Log24

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Glory Road (continued)

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 7:59 am

"In ancient Greece, 9 was the number of the Muses,
patron goddesses of the arts. They were the daughters
of Mnemosyne ('memory'), the source
of imagination, which in turn is the carrier of archetypal,
elementary ideas to artistic realization in the field
of space-time. The number 9, that is to say, relates
traditionally to the Great Goddess of Many Names
(Devi, Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Artemis, Venus, etc.),
as matrix of the cosmic process, whether in the
macrocosm or in a microcosmic field of manifestation."

— Joseph Campbell in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space ,
      first published in 1986

From Robert A. Heinlein’s Glory Road  (1963):

Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

“Is that one of your names?”

“It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent.  Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely.  Or ‘Aster.’  Or even ‘Estrellita.’ “

” ‘Aster,’ ” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Glory Road (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110401-NYTobits0330AM.jpg

Related material: Object Lesson.

See also For the Pope in Scotland.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Glory Road continued…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am

Thanks to Critical Mass for a July 24, 2009, discussion of the word "glory."

Related material: The glorious illustrations by Arnold Roth in the City Journal  of November 13, 2009.

Friday, August 4, 2023

The Roc’s Egg

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:46 am
 

James Joyce, Ulysses  —

"Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler."

 

Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road  —

“What did I want? I wanted a Roc’s egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist, and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur – I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.

I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, 'The game’s afoot!' I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and to eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be the way they had promised me it was going to be, instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is. I had had one chance – for ten minutes yesterday afternoon. Helen of Troy, whatever your true name may be – and I had known it and I had let it slip away. Maybe one chance is all you ever get.”

Saturday, April 9, 2022

Readings for Remembrance

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm

The author of the above title is featured in
a New York Times  obituary today. Another 
book by the same author, On Glory Roads,
appears in some related readings here .

Saturday, June 9, 2018

Roads

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:29 pm

See Glory Road in this journal.

See also Road to Hell.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Shifts and Pivots

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:13 pm

In a New Yorker  "Cultural Comment" column today,
Richard Brody describes a 2004 novel that he says

"… dramatizes the American character as
vast, manifold, and inchoate;
it can use its prodigious and uninhibited energy
for good or for evil, and it shifts
under the sudden force of unforeseeable events.
The shifts and pivots of the American nation
at large are also those of each individual American.
The grand political stage and the intimate life
are inseparable; identity itself is inextricable
from the currents of history. The novel’s
mighty psychological weight rests upon
a terrifyingly delicate balance of circumstances
that depend on whims of chance." 

I prefer the shifts and pivots in earlier fictions; for example,
those of Robert A. Heinlein, who died in 1988.

Some backstory :  Glory Road  in this journal.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Boxing Day

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

See "Glory Road" + "Black Box."

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The Malfunctioning TARDIS

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:01 am

(Continued from previous TARDIS posts)

Summary: A review of some  posts from last August is suggested by the death,
reportedly during the dark hours early on October 30, of artist Lebbeus Woods.

An (initially unauthorized) appearance of his work in the 1995 film
Twelve Monkeys 

 … suggests a review of three posts from last August.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Defining Form

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 11:01 AM 

Continued from July 29 in memory of filmmaker Chris Marker,
who reportedly* died on that date at 91 at his home in Paris.

See Slides and Chantingand Where Madness Lies.

See also Sherrill Grace on Malcolm Lowry.

Washington PostOther sources say Marker died on July 30.

 These notably occur in Marker's masterpiece
     La Jetée  (review with spoilers).

 

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Triple Feature

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 11:11 PM

IMAGE- Triple Feature: 'Twelve Monkeys,' Reagan National Airport on July 31, 2012, and 'Die Hard 2'

For related material, see this morning's post Defining Form.

 

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Doctor Who

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 2:00 PM

On Robert A. Heinlein's novel Glory Road

"Glory Road  (1963) included the foldbox , a hyperdimensional packing case that was bigger inside than outside. It is unclear if Glory Road  was influenced by the debut of the science fiction television series Doctor Who  on the BBC that same year. In Doctor Who , the main character pilots a time machine called a TARDIS, which is built with technology which makes it 'dimensionally transcendental,' that is, bigger inside than out."

— Todd, Tesseract article at exampleproblems.com

From the same exampleproblems.com article—

"The connection pattern of the tesseract's vertices is the same as that of a 4×4 square array drawn on a torus; each cell (representing a vertex of the tesseract) is adjacent to exactly four other cells. See geometry of the 4×4 square."

For further details, see today's new page on vertex adjacency at finitegeometry.org.

 

"It was a dark and stormy night."— A Wrinkle in Time

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Doctor Who

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:00 pm

On Robert A. Heinlein's novel Glory Road

"Glory Road  (1963) included the foldbox , a hyperdimensional packing case that was bigger inside than outside. It is unclear if Glory Road  was influenced by the debut of the science fiction television series Doctor Who  on the BBC that same year. In Doctor Who , the main character pilots a time machine called a TARDIS, which is built with technology which makes it 'dimensionally transcendental,' that is, bigger inside than out."

— Todd, Tesseract article at exampleproblems.com

From the same exampleproblems.com article—

"The connection pattern of the tesseract's vertices is the same as that of a 4×4 square array drawn on a torus; each cell (representing a vertex of the tesseract) is adjacent to exactly four other cells. See geometry of the 4×4 square."

For further details, see today's new page on vertex adjacency at finitegeometry.org.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Purloined Diamond

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

(Continued)

The diamond from the Chi-rho page
of the Book of Kells —

The diamond at the center of Euclid's
Proposition I, according to James Joyce
(i.e., the Diamond in the Mandorla) —

Geometry lesson: the vesica piscis in Finnegans Wake

The Diamond in the Football

Football-mandorla

“He pointed at the football
  on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
         – Glory Road
   

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Synergy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:48 am

"Examples are the stained-glass windows of knowledge." —Nabokov

Suggested by yesterday's evening NY lottery

Post 4248: The Hunt for Exemplary October, and
Post   942: Links for St. Benedict

Related material—

three-point landing n

1. (Engineering / Aeronautics) an aircraft landing
in which the two main wheels and the nose or tail wheel
all touch the ground simultaneously

— Collins English Dictionary

See also…

     Tiffany Case and…

 The Diamond
in the Mandorla

Football-mandorla with link to 'Heaven Can<br />
Wait'

“He pointed at the football
  on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
     – Glory Road
    

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Happy Bastille Day…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

To the leftist philosophers of Villanova

From "Make a Différance"
(Women's History Month, 2005)—

Frida Saal's 

Lacan The image 
“http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Diamond.gif” cannot be displayed,
 because it contains errors. Derrida:

"Our proposal includes the lozenge (diamond) in between the names, because in the relationship / non-relationship that is established among them, a tension is created that implies simultaneously a union and a disjunction, in the perspective of a theoretical encounter that is at the same time necessary and impossible. That is the meaning of the lozenge that joins and separates the two proper names….  What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of the main issues in this presentation."

Football-mandorla (vesica piscis) with link to 'Heaven Can 
Wait'

“He pointed at the football
  on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
Glory Road
    

Quodlibet* 

Compare and contrast
the diamond in the football
with the jewel in the lotus.

* "A scholastic argumentation upon a subject chosen at will, but almost always theological. These are generally the most elaborate and subtle of the works of the scholastic doctors." —Century Dictionary

Friday, June 4, 2010

A Better Story

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

Continued from May 8
(Feast of Saint Robert Heinlein)

“Wells and trees were dedicated to saints.  But the offerings at many wells and trees were to something other than the saint; had it not been so they would not have been, as we find they often were, forbidden.  Within this double and intertwined life existed those other capacities, of which we know more now, but of which we still know little– clairvoyance, clairaudience, foresight, telepathy.”

— Charles Williams, Witchcraft, Faber and Faber, London, 1941

Why "Saint" Robert? See his accurate depiction of evil– the Eater of Souls in Glory Road.

For more on Williams's "other capacities," see Heinlein's story "Lost Legacy."

A related story– Fritz Leiber's "The Mind Spider." An excerpt:

The conference—it was much more a hyper-intimate
gabfest—proceeded.

"My static box bugged out for a few ticks this morning,"
Evelyn remarked in the course of talking over the
trivia of the past twenty-four hours.

The static boxes were an invention of Grandfather
Horn. They generated a tiny cloud of meaningless brain
waves. Without such individual thought-screens, there was
too much danger of complete loss of individual personality

—once Grandfather Horn had "become" his infant daughter
as well as himself for several hours and the unfledged
mind had come close to being permanently lost in its own
subconscious. The static boxes provided a mental wall be-
– hind which a mind could safely grow and function, similar
to the wall by which ordinary minds are apparently
always enclosed.

In spite of the boxes, the Horns shared thoughts and
emotions to an amazing degree. Their mental togetherness
was as real and as mysterious—and as incredible—as
thought itself . . . and thought is the original angel-cloud
dancing on the head of a pin. Their present conference
was as warm and intimate and tart as any actual family
gathering in one actual room around one actual table.
Five minds, joined together in the vast mental darkness
that shrouds all minds. Five minds hugged together for
comfort and safety in the infinite mental loneliness that
pervades the cosmos.

Evelyn continued, "Your boxes were all working, of
course, so I couldn't get your thoughts—just the blurs of
your boxes like little old dark grey stars. But this time
if gave me a funny uncomfortable feeling, like a spider
Crawling down my—Grayl! Don't feel so wildly! What
Is it?”

Then… just as Grayl started to think her answer…
something crept from the vast mental darkness and infinite
cosmic loneliness surrounding the five minds of the
Horns
.

Grayl was the first to notice. Her panicky thought had
ttie curling too-keen edge of hysteria. "There are six of
us now! There should only be five, but there are six.
Count! Count, I tell you! Six!"

To Mort it seemed that a gigantic spider was racing
across the web of their thoughts….

See also this journal on May 30– "720 in the Book"– and on May 31– "Memorial for Galois."

("Obnoxious nerds"— a phrase Martin Gardner recently applied to Galois— will note that 720 (= 6!) is one possible result of obeying Leiber's command "Count! Count, I tell you! Six!")

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Song of the Minotaur

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

"I was visited by a minotaur."
— Harvard student, Fall 2009.

(For the visit, see yesterday's posts
Glory Road continuedAnd continued….)

Song of the Minotaur– Part I, Part II, Part III

Friday, December 4, 2009

And continued…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Glory Road postgraduate curriculum–

"Learning has always been a major part of Catholic tradition."

Related material:

The Labyrinth of Solitude
entry in this journal,
The Harvard Crimson on the
Harvard FML Video Contest,
and the winning video

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/091204-HUTV.jpg

Another view of Harvard–

St. Paul's RC Church and the Harvard Lampoon building, photo from MSPdude at Flickr

Photo from MSPdude at Flickr

"Let Noon Be Fair."
— Novel title, Willard Motley.

See also Soul at Harvard.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Sunday July 5, 2009

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

Sermon

Football-mandorla with link to 'Heaven Can Wait'

7/01 

“He pointed at the football
on his desk. ‘There it is.'”
Glory Road   

See also
Hieron Grammaton
and
Epiphany 2007.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Wednesday January 14, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm
A Fight for
Love and Glory

The 8-point star
of Venus:

Eight-point star of Venus

This star is suggested by
the Spanish name “Lucero”
and by the following
passage from Heinlein’s
classic novel Glory Road:

    “I have many names. What would you like to call me?”

    “Is one of them ‘Helen’?”

    She smiled like sunshine and I learned that she had dimples. She looked sixteen and in her first party dress. “You are very gracious. No, she’s not even a relative. That was many, many years ago.” Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

    “Is that one of your names?”

    “It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent. Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely. Or ‘Aster.’ Or even ‘Estrellita.'”

    “‘Aster,'” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

Ricardo Montalban, d. Jan. 14, 2009-- NY Times
 
Que descanse en paz.

Little Mermaid bed

Later the same evening…
an update in memory
of Patrick McGoohan:

NYT obituaries 1/14/09 for both Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan

“There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling….
 
…of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore….”
 
— Robert Graves,
   “To Juan at the Winter Solstice”

Monday, February 25, 2008

Monday February 25, 2008

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

Robert A. Heinlein’s 
Glory Road (1963):

    “I have many names. What would you like to call me?”

“Is one of them ‘Helen’?”

She smiled like sunshine and I learned that she had dimples. She looked sixteen and in her first party dress. “You are very gracious. No, she’s not even a relative. That was many, many years ago.” Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

“Is that one of your names?”

“It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent. Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely. Or ‘Aster.’ Or even  ‘Estrellita.’ ”

” ‘Aster,’ ” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

“I hope that I will be your lucky star,” she said earnestly. “As you will. But what shall I call you?”

I thought about it….

The name I had picked up in the hospital ward would do. I shrugged. “Oh, Scar is a good enough name.”

” ‘Oscar,’ ” she repeated, broadening the “O” into “Aw,”and stressing both syllables. “A noble name. A hero’s name. Oscar.” She caressed it with her voice.

“No, no! Not ‘Oscar’– ‘Scar.’ ‘Scarface.’ For this.”

“Oscar is your name,” she said firmly. “Oscar and Aster. Scar and Star.”


Related material:

In memory of
Albert Axelrod
,

who died on
February 24, 2004
(Mardi Gras) —

Road to Nowhere

and today’s comics:

Hagar the Horrible and fencer: 'You have to admire his guts.'

See also yesterday’s
entry for Oscar night

(the fourth anniversary
of Axelrod’s death and of
The Crimson Passion).

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Thursday February 21, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am
Class
Galore

The New Yorker's Anthony Lane reviewing the new film "Jumper"–

"I wasn’t expecting Ernst Gombrich, but surely three writers, among them, could inject a touch of class."

The "Jumper" theme, teleportation, has been better developed by three other writers– Bester, Zelazny, and King–

"As a long-time fan of both Alfie Bester and Roger Zelazny, I was delighted to find this posthumous collaboration. Psychoshop is, I think, true to both authors' bodies of work. After all, Bester's influence on Zelazny is evident in a a number of works, most notably Eye of Cat with its dazzling experimental typography so reminiscent of what Bester had done in The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination."

— Amazon.com customer review

"'This is the last call for Jaunt-701,' the pleasant female voice echoed through the Blue Concourse of New York's Port Authority Terminal."

— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
 

 
From another
"Jaunt-701"–
Log24, Feb. 7:
 

The Football
Mandorla

New York Lottery, 2008:

NY Lottery Feb. 6, 2008: Mid-day 064, Evening 701

The Mandorla (vesica piscis) as Football

7/01 

"He pointed at the football
  on his desk. 'There it is.'"
Glory Road   

"The
Wu  Li
Masters know
that physicists are
doing  more  than
'discovering  the endless
 diversity of nature.' They
 are  dancing with Kali,
 the Divine Mother of
 Hindu  mythology."
 — Gary Zukav,
 Harvard
 '64


"What happened?"
  one of the scientists shouted….

"It's eternity in there,"
 he said, and dropped dead….

— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
 

As
for  Ernst
Gombrich, see
his  link in  the
Log24 entries
of June 15,
 2007.

Related material:
the previous entry.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Thursday February 7, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 am
The Football
Mandorla

New York Lottery, 2008:

NY Lottery Feb. 6, 2008: Mid-day 064, Evening 701

The Mandorla as Football

7/01 

"He pointed at the football
  on his desk. 'There it is.'"
Glory Road   

 

  "The Rock" — 

Goodspeed:
"I'll do my best."

Mason:

"Your best. Losers
always whine about
their best. Winners
go home and …."

 

"The
Wu  Li
Masters know
that physicists are
doing  more  than
'discovering  the endless
 diversity of nature.' They
 are  dancing with Kali,
 the Divine Mother of
 Hindu  mythology."
 — Gary Zukav,
 Harvard
 '64
 

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Sunday July 1, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 pm
Object Lesson
continued…

"Three times the concentred
     self takes hold, three times
The thrice concentred self,
     having possessed
The object, grips it
     in savage scrutiny,
Once to make captive,
     once to subjugate
Or yield to subjugation,
     once to proclaim
The meaning of the capture,
     this hard prize,
Fully made, fully apparent,
     fully found."

— "Credences of Summer," VII,
    by Wallace Stevens, from
    Transport to Summer (1947)

 

Mathematics of the football mandorla (vesica piscis)

For a religious
interpretation
of 265, see
Sept. 30, 2004.

For a religious
interpretation
of 153, see
Fish Story.
 
A quotation from
the Eater of Souls:

"That's how it is, Easy," my Coach went on, his voice more in sorrow than in anger. "Yardage is all very well but you don't make a nickel unless you cross that old goal line with the egg tucked underneath your arm." He pointed at the football on his desk. "There it is. I had it gilded and lettered clear back at the beginning of the season, you looked so good and I had so much confidence in you– it was meant to be yours at the end of the season, at a victory banquet."

Glory Road,
by Robert A. Heinlein
 

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Sunday May 20, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm
Robert A. Heinlein,
Glory Road:

“Rufo’s baggage turned out
to be a little black box
about the size and shape
of a portable typewriter.
He opened it.
And opened it again.
   And kept on opening it….”
 
60 Minutes logo

ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD MIT Prof. Nicholas Negroponte’s dream is to put a laptop computer into the hands of every child as an educational aid. Lesley Stahl reports on his progress in Cambodia and Brazil. Catherine Olian is the producer.

Related material:
Log24 entries of 11/18/05

Friday, July 14, 2006

Friday July 14, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
Assigned Names
and Numbers

“What do you hear when you listen?”
“Like the wind in a thousand wires.”

— “Fee-5,” a character in  
Alfred Bester’s 1975
The Computer Connection

From Robert A. Heinlein’s
1963 Glory Road:

“I have many names.
What would you like
to call me?”

From the Web:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060714-Esther.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(Former Chairman of the Board
of the
Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers)

Happy birthday, Star.

Related material:
Log24, July 14-15, 2004

Monday, May 8, 2006

Monday May 8, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:15 pm
Today is the feast of
Saint Robert Heinlein,
who died on this date
in 1988.

Why “saint”?  See his
accurate depiction of evil, the
Eater of Souls” in Glory Road.

Related material:
Steven Cullinane is a Crank
and “Certified Crank.”

Monday, March 27, 2006

Monday March 27, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:17 am

A Living Church

A skeptic’s remark:

“…the mind is an amazing thing and it can create patterns and interconnections among things all day if you let it, regardless of whether they are real connections.”

— Xanga blogger “sejanus”

A reply from G. K. Chesterton
(Log24, Jan. 18, 2004):

“Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living. To know that Plato might break out with an original lecture to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.”

For Reba McEntire:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060327-Reba.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sunday’s lottery in the
State of Grace
(Kelly, of Philadelphia):

Mid-day: 024
Evening: 672

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/HoldingWonder.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

A meditation on  
Sunday’s numbers —

From Log24, Jan. 8, 2005:

24

The Star
of Venus

“He looked at the fading light
in the western sky and saw Mercury,
or perhaps it was Venus,
gleaming at him as the evening star.
Darkness and light,
the old man thought.
It is what every hero legend is about.
The darkness which is more than death,
the light which is love, like our friend
Venus here….”

Roderick MacLeish, Prince Ombra

From Log24, Oct. 23, 2002:

An excerpt from
Robert A. Heinlein‘s
classic novel Glory Road

    “I have many names. What would you like to call me?”

    “Is one of them ‘Helen’?”

    She smiled like sunshine and I learned that she had dimples. She looked sixteen and in her first party dress. “You are very gracious. No, she’s not even a relative. That was many, many years ago.” Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

    “Is that one of your names?”

    “It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent. Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely. Or ‘Aster.’ Or even ‘Estrellita.’ ”

    ” ‘Aster,’ ” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

Related material:

672 Astarte and
The Venerable Bede
(born in 672).

672 illustrated:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060327-BedeStar.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
The Venerable Bede
and the Star of Venus

The 672 connection is, of course,
not a real connection
(in the sense of “sejanus” above)
but it is nevertheless
not without interest.

Postscript of 6 PM

A further note on the above
illustration of the 672 connection:

The late Buck Owens
(see previous entry for
Owens, Reba, and the
star of Venus)
once described
his TV series as
“a show of fat old men
and pretty young girls”
(today’s Washington Post).

A further note on
lottery hermeneutics:

Those who prefer to interpret
random numbers with the aid
of a dictionary
(as in Is Nothing Sacred?)
may be pleased to note that
“heehaw” occurs in Webster’s
New World Dictionary,
College Edition
, 1960,
on page 672.

In today’s Washington Post,
Richard Harrington informs us that
“As a child, Owens worked cotton and
  maize fields, taking the name Buck
from a well-liked mule….”

Hee. Haw.
 

Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Wednesday March 1, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:24 pm

Women's History Month continues:

Raiders of the Lost…
(cont. from Feb. 17)
 
For Harrison Ford
and Meg Ryan,
a quotation from
Sir Walter Raleigh,
via Susanna Moore
and Elizabeth Tallent:
 
"Give me my scallop shell of quiet"
 
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Author Susanna Moore,
photo by Paresh Gandhi

Related material:

An article in The Telegraph
on the late Sybille Bedford
(see also the previous entry), and

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On Glory Roads:
A Pilgrim's Book
About Pilgrimage
,
by Eleanor Munro

Friday, November 18, 2005

Friday November 18, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 am
It’s still the same old story,
a fight for love and…

Glory

Wikipedia on the tesseract:

Glory Road (1963) included the foldbox, a hyperdimensional packing case that was bigger inside than outside.”

Robert A. Heinlein in Glory Road:

    “Rufo’s baggage turned out to be a little black box about the size and shape of a portable typewriter. He opened it.
    And opened it again.
    And kept on opening it– And kept right on unfolding its sides and letting them down until the durn thing was the size of a small moving van and even more packed….
    … Anyone who has studied math knows that the inside does not have to be smaller than the outside, in theory….  Rufo’s baggage just carried the principle further.”

Johnny Cash: “And behold, a white horse.”

On The Last Battle
, a book in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis:

“… there is much glory in this wonderfully written apocalypse.  Tirian, looking into the stable through the hole in the door, says, ‘The stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two different places.’ Digory answers, ‘Its inside is bigger than its outside.’  It is the perceptive Lucy who voices the hope that is in us, ‘In our world, too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.'”


Lewis said in “The Weight of Glory”

 

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.”

On enchantments that need to be broken:

See the description of the Eater of Souls in Glory Road and of Scientism in

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Saturday November 12, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm
Nine is a Vine

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Representation
of a quaternion


Related material:

“Oh, I wasn’t about to hole up
in a monastery.  I still wanted–
  What did I want?
      I wanted a Roc’s egg….”

Robert A. Heinlein
  Glory Road

   And So To Bed.

(Log24, St. Peter’s Day, 2004)

Saturday November 12, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:00 pm

State of Grace
On this date in 1929,
Grace Kelly was born.

Enough —
    the first Abode
On the familiar Road
Galloped in Dreams —

— Emily Dickinson

 

“Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato’s beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam’s razor…. I have dwelt at length on the inconvenience of putting up with it. It is time to think about taking steps.”

— Willard Van Orman Quine, 1948, “On What There Is,” reprinted in From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press, 1980

“Item: Friar Guillaume’s razor
ne’er shaved the barber,
it is much too dull.”

— Robert A. Heinlein
  Glory Road

Related material:
Plato, Pegasus, and
the Evening Star

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Wednesday July 14, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:25 pm
Bright Star

From Robert A. Heinlein‘s
classic novel, Glory Road:

    “I have many names. What would you like to call me?”

    “Is one of them ‘Helen’?”

    She smiled like sunshine and I learned that she had dimples. She looked sixteen and in her first party dress. “You are very gracious. No, she’s not even a relative. That was many, many years ago.” Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

    “Is that one of your names?”

    “It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent. Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely. Or ‘Aster.’ Or even ‘Estrellita.’ ”

    ” ‘Aster,’ ” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

Today’s birthday:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04A/040714-BrightStar.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Esther Dyson

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Thursday June 17, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 pm

Ishtar Wannabe

Reuters, Los Angeles,
June 17, 2004 09:09 PM ET

Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone has adopted the Hebrew name Esther.

I personally feel that a more deserving candidate for such a flattering name change would be Piper Laurie (nee Rosetta Jacobs).

See an entry of  Dec. 30, 2002, on Miss Laurie:

From Robert A. Heinlein’s Glory Road:

Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

“Is that one of your names?”

“It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent.  Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely.  Or ‘Aster.’  Or even ‘Estrellita.’ “

” ‘Aster,’ ” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

Monday, December 30, 2002

Monday December 30, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm

Three in One

This evening’s earlier entry, “Homer,” is meant in part as a tribute to three goddess-figures from the world of film.  But there is one actress who combines the intelligence of Judy Davis with the glamour of Nicole Kidman and the goodness of Kate Winslet– Perhaps the only actress who could have made me cry Stella! as if I were Brando…. Piper Laurie.

From the Robert A. Heinlein novel

Glory Road

    “I have many names. What would you  like to call me?”

    “Is one of them ‘Helen’?”

    She smiled like sunshine and I learned that she had dimples. She looked sixteen and in her first party dress. “You are very gracious. No, she’s not even a relative. That was many, many years ago.” Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

    “Is that one of your names?”

    “It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent. Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely. Or ‘Aster.’ Or even  ‘Estrellita.’ “

    ” ‘Aster,’ ” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

    “I hope that I will be your lucky star,” she said earnestly. “As you will. But what shall I call you?”

    I thought about it….

   The name I had picked up in the hospital ward would do. I shrugged. “Oh, Scar is a good enough name.”

    ” ‘Oscar,’ ” she repeated, broadening the “O” into “Aw,”and stressing both syllables. “A noble name. A hero’s name.  Oscar.” She caressed it with her voice.

    “No, no! Not ‘Oscar’– ‘Scar.’ ‘Scarface.’  For this.”

    “Oscar is your name,” she said firmly. “Oscar and Aster.  Scar and Star.”

The Hustler

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Wednesday October 23, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm

Bright Star

From the website of Karey Lea Perkins:

“The truth is that man’s capacity for symbol-mongering in general and language in particular is…intimately part and parcel of his being human, of his perceiving and knowing, of his very consciousness…”

Walker Percy, The Message in the Bottle, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1975

Today’s New York Times story on Richard Helms, together with my reminiscences in the entry that follows it below, suggest the following possibility for symbol-mongering:

Compare the 16-point star of the C.I.A.

with the classic 8-point star of Venus:

This comparison is suggested by the Spanish word “Lucero” (the name, which means “Bright Star,” of the girl in Cuernavaca mentioned two entries down) and by the following passage from Robert A. Heinlein‘s classic novel, Glory Road:

    “I have many names. What would you like to call me?”

    “Is one of them ‘Helen’?”

    She smiled like sunshine and I learned that she had dimples. She looked sixteen and in her first party dress. “You are very gracious. No, she’s not even a relative. That was many, many years ago.” Her face turned thoughtful. “Would you like to call me ‘Ettarre’?”

    “Is that one of your names?”

    “It is much like one of them, allowing for different spelling and accent. Or it could be ‘Esther’ just as closely. Or ‘Aster.’ Or even ‘Estrellita.’ ”

    ” ‘Aster,’ ” I repeated. “Star. Lucky Star!”

The C.I.A. star above is from that organization’s own site.  The star of Venus (alias Aster, alias Ishtar) is from Symbols.com, an excellent site that has the following variations on the Bright Star theme:

Ideogram for light Alchemical sign
Greek “Aster” Babylonian Ishtar
Phoenician Astarte Octagram of Venus
Phaistos Symbol Fortress Octagram

See also my notes The Still Point and the Wheel and Midsummer Eve’s Dream.  Both notes quote Robinson Jeffers:

“For the essence and the end
Of his labor is beauty…
one beauty, the rhythm of that Wheel,
and who can behold it is happy
and will praise it to the people.”

— Robinson Jeffers, “Point Pinos and Point Lobos,”
quoted at the end of The Cosmic Code,
by Heinz Pagels, Simon & Schuster, 1982

Place the eightfold star in a circle, and you have the Buddhist Wheel of Life:

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