing not with Acapulco but with a part of Mexico where in my youth I spent much more time– Cuernavaca.

Lest Lowry's reflections prove too depressing, I recommend as background music the jazz piano of the late Dave McKenna… in particular, "Me and My Shadow."

McKenna died on Saturday, the date of the entry that included "Loco in Acapulco." Saturday was also the Feast of Saint Luke.
 

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Sunday July 13, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm
Indefinable?

C. P. Snow on G. H. Hardy:

“This was 1931, and the phrase was not yet in English use, but in later days they would have said that in some indefinable way he had star quality.”

From the Feast of the
Transfiguration, 2007
:

 Symmetry axes
of the square:

Symmetry axes of the square

See Damnation Morning.

See also today’s
previous three entries
.

Happy birthday,
Harrison Ford.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Wednesday June 25, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 am
Born 100 years ago today:

Willard Van Orman Quine, picture from cover of his autobiography

From A Logical Point of View,  Harvard U. Press, 1980, p. 72
From A Logical Point of View,  Harvard U. Press, 1980, p. 73
Other approaches to the
eight-ray star figure

Figure by Quine for an argument against univesals in 'From a Logical Point of View'

have been sketched in
various Log24 entries.

See, for instance, the
June 21 entries on
the Kyoto Prize for
arts and philosophy.
Quine won this prize
 in 1996.

Quine’s figure, cited in an
argument against universals,
is also a classic symbol for
the morning or evening star.

This year’s winner http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif
of the Kyoto Prize has
a more poetic approach
to philosophy:

“… the object sets up
 a kind of frame or space or field
   within which there can be epiphany.”

For one such frame or space,
a Mexican cantina, see
Shining Forth.

See also Damnation Morning and
The Devil and Wallace Stevens.

http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif Charles Taylor.  See
“Epiphanies of Modernism,”
Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self
  (Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477)

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Tuesday June 24, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:13 am
Damnation Morning
 Revisited:

See Notes on
Kosinski’s Birthday

and
Sunday in the Park with Death.

See also 4:13 and 4/13.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Tuesday February 19, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 am
Sumerian
Cuneiform

Cuneiform An (Sky) and Dingir (God, Goddess)

An: sky, heaven
also
digir (dingir): god, goddess

“The sigil was an eight-limbed
 asterisk made of fine dark lines,,,,
An X superimposed on a plus sign.
It looked permanent.”

— Fritz Leiber,
“Damnation Morning,”
1959 short story
in Changewar

Leiber, Changewar, Ace edition, 1983

Ace edition, May 1, 1983

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Sunday February 17, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:15 am
Big Time

Log24 on Feb. 13:

New York Times today–
"Plot Would Thicken, if the
Writers Remembered It
"

"We've lost the plot!"
Slipstream


Nicole Kidman in 'The Human Stain' at VideoSpider.tv

Excerpt from Fritz Leiber's
"Damnation Morning," 1959

Time traveling, which is not quite the good clean boyish fun it's cracked up to be, started for me when this woman with the sigil on her forehead looked in on me from the open doorway of the hotel bedroom where I'd hidden myself and the bottles and asked me, "Look, Buster, do you want to live?"….

Her right arm was raised and bent, the elbow touching the door frame, the hand brushing back the very dark bangs from her forehead to show me the sigil, as if that had a bearing on her question.

Fritz Leiber's 'Spider' symbol

Bordered version
of the sigil

The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines and about as big as a silver dollar.  An X superimposed on a plus sign.  It looked permanent….

… "Here is how it stacks up:  You've bought your way with something other than money into an organization of which I am an agent…."

"It's a very big organization," she went on, as if warning me.  "Call it an empire or a power if you like.  So far as you are concerned, it has always existed and always will exist.  It has agents everywhere, literally.  Space and time are no barriers to it.  Its purpose, so far as you will ever be able to know it, is to change, for its own aggrandizement, not only the present and the future, but also the past.  It is a ruthlessly competitive organization and is merciless to its employees."

"I. G. Farben?" I asked grabbing nervously and clumsily at humor.

She didn't rebuke my flippancy, but said, "And it isn't the Communist Party or the Ku Klux Klan, or the Avenging Angels or the Black Hand, either, though its enemies give it a nastier name."

"Which is?" I asked.

"The Spiders," she said.

That word gave me the shudders, coming so suddenly.  I expected the sigil to step off her forehead and scuttle down her face and leap at me– something like that.

She watched me.  "You might call it the Double Cross," she suggested, "if that seems better."

Related material:
the previous entry.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Thursday January 31, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:24 am
From G. K. Chesterton,
The Black Virgin
 
As the black moon
of some divine eclipse,
As the black sun
of the Apocalypse,
As the black flower
that blessed Odysseus back
From witchcraft; and
he saw again the ships.

In all thy thousand images
we salute thee.

Earlier in the poem….
 
Clothed with the sun
or standing on the moon
Crowned with the stars
or single, a morning star,
Sunlight and moonlight
are thy luminous shadows,
Starlight and twilight
thy refractions are,
Lights and half-lights and
all lights turn about thee.

 
From Oct. 16, 2007,
date of death of Deborah Kerr:

"Harish, who was of a
spiritual, even religious, cast
and who liked to express himself in
metaphors, vivid and compelling,
did see, I believe, mathematics
as mediating between man and
what one can only call God."
R. P. Langlands

From a link of Jan. 17, 2008
Time and Eternity:

Abstract Symbols of Time and Eternity

Jean Simmons and Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus
Jean Simmons (l.) and Deborah Kerr (r.)
in "Black Narcissus" (1947)

and from the next day,
Jan. 18, 2008:

… Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte.

Rubén Darío,
born January 18, 1867

Related material:

Dark Lady and Bright Star,
Time and Eternity,
Damnation Morning

Happy birthday also to
the late John O'Hara.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Monday August 6, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:00 am
The Divine Universals

"The tigers of wrath          
 are wiser than                
 the horses of instruction."

— William Blake,
Proverbs of Hell

From Shining Forth:

  The Place of the Lion, by Charles Williams, 1931, Chapter Eight:

"Besides, if this fellow were right, what harm would the Divine Universals do us? I mean, aren't the angels supposed to be rather gentle and helpful and all that?"

"You're doing what Marcellus warned you against… judging them by English pictures. All nightgowns and body and a kind of flacculent sweetness. As in cemeteries, with broken bits of marble. These are Angels– not a bit the same thing. These are the principles of the tiger and the volcano and the flaming suns of space."

 Under the Volcano, Chapter Two:

"But if you look at that sunlight there, then perhaps you'll get the answer, see, look at the way it falls through the window: what beauty can compare to that of a cantina in the early morning? Your volcanoes outside? Your stars– Ras Algethi? Antares raging south southeast? Forgive me, no." 

 A Spanish-English dictionary:

lucero m.
morning or evening star:
any bright star….
hole in a window panel
     for the admission of light….

Look at the way it
falls through the window….

— Malcolm Lowry

How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
— Isaiah 14:12

For more on Spanish
and the evening star,
see Plato, Pegasus, and
the Evening Star.

 Symmetry axes
of the square:

Symmetry axes of the square

(See Damnation Morning.)

From the cover of the
 Martin Cruz Smith novel
Stallion Gate:

Atom on cover of Stallion

"That old Jew
gave me this here."

Dialogue from the
Robert Stone novel
A Flag for Sunrise.

Related material:

A Mass for Lucero,

Log24, Sept. 13, 2006

Mathematics, Religion, Art

— and this morning's online
New York Times obituaries:

Cardinal Lustiger of Paris and jazz pianist Sal Mosca, New York Times obituaries on August 6, 2007

The above image contains summary obituaries for Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, 1981-2005, and for Sal Mosca, jazz pianist and teacher. In memory of the former, see all of the remarks preceding the image above. In memory of the latter, the remarks of a character in Martin Cruz Smith's Stallion Gate on jazz piano may have some relevance:

"I hate arguments. I'm a coward. Arguments are full of words, and each person is sure he's the only one who knows what the words mean. Each word is a basket of eels, as far as I'm concerned. Everybody gets to grab just one eel and that's his interpretation and he'll fight to the death for it…. Which is why I love music. You hit a C and it's a C and that's all it is. Like speaking clearly for the first time. Like being intelligent. Like understanding. A Mozart or an Art Tatum sits at the piano and picks out the undeniable truth."

Friday, August 3, 2007

Friday August 3, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:09 pm
From August 1

SPORTS OF THE TIMES

Restoring the Faith
After Hitting the Bottom

By SELENA ROBERTS
The New York Times
Published: August 1, 2007

What good is a nadir if it’s denied or ignored? What’s the value of reaching the lowest of the low if it can’t buy a cheap epiphany?

 
The following image
represents an epiphany
of sorts:
 
 The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/070803-BrightStar.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
It contains the
“double cross” symbol
of Fritz Leiber’s
Changewar stories;
the “double cross” is
also the traditional
eight-ray symbol of
the evening star–
the planet Venus.
Epiphanies due to Venus
are indeed sometimes
cheap… but not always.

For further details, see

 
 
 
and
 

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Thursday June 14, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:00 am
Unscholarly Notes

The time of the previous entry, 1:06:18, suggests both the date of Epiphany, 1:06, and Hexagram 18 of the I Ching: Ku, Work on what has been spoiled (Decay).

Epiphany: A link in the Log24 entries for Epiphany 2007 leads to Damnation Morning, which in turn leads to Why Me?, a discussion of the mythology of Spiders vs. Snakes devised by Fritz Leiber.  Spiders represent the conscious mind, snakes the unconscious.

On Hexagram 18: "The Chinese character ku represents a bowl in whose contents worms are breeding. This means decay." —Wilhelm's commentary

This brings us back to the previous entry with its mention of the date of Rudolf Arnheim's death: Saturday, June 9.  In Log24 on that date there was a link, in honor of Aaron Sorkin's birthday, to a short story by Leonard Michaels.  That link was suggested, in part,  by a review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review (available online earlier, on Friday). Here is a quote from that review related to the Hexagram 18 worm bowl:

"… what grabbed attention for his early collections was Michaels's gruesome, swaggering depiction of the sexual rampage that was the swinging '60s in New York– 'the worm bucket,' as Michaels described an orgy."

Related material for meditation on this, the anniversary (according to Encyclopaedia Britannica) of the birth of author Jerzy Kosinski— his novel The Hermit of 69th Street.

Kosinski was not unfamiliar with Michaels's worm bucket.  For related information, see Hermit (or at least a review).

In Leiber's stories the symbol of the Snakes is similar to the famed Yin-Yang symbol, also known as the T'ai-chi tu.  For an analysis of this symbol by Arnheim, see the previous entry.  See also "Sunday in the Park with Death" (Log24, Oct. 26, 2003):

"Ay que bonito es volar  
    A las dos de la mañana
…."
— "La Bruja"

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Sunday January 7, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

Short Story

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070107-Story.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

In Lieu of Rosebud,
Damnation Morning


Saturday, January 6, 2007

Saturday January 6, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:31 am

An Epiphany
for the Birthday
of E. L. Doctorow,
Author of
City of God

(Doctorow wrote about
New York. A city more
closely associated with
God is Jerusalem.)

 

On the morning of January 2 this year, inspired by Sambin’s “basic picture,” I considered an entry dealing with Galois lattices (pdf).  This train of thought was halted by news of the death earlier that morning of Teddy Kollek, 95, a founder of the Israeli intelligence service and six-term mayor of Jerusalem. (This led later to the entry “Damnation Morning“– a reference to the Fritz Leiber short story.)

This morning’s entry reboards the Galois train of thought.

Here are some relevant links:

Galois Connections (a French weblog entry providing an brief overview of Galois theory and an introduction to the use of Galois lattices in “formal concept analysis“)

Ontology (an introduction to formal concept analysis linked to on 3/31/06)

One motive for resuming consideration of Galois lattices today is to honor the late A. Richard Newton, a pioneer in engineering design who died at 55– also on Tuesday, Jan. 2, the date of Kollek’s death.  Today’s New York Times obituary for Newton says that “most recently, Professor Newton championed the study of synthetic biology.”

A check of syntheticbiology.org leads to a web page on– again– ontology.

For the relationship between ontology (in the semantic-web sense) and Galois lattices, see (for instance)

Knowledge Organisation and Information Retrieval Using Galois Lattices” (ps) and its references.

An epiphany within all this that Doctorow might appreciate is the following from Wikipedia, found by following a link to “upper ontology” in the syntheticbiology.org ontology page:

  • There is no self-evident way of dividing the world up into concepts.
  • There is no neutral ground that can serve as a means of translating between specialized (lower) ontologies.
  • Human language itself is already an arbitrary approximation of just one among many possible conceptual maps. To draw any necessary correlation between English words and any number of intellectual concepts we might like to represent in our ontologies is just asking for trouble.

Related material:

The intellectual concepts
mentioned by Richard Powers
at the end of tomorrow’s
New York Times Book Review.
(See the links on these concepts
in yesterday’s “Goldberg Variation.”)

See also Old School Tie.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Tuesday January 2, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 am
Introduction to

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070103-DoubleCross.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

the Double Cross

This time slot, 7:00 AM EST,
Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007,
was reserved earlier.

It now (mid-day Jan. 3)
seems an appropriate place
for the following
illustration —

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050221-Spider.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Spider Jerusalem

— and for a link to
comments on the
Fritz Leiber story
Damnation Morning.”

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Tuesday November 15, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:56 am
Spider Woman

    “Time traveling, which is not quite the good clean boyish fun it’s cracked up to be, started for me when this woman with the sigil on her forehead looked in on me from the open doorway of the hotel bedroom where I’d hidden myself and the bottles and asked me, ‘Look, Buster, do you want to live?’….
    Her right arm was raised and bent, the elbow touching the door frame, the hand brushing back the very dark bangs from her forehead to show me the sigil, as if that had a bearing on her question.

Fritz Leiber's 'Spider' symbol

Bordered version
of the sigil

The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines and about as big as a silver dollar.  An X superimposed on a plus sign.  It looked permanent.”

— Fritz Leiber, “Damnation Morning

For Vine Deloria Jr., who died at 72 on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2005:

        Things forgotten are shadows.
        The shadows will be as real
        as wind and rain and song and light,
        there in the old place.
        Spider Woman atop your rock,
        I would greet you,
        but I am going the other way.
        Only a fool would pursue a Navajo
        into the Canyon of Death.

— Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat

Related material:
from a Log24 entry
on the morning of
Deloria’s death–

Kaleidoscope turning…
Shifting pattern
within unalterable structure…

— Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat

  

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Tuesday February 22, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:48 pm
A Shot at Redemption

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050222-T2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Hunter S. Thompson, photos
from The New York Times

Excerpt from Fritz Leiber's
"Damnation Morning," 1959:

"Time traveling, which is not quite the good clean boyish fun it's cracked up to be, started for me when this woman with the sigil on her forehead looked in on me from the open doorway of the hotel bedroom where I'd hidden myself and the bottles and asked me, 'Look, Buster, do you want to live?'"

"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard."
 

See also

Monday, February 21, 2005

Monday February 21, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:09 am
Spider

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050221-Spider.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

"You are Spider Jerusalem.

Spider is THE journalist of the future. He smokes, he does drugs, and he kicks ass. The drugs are going to eventually kill him but not before he gets his way. And his way is the demise of the failed American dream. Although full of hate, he cares about his city. All he wants to bring the world is truth. Spider Jerusalem, conscience of the City. Frightening thought, but he's the only one we've got."

What Gritty No Nonsense Comic Book Character are You? brought to you by Quizilla

The following references to the Fritz Leiber story "Damnation Morning" seem relevant:

Sunday, June 6, 2004

Sunday June 6, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:30 pm
The X Factor

On OSS veteran Charles Hostler,
an unsung D-Day hero, now sung:

“He was trained by the British MI6
intelligence agency for an operation
known as X2 – or ‘double cross.’ “

Beth Gardiner, AP, June 6, 2004

 From Fritz Leiber’s
“Damnation Morning,” 1959:

Bordered version
of the sigil

The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines and about as big as a silver dollar.  An X superimposed on a plus sign.  It looked permanent….

… “Here is how it stacks up:  You’ve bought your way with something other than money into an organization of which I am an agent….”

“It’s a very big organization,” she went on, as if warning me.  “Call it an empire or a power if you like.  So far as you are concerned, it has always existed and always will exist.  It has agents everywhere, literally.  Space and time are no barriers to it.  Its purpose, so far as you will ever be able to know it, is to change, for its own aggrandizement, not only the present and the future, but also the past.  It is a ruthlessly competitive organization and is merciless to its employees.”

“I. G. Farben?” I asked grabbing nervously and clumsily at humor.

She didn’t rebuke my flippancy, but said, “And it isn’t the Communist Party or the Ku Klux Klan, or the Avenging Angels or the Black Hand, either, though its enemies give it a nastier name.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“The Spiders,” she said.

That word gave me the shudders, coming so suddenly.  I expected the sigil to step off her forehead and scuttle down her face and leap at me — something like that.

She watched me.  “You might call it the Double Cross,” she suggested, “if that seems better.”

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Saturday May 22, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:14 am

Star Wars

In memory of Melvin J. Lasky, editor, 1958-1990, of the CIA-funded journal Encounter:

“Once called as lively, and as bitchy, as a literary cocktail party, Encounter published articles of unrivalled authority on politics, history and literature.”

— Obituary in the Telegraph 

Lasky died on Wednesday, May 19, 2004.  From a journal entry of my own on that date:

This newly-digitized diagram is from a
paper journal note of October 21, 1999.

Note that the diagram’s overall form is that of an eight-point star.  Here is an excerpt from a Fritz Leiber story dealing with such a star, the symbol of a fictional organization:

Time traveling, which is not quite the good clean boyish fun it’s cracked up to be, started for me when this woman with the sigil on her forehead looked in on me from the open doorway of the hotel bedroom where I’d hidden myself and the bottles and asked me, “Look, Buster, do you want to live?”
….

Her right arm was raised and bent, the elbow touching the door frame, the hand brushing back the very dark bangs from her forehead to show me the sigil, as if that had a bearing on her question.

The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk made of fine dark lines and about as big as a silver dollar.  An X superimposed on a plus sign.  It looked permanent.
….

… “Here is how it stacks up:  You’ve bought your way with something other than money into an organization of which I am an agent….”
….

“It’s a very big organization,” she went on, as if warning me.  “Call it an empire or a power if you like.  So far as you are concerned, it has always existed and always will exist.  It has agents everywhere, literally.  Space and time are no barriers to it.  Its purpose, so far as you will ever be able to know it, is to change, for its own aggrandizement, not only the present and the future, but also the past.  It is a ruthlessly competitive organization and is merciless to its employees.”

“I. G. Farben?” I asked grabbing nervously and clumsily at humor.

She didn’t rebuke my flippancy, but said, “And it isn’t the Communist Party or the Ku Klux Klan, or the Avenging Angels or the Black Hand, either, though its enemies give it a nastier name.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“The Spiders,” she said.

That word gave me the shudders, coming so suddenly.  I expected the sigil to step off her forehead and scuttle down her face and leap at me—something like that.

She watched me.  “You might call it the Double Cross,” she suggested, “if that seems better.”

— Fritz Leiber,
   “Damnation Morning,” 1959

From last year’s entry,
Indiana Jones and the Hidden Coffer,
of 6/14:

From Borges’s “The Aleph“:

“The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court…. The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions…. Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone?”

(“Los fieles que concurren a la mezquita de Amr, en el Cairo, saben muy bien que el universo está en el interior de una de las columnas de piedra que rodean el patio central…. la mezquita data del siglo VII; las columnas proceden de otros templos de religiones anteislámicas…. ¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo de una piedra?”)

From The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

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.

See also the figures obtained by coloring and permuting parts of the above religious symbol.

Lena Olin and Harrison Ford
in “Hollywood Homicide

Finally, from an excellent site
on the Knights Templar,
a quotation from Umberto Eco:

When all the archetypes burst out shamelessly, we plumb the depths of Homeric profundity. Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred cliches move us because we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion . . . Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion borders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the Sublime.

— “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage” (1984) from Travels in Hyperreality

Monday, August 4, 2003

Monday August 4, 2003

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:03 am

Resurrection

The previous entry, on Christian theology, does not imply that all religion is bad.  Consider, for instance, the following from a memorial web page

“Al Grierson’s song Resurrection was sung by Ray Wylie Hubbard, on his outstanding Dangerous Spirits album. The song is awesome, and fits right into Ray Wylie’s spirit ‘and an angel lay on a mattress and spoke of history and death with perfume on her lingerie and whiskey on her breath . . . he’s loading up his saddlebags on the edge of wonder, one is filled with music and the other’s filled with thunder.’ Wow.”

Amen.
Grierson died on November 2, 2000
— All Souls Day, Dia de los Muertos.

My own favorite resurrection story is “Damnation Morning,” by Fritz Leiber; see Why Me? 

For more on the Day of the Dead, see Under the Volcano.

These are, of course, just stories, but may reflect some as yet unknown truth.

By the way, thanks, Joni, for leading me to KHYI.com on the day of the Toronto Stones concert.

Saturday, May 24, 2003

Saturday May 24, 2003

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:06 am

Mental Health Month, Day 24:

The Sacred Day of
Kali, the Dark Lady

On this day, Gypsies from all over Europe gather in Provence for the sacred day of St. Sarah, also known as Kali.

Various representations of Kali exist; there is a novel about the ways men have pictured her:

From the prologue to
The Dark Lady,

 by Mike Resnick.

She was old when the earth was young.

She stood atop Cemetery Ridge when Pickett made his charge, and she was there when the six hundred rode into the Valley of Death.  She was at Pompeii when Mount Vesuvius blew, and she was in the forests of Siberia when the comet hit.  She hunted elephant with Selous and buffalo with Cody, and she was there the night the high wire broke beneath the Flying Wallendas.  She was at the fall of Troy and the Little Bighorn, and she watched Manolete and Dominguez face the brave bulls in the bloodstained arenas of Madrid….

She has no name, no past, no present, no future.  She wears only black, and though she has been seen by many men, she is known to only a handful of them.  You’ll see her — if you see her at all — just after you’ve taken your last breath.  Then, before you exhale for the final time, she’ll appear, silent and sad-eyed, and beckon to you.

She is the Dark Lady, and this is her story.

The above is one of the best descriptions of Kali I know of in literature; another is in a short story by Fritz Leiber, “Damnation Morning.”   It is not coincidental that one collection of Leiber’s writings is called “Dark Ladies.”

My journal note “Biblical Proportions” was in part inspired by Leiber.

Frank Sinatra may have pictured her as Ava Gardner.  I think I saw her the night Sinatra died… hence my entries of March 31 and April 2, 2003. 

It is perhaps not irrelevant that Kali is, among other things, a mother goddess, and that my entry “Raiders of the Lost Matrix” of May 20 deals with this concept and with the number 24.

The above religious symbol (see “Damnation Morning“) pictures both the axes of symmetry of the square¹ and a pattern with intriguing combinatorial properties².  It also is the basis of a puzzle³ I purchased on August 29, 1997 — Judgment Day in Terminator 2.  Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in that film is an excellent representation of the Dark Lady, both as mother figure and as Death Goddess.

 
Sarah Connor

Background music: “Bit by bit…” — Stephen Sondheim… See Sondheim and the Judgment Day puzzle in my entry of May 20. The Lottery Covenant.

¹ A. W. Joshi, Elements of Group Theory for Physicists, Third Edition, Wiley, 1982, p. 5

² V. K. Balakrishnan, Combinatorics, McGraw-Hill, 1995, p. 180

³ The Izzi Puzzle

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