Log24

Monday, August 1, 2022

Review

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:12 am

From Log24 posts tagged Art Space —

From a paper on Kummer varieties,
arXiv:1208.1229v3 [math.AG] 12 Jun 2013,
The Universal Kummer Threefold,” by
Qingchun Ren, Steven V Sam, Gus Schrader,
and Bernd Sturmfels —

IMAGE- 'Consider the 6-dimensional vector space over the 2-element field,' from 'The Universal Kummer Threefold'

Two such considerations —

IMAGE- 'American Hustle' and Art Cube

IMAGE- Cube for study of I Ching group actions, with Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman 

Sunday, July 1, 2018

The Perpetual Motion of T. S. Eliot

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:28 am

IMAGE- Cube for study of I Ching group actions, with Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman

Friday, June 29, 2018

For St. Stanley

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 1:26 pm

The phrase "Blue Dream" in the previous post
suggests a Web search for Traumnovelle .
That search yields an interesting weblog post
from 2014 commemorating the 1999 dies natalis 
(birth into heaven) of St. Stanley Kubrick.

Related material from March 7, 2014,
in this  journal

IMAGE- Cube for study of I Ching group actions, with Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman 

That  2014 post was titled "Kummer Varieties." It is now tagged
"Kummerhenge." For some backstory, see other posts so tagged.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

“But Back to the Action…”

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:40 am

The title is from this morning's online New York Times  review
of a new Jackie Chan film.

Click the image below for some related posts.

IMAGE- Cube for study of I Ching group actions, with Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Annals of Critical Epistemology

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:36 pm

"But unlike many who left the Communist Party, I turned left
rather than right, and returned—or rather turned for the first time—
to a critical examination of Marx's work. I found—and still find—
that his analysis of capitalism, which for me is the heart of his work,
provides the best starting point, the best critical tools, with which—
suitably developed—to understand contemporary capitalism.
I remind you that this year is also the sesquicentennial of the
Communist Manifesto , a document that still haunts the capitalist world."

— From "Autobiographical Reflections," a talk given on June 5, 1998, by
John Stachel at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin
on the occasion of a workshop honoring his 70th birthday, 
"Space-Time, Quantum Entanglement and Critical Epistemology."

From a passage by Stachel quoted in the previous post

From the source for Stachel's remarks on Weyl and coordinatization —

Note that Stachel distorted Weyl's text by replacing Weyl's word 
"symbols" with the word "quantities." —

This replacement makes no sense if the coordinates in question
are drawn from a Galois field — a field not of quantities , but rather
of algebraic symbols .

"You've got to pick up every stitch… Must be the season of the witch."
— Donovan song at the end of Nicole Kidman's "To Die For"

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Art Space, Continued

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:35 am

"And as the characters in the meme twitch into the abyss
that is the sky, this meme will disappear into whatever
internet abyss swallowed MySpace."

—Staff writer Kamila Czachorowski, Harvard Crimson  today

From Log24 posts tagged Art Space

From a recent paper on Kummer varieties,
arXiv:1208.1229v3 [math.AG] 12 Jun 2013,
The Universal Kummer Threefold,” by
Qingchun Ren, Steven V Sam, Gus Schrader, and
Bernd Sturmfels —

IMAGE- 'Consider the 6-dimensional vector space over the 2-element field,' from 'The Universal Kummer Threefold'

Two such considerations —

IMAGE- 'American Hustle' and Art Cube

IMAGE- Cube for study of I Ching group actions, with Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman 

Monday, March 7, 2016

Clue

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:12 pm

Nicole Kidman at the end of
“Hemingway & Gellhorn” (2012)

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Joyce’s Wake

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:48 pm

This post is thanks to Nicole Kidman

E! Online  today reminds us that "Bowie's song 'Nature Boy' 
was ... featured in Kidman's 2001 film Moulin Rouge ."

A YouTube video of the Moulin Rouge  "Nature Boy"
was uploaded on April 1, 2011. That date in this journal

The last New York Lottery number
of Women's History Month 2011 was 146.

"…every answer involves as much of history
and mythology as Joyce can cram into
remarks which are ostensibly about
popular entertainment…."

James S. Atherton, The Books at the Wake:
A Study of Literary Allusions
in James Joyce's FINNEGANS WAKE 
,
Southern Illinois University Press,
Carbondale and Edwardsville
(1959. Arcturus Books Edition 1974), p. 146.

James Joyce reportedly died on today's date in 1941.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Progressive Matrix

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 6:00 am

Yesterday's post and recent Hollywood news suggest
a meditation on a Progressive Matrix —

Oct. 12-14, 2005:

'A Poem for Pinter,' conclusion: 'Tick Tick Hash.'

'The Interpreter'-- Sean Penn to Nicole Kidman-- 'My Card.'

Click to enlarge.

"My card."

Structurally related images —

A sample Raven's Progressive Matrices  test item
(such items share the 3×3 structure of the hash symbol above):

IMAGE- Raven's Progressive Matrices item with symbols from Cullinane's box-style I Ching

Structural background —

Monday, October 20, 2014

The Library

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

The online Harvard Crimson  today:

“ ‘I don’t like how they check your bags
when you leave the library
even though you have to swipe your
student ID to get in.’

But what else would I be carrying in this
Gutenberg Bible-sized backpack? ”

Nicole Kidman at the end of “Hemingway & Gellhorn” (2012)

Perhaps the I Ching ?

Saturday, May 31, 2014

For the Black Widow Club*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:19 am

… and for Anthony Hopkins and a Black Widow,
as well as for a filmmaker who reportedly died on May 19.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07A/070915-HumanStain.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Update of 4:48 PM ET:  See also Philip Roth on an ambiguity.

* The title was suggested in part by a series of Isaac Asimov mysteries.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Kummer Varieties

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:20 am

The Dream of the Expanded Field continues

Image-- The Dream of the Expanded Field

From Klein's 1893 Lectures on Mathematics —

"The varieties introduced by Wirtinger may be called Kummer varieties…."
E. Spanier, 1956

From this journal on March 10, 2013 —

From a recent paper on Kummer varieties,
arXiv:1208.1229v3 [math.AG] 12 Jun 2013,
"The Universal Kummer Threefold," by
Qingchun Ren, Steven V Sam, Gus Schrader, and Bernd Sturmfels —

IMAGE- 'Consider the 6-dimensional vector space over the 2-element field,' from 'The Universal Kummer Threefold'

Two such considerations —

IMAGE- 'American Hustle' and Art Cube

IMAGE- Cube for study of I Ching group actions, with Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman 

Update of 10 PM ET March 7, 2014 —

The following slides by one of the "Kummer Threefold" authors give
some background related to the above 64-point vector space and
to the Weyl group of type E7(E7):

The Cayley reference is to "Algorithm for the characteristics of the
triple ϑ-functions," Journal für die Reine und Angewandte
Mathematik  87 (1879): 165-169. <http://eudml.org/doc/148412>.
To read this in the context of Cayley's other work, see pp. 441-445
of Volume 10 of his Collected Mathematical Papers .

Friday, January 31, 2014

Uneven Break

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 am

See also Nicole Kidman as an earlier Black Widow.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Sweet Home Alabama…

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

deserves a haiku.

    See the 11:01 post, and
    a video —

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070514-Dance.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Nicole Kidman dances 
"Sweet Home Alabama."

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Plan 9 Continued…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:30 am

Or: Chinny-Chin-Chin .

This post will be meaningless unless you
have seen the recent film "R.I.P.D.," starring
James Hong and Jeff Bridges.

(In that film, two deceased lawmen appear to 
the living in disguised form— as Hong, and 
as Bridges in the guise of a major babe.)

From the AP Today in History  page
for October 29, 2013 —

On this date in:
1967 The musical "Hair" opened off-Broadway.

This, together with the Halloween season and
"R.I.P.D.," suggests a bizarre show:

"And there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space…"
– Don McLean, "American Pie

    Cybill Shepherd (born 1950) and Jeff Bridges (born 1949) in 'The Last Picture Show'

The show would star Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges
as, respectively, Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman in

V.I.P.D.

See also some related posts with Jeff Bridges.

Backstory: Sermon (Nov. 18,  2012) and
Eternal Recreation (Dec. 24, 2012).

"We've lost the plot!" — "Slipstream."  Small wonder.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Dream of the Expanded Field

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:28 pm

(Continued)

IMAGE- Cube for study of I Ching group actions, with Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman

Further context: Galois I Ching

Friday, August 2, 2013

Duende for St. Wallace

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:01 am

IMAGE- Google search on 'Wallace Stevens died'

(The final quote above is bogus. Stevens did write "Death is the mother 
of beauty," but the "perishable" part is from a lesser poet, Billy Collins.)

For the duende  of this post's title, see a dance.

The dance suggests a 1956 passage by Robert Silverberg—

"There was something in the heart of the diamond—
not the familiar brown flaw of the others, but something
of a different color, something moving and flickering.
Before my eyes, it changed and grew.

And I saw what it was. It was the form of a girl—
a woman, rather, a voluptuous, writhing nude form
in the center of the gem. Her hair was a lustrous blue-black,
her eyes a piercing ebony. She was gesturing to me,
holding out her hands, incredibly beckoning from within
the heart of the diamond.

I felt my legs go limp. She was growing larger, coming closer,
holding out her arms, beckoning, calling—

She seemed to fill the room. The diamond grew to gigantic size,
and my brain whirled and bobbed in dizzy circles.
I sensed the overpowering, wordless call."

— "Guardian of the Crystal Gate," August 1956

For similar gestures, see Nicole Kidman's dance in "The Human Stain."

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Stitch

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment
of our intelligence by means of our language." — Wittgenstein

"You've got to pick up every stitch…
Must be the season of the witch."
— Donovan song at the end of Nicole Kidman's "To Die For"

Today's morning post, Rubric, suggests a check
of Alexander Bogomolny's tweets:

Clicking the hint leads to Bogomolny's Ambiguities in Plain Language:

See also, in this  journal, alea  (which appears within the derived word "aleatory").

Saturday, October 20, 2012

’Round Midnight

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:20 am

(Continued)

IMAGE- NY Times obituaries, 12:08 AM ET Sat., Oct. 20, 2012, with ad for feature on Nicole Kidman, and added correction on the date of death of a Catholic priest

Update of 1 AM Saturday—

On the late Frank Moore Cross, biblical scholar

"When you walked into his classes, you felt
you were on the frontier of knowledge in the field,"
said Peter Machinist, who studied under Dr. Cross
as an undergraduate at Harvard and now holds
the endowed professorship there that Dr. Cross
had held until his retirement in 1992.

For religious remarks from a different Machinist,
see a post of July 24, 2012

IMAGE- Poster for 'The Machinist' (2004), starring Christian Bale

Click link for a condition on the professorship that was
    apparently met by Cross, but that has perhaps not 
    been 
met by Machinist, a rather rabbinical figure.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Methods

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:59 pm

From the July 28, 2012, post "Hey"—

"You know my methods."

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Conjure

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:02 pm

In the catacomb of my mind
Where the dead endure—a kingdom
I conjure by love to rise

Samuel Menashe, as quoted by
Stephen Spender in a review of four
different poets, "The Last Ditch,"
The New York Review of Books , July 22, 1971

"…the ghost reveals that the beggar
is in fact a sorcerer, a necromancer
who is preparing the mandala in order
to achieve an evil end. The ascetic
intends to bind the ghost to the corpse,
place it in the center of the circle,
and worship it as a deity."

The King and the Corpse  (from synopsis in
"How Many Facets Can a Non-Existent Jewel Have?")

Menashe died on Monday, August 22, 2011.

Related material by and for two other poets
who also died on Monday:

  1. By Jerry Leiber— "Love Potion #9"
  2. For Nick AshfordNicole Kidman in
    Sermon (from Jan. 9) and
    Conjure Wife, a 1943 tale by Fritz  Leiber

See also an excerpt from Kerouac I cached on Monday, and

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail .

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Problem

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

Wednesday's Marginal Remarks pictured Robert De Niro
and Sean Penn in "We're No Angels." De Niro appeared
again in a Saturday Night Live sketch linked to
in last night's 9:29 post.

Here are some remarks featuring Penn related to
Peter J. Cameron's description yesterday of Sudoku
as an example of mathematics.

(Recall that the symbol #, known as 'hash,"
can stand for checkmate.)

"Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics."
— G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110611-TickTickHash.gif

IMAGE-Sean Penn with Nicole Kidman in 'The Interpreter'
Click to enlarge.

My card.

For a sample chess problem, see a post from Oct. 10, 2005,
the day that the Sudoku remark Cameron describes was
in the news.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Plato’s Pheedo

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:30 am

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110614-ZiskinRSS-Pheedo.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110614-PheedoDotInfo.jpg

But seriously—
Degreeless Noon

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110611-TickTickHash.gif

IMAGE-Sean Penn with Nicole Kidman in 'The Interpreter'
Click to enlarge.
“My card.”

Related material:

"Start the new year off with a new job at Pheedo."

See January 1, 2, 3 of 2010.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

But Seriously–

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:30 pm

Godfather

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110611-MessinaHashtag300w.jpg

"Mr. Messina is no ordinary Twitter user. The self-described
'hash godfather,' he officially invented the Twitter hashtag
in August 2007…."

Ashley Parker (page ST1 of tomorrow's
    NY Times  National Edition)

But seriously—
Degreeless Noon

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110611-TickTickHash.gif

IMAGE-Sean Penn with Nicole Kidman in 'The Interpreter'
Click to enlarge.
“My card.”

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Sermon

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

Another  topic from today's newspaper —

IMAGE- Nicole Kidman in a Sunday supplement

Commentary —

"We're gonna need more holy water." — "Season of the Witch," a film that opened Friday

See also

This morning's post Inception and the following site:

Image- The Ninefold Favicon

Note the ninefold favicon at the above site. Some background—
The Ninth Gate  in yesterday's post and this image from last September

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/100902-Favicon.jpg

Friday, January 7, 2011

Ayn Sof

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:26 pm

(A continuation of this morning's Coxeter and the Aleph)

"You've got to pick up every stitch… Must be the season of the witch."
Donovan song at the end of Nicole Kidman's "To Die For"

Mathematics and Narrative, Illustrated
http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110107-The1950Aleph-Sm.jpg

Mathematics

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110107-ScriptAlephSm.jpg
Narrative

"As is well known, the Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Its use for the strange sphere in my story may not be accidental.
For the Kabbala, the letter stands for the En Soph ,
the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it takes
the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order to show
that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; for Cantor's
Mengenlehre , it is the symbol of transfinite numbers,
of which any part is as great as the whole."

— Borges, "The Aleph"

From WorldLingo.com

Ein Sof

Ein Soph or Ayn Sof (Hebrew  אין סוף, literally "without end", denoting "boundlessness" and/or "nothingness"), is a Kabbalistic term that usually refers to an abstract state of existence preceding God's Creation of the limited universe. This Ein Sof , typically referred to figuratively as the "light of Ein Sof " ("Or Ein Sof "), is the most fundamental emanation manifested by God. The Ein Sof  is the material basis of Creation that, when focused, restricted, and filtered through the sefirot , results in the created, dynamic universe.
….

Cultural impact

Mathematician Georg Cantor labeled different sizes of infinity using the Aleph. The smallest size of infinity is aleph-null (0), the second size is aleph-one (1), etc. One theory about why Cantor chose to use the aleph is because it is the first letter of Ein-Sof. (See Aleph number)

"Infinite Jest… now stands as the principal contender
for what serious literature can aspire to
in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."

All Things Shining, a work of pop philosophy published January 4th

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101231-AllThingsShining-Cover.jpg

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." — Roy Scheider in "Jaws"

"We're gonna need more holy water." — "Season of the Witch," a film opening tonight

See also, with respect to David Foster Wallace, infinity, nihilism,
and the above reading of "Ayn Sof" as "nothingness,"
the quotations compiled as "Is Nothing Sacred?"

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

The Ending That Fell Off a Truck

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:19 pm

"…the ending arrives as if dropped from a passing truck."
    — Stephen Hunter, Washington Post  review of the 2007 film
   "The Invasion" (starring Nicole Kidman)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101005-TheInvasion.jpg

 

"The Invasion"

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101005-BigTime.jpg

 

Leiber's Big Time

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101005-WashPostObit.jpg

Related material— "The reviews are in!"— Wall Street Journal  today

See also this  journal on October First, the date of the above death.

"We've lost the plot!" — "Slipstream"

"Big time." — Dick Cheney

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Saturday March 21, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:30 pm
Interpreter's Booth

Tonight's online New York Times:

NY Times  online March 21, 2009: Pope in Angola tells clergy to work against belief in witchcraft

Click to enlarge.


Mary Karr,
"Facing Altars:
    Poetry and Prayer"–

"There is a body
on the cross
  in my church."


Sean Penn gives Nicole Kidman his card in 'The Interpreter'

Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman
in "The Interpreter."

Click to enlarge.

"My card."

"Is Heart of Darkness the story of Kurtz or the story of Marlow’s experience of Kurtz?  Was Marlow invented as a rhetorical device for heightening the meaning of Kurtz’s moral collapse, or was Kurtz invented in order to provide Marlow with the centre of his experience in the Congo?  Again a seamless web, and we tell ourselves that the old-fashioned question 'Who is the protagonist?' is a meaningless one."


Wayne C. Booth, p. 346 in
The Rhetoric of Fiction
(1961),
as quoted by Paul Wake in
"The Storyteller in Chance"

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Thursday December 25, 2008

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

Christmas Card

Top center front page, online NY Times, Christmas 2008-- Pinter dead at 78

Commentary

Oct. 11-14, 2005:

'A Poem for Pinter,' conclusion: 'Tick Tick Hash.'

'The Interpreter'-- Sean Penn to Nicole Kidman-- 'My Card.'
Click to enlarge.

"My card."

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.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Friday December 14, 2007

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

“Well, it changes.”

Nicole Kidman at a press conference
for the London premiere of
“The Golden Compass” on November 27:

Nicole Kidman'-- kittens and tiger

A related Log24 link from
that same date, November 27:

Deep Beauty

See also Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance

“Plato hadn’t tried to destroy areté. He had encapsulated it; made a permanent, fixed Idea out of it; had converted it to a rigid, immobile Immortal Truth. He made areté the Good, the highest form, the highest Idea of all. It was subordinate only to Truth itself, in a synthesis of all that had gone before.That was why the Quality that Phaedrus had arrived at in the classroom had seemed so close to Plato’s Good. Plato’s Good was taken from the rhetoricians. Phaedrus searched, but could find no previous cosmologists who had talked about the Good. That was from the Sophists. The difference was that Plato’s Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way.”

— as well as Cold Mountain

Page 48: “It’s claimed that if
you take a mirror and look
backwards into a well, you’ll
see your future down in the water.”

“So in short order Ada found herself bent backward over the mossy well lip, canted in a pose with little to recommend it in the way of dignity or comfort, back arched, hips forward, legs spraddled for balance.  She held a hand mirror above her face, angled to catch the surface of the water below.

Ada had agreed to the well-viewing as a variety of experiment in local custom and as a tonic for her gloom. Her thoughts had been broody and morbid and excessively retrospective for so long that she welcomed the chance to run counter to that flow, to cast forward and think about the future, even though she expected to see nothing but water at the bottom of the well.

She shifted her feet to find better grip on the packed dirt of the yard and then tried to look into the mirror.  The white sky above was skimmed over with backlit haze, bright as a pearl or as a silver mirror itself.  The dark foliage of oaks all around the edges framed the sky, duplicating the wooden frame of the mirror into which Ada peered, examining its picture of the well depths behind her to see what might lie ahead in her life. The bright round of well water at the end of the black shaft was another mirror.  It cast back the shine of sky and was furred around the edges here and there with sprigs of fern growing between stones.

Ada tried to focus her attention on the hand mirror, but the bright sky beyond kept drawing her eye away.  She was dazzled by light and shade, by the confusing duplication of reflections and of frames. All coming from too many directions for the mind to take account of. The various images bounced against each other until she felt a desperate vertigo, as if she could at any moment pitch backward and plunge head first down the well shaft and drown there, the sky far above her, her last vision but a bright circle set in the dark, no bigger than a full moon.

Her head spun and she reached with her free hand and held to the stonework of the well.  And then just for a moment things steadied, and there indeed seemed to be a picture in the mirror.”

— and Log24 on December 3 —

I Ching Hexagram 48: The Well
The above Chinese character
stands for Hexagram 48, “The Well.”
For further details, click on the well.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Saturday September 15, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:00 pm
The Crimson Passion
continues...
 
Professors: Post Your Syllabi
 
Professors should post their
course syllabi before move-in,
not after class has started

The Harvard Crimson

Published On Friday, September 14, 2007  12:54 AM

"Classes start in three days, and that means it’s time to… examine course syllabi– that is if you can find them…." More >>


Classics 101:
The Holy Spook
 

IMAGE- Anthony Hopkins in 'The Human Stain'

Prof. Coleman Silk introducing
 freshmen to academic values

The Course Begins:

Larry Summers, former president
of Harvard, was recently invited,
then disinvited, to speak at a
politically correct UC campus.

A Guest Lecturer Speaks:

"This is so pathetic. I used to write long disquisitions on the ethical dimensions of behavior like this, but years of it can make a girl get very tired. And that's because this stuff is tiresome, and boring, and wrong, and pathetic, and so very indicative of the derailed character of academic life. It's more important to keep punishing Summers for a comment he made years ago– and apologized for many times over, and essentially lost the presidency of Harvard over– than it is just to move on and let free exchange happen on campuses. I doubt Summers would have devoted his time before the Regents to theorizing gender (not that I would personally care much if he did– I was not so mortally wounded by his observations as others were), and he is a brilliant man with much of value to bring to a visit with the Regents. But what does that matter when the opportunity to mob a politically incorrect academic presents itself?" —Erin O'Connor on Sept. 15, 2007

Illustration of the Theme:

Clarinetist Ken Peplowski
plays "Cry Me a River"
as Nicole Kidman focuses
the students' attention.

A sample Holy Spook,
Kurt Vonnegut, was introduced
by Peplowski on the birthday
this year of Pope Benedict XVI.

"Deeply vulgar"
Academic characterization
of Harvard president Summers

"Do they still call it
 the licorice stick?"
Kurt Vonnegut

Related Material:

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Midnight Drums for Larry

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Tuesday May 15, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:11 pm

Tony Nominations Announced

The Rev. Jerry Falwell Dies

The Rev. Jerry Falwell in Montgomery, 2003

The Rev. Jerry Falwell speaks at a rally
on the steps of the Alabama Capitol
in Montgomery in this Saturday,
Aug. 16, 2003, file photo.
(AP Photo/Dave Martin)

The New York Times, Nov. 22, 2004:

"The Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University [at Lynchburg, Virginia] is part of a movement around the nation that brings a religious perspective to the law."

Religious perspective:

See the five Log24 entries ending with "Dinner Theater?" (Nov. 26, 2004).  Note Charles Williams's discussion of the Salem witchcraft trials.

See also yesterday's "Seven Bridges."  In light of that entry's picture of Nicole Kidman in "To Die For," and of Charles Williams's remarks, a discussion of Kidman's "Practical Magic" may also interest some.

"Hey, good lookin',     
whatcha got cookin'?"
Hank Williams      

Monday, May 14, 2007

Monday May 14, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:30 am

Seven Bridges

"Make me young…"
Kilgore Trout

For the old at heart:  

The Mathematical Association of America in this
Euler Tercentenary Year honors the seven bridges of
Königsberg, Prussia (birthplace of David Hilbert).

For Kilgore Trout:

A song about the road to (and from)
Hank Williams's memorial marker:

"There are stars in the Southern sky
and if ever you decide you should go
there is a taste of time-sweetened honey
down the Seven Bridges Road

Now I have loved you like a baby
like some lonesome child
and I have loved you in a tame way
and I have loved you wild"

Steve Young

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070514-Dance.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Nicole Kidman dances 
"Sweet Home Alabama"

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Sunday September 10, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

ART WARS
continued:

Sontag’s Sermon

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060910-Doonesbury4.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Sources:
This morning’s Log24 entry,
today’s New York Times Magazine,
and today’s Doonesbury.

Related material:

My Life among the Deathworks:
Illustrations of the
Aesthetics of Authority
,
by Philip Rieff,
Sontag’s ex-husband.

See also Nicole Kidman in
the 2004 remake of
The Stepford Wives.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Saturday December 10, 2005

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

Roger Shattuck, Scholar, Is Dead at 82

In his honor, some excerpts from previous entries:

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

I just subscribed to The New York Review of Books online for another year,
prompted by my desire to read Roger Shattuck on Rimbaud….

"How did this poetic sensibility come to burn so bright?"

The Shattuck piece is from 1967, the year of The Doors' first album.

(See Death and the Spirit, Part II.)

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051210-Blue.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The photo of Nicole Kidman
is from Globe Song
(Log24, Jan. 18, 2005).

The Times says Shattuck died
on Thursday (Dec. 8, 2005).

Here, from 4:00 AM on the
morning of Shattuck's death,
is a brief companion-piece
to Eight is a Gate:

Four is a Door:

From Carole A. Holdsworth,
Dulcinea and Pynchon's V:

Tanner may have stated it best:

“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).

She's a mystery
She's everything
   a woman should be
Woman in black
   got a hold on me

Foreigner 4

She's in midnight blue,
 still the words ring true;
woman in blue
got a hold on you.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Wednesday October 12, 2005

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am
Don’t Know Much About
History

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051012-MyCard.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Click to enlarge.

“My card.”

Sources:
Today’s online New York Times
and Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman
in “The Interpreter”
“Is Heart of Darkness the story of Kurtz or the story of Marlow’s experience of Kurtz?  Was Marlow invented as a rhetorical device for heightening the meaning of Kurtz’s moral collapse, or was Kurtz invented in order to provide Marlow with the centre of his experience in the Congo?  Again a seamless web, and we tell ourselves that the old-fashioned question ‘Who is the protagonist?’ is a meaningless one.”
— Wayne C. Booth, p. 346 in
The Rhetoric of Fiction
(1961),
as quoted by Paul Wake in
The Storyteller in Chance
The dates of death for the two men
pictured in the Times clipping were
October 9 and October 10.

Log24 entries for those dates contain allusions
to games of chance and games of skill.
See also yesterday’s entry.

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

Monday December 30, 2002

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:30 pm

Homer

“No matter how it’s done, you won’t like it.”
— Robert Redford to Robert M. Pirsig in Lila

The evening before Harriet injures Roy,
she asks him, in a restaurant car,
whether he has read Homer.”
Oxford website on the film of The Natural

“Brush Up Your Shakespeare”
— Cole Porter lyric for a show that opened
on December 30, 1948

Judy Davis as Harriet Bird

                                        

Thine eyes I love…
Shakespeare, Sonnet 132

“Roy’s Guenevere-like lover is named Memo Paris,
presumably the face that launched a thousand strikes.”
Oxford website on the film of The Natural 

Nicole Kidman
as Memo Paris

“Iris is someone to watch over Roy.”
Oxford website on the film of The Natural 

Kate Winslet as young Iris Murdoch

From the second-draft screenplay
for The Sting,
with Robert Redford as Hooker:

HOOKER
(shuffling a little)
I, ah…thought you might wanna come out for a while.  Maybe have a drink or somethin’.

LORETTA
You move right along, don’t ya.

HOOKER
(with more innocence than confidence)
I don’t mean nothin’ by it.  I just don’t know many regular girls, that’s all.

LORETTA
And you expect me to come over, just like that.

HOOKER
If I expected somethin’, I wouldn’t be still standin’ out here in the hall.

Loretta looks at him carefully.  She knows it’s not a line.

LORETTA
(with less resistance now)
I don’t even know you.

HOOKER
(slowly)
You know me.  I’m just like you…
It’s two in the morning and I don’t know nobody.

The two just stand there in silence a second.  There’s nothing more to say.  She stands back and lets him in.

Iris Murdoch on Plato’s Form of the Good,
by Joseph Malikail:

For Murdoch as for Plato, the Good belongs to Plato’s Realm of Being not the Realm of Becoming…. However, Murdoch does not read Plato as declaring his faith in a divine being when he says that the Good is

the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and the lord of light in the visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which [one who] would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eyes fixed (Republic…).

Though she acknowledges the influence of Simone Weil in her reading of Plato, her understanding of Plato on Good and God is not Weil’s (1952, ch.7)*. For Murdoch,

Plato never identified his Form of the Good with God (the use of theos in the Republic… is a façon de parler), and this separation is for him an essential one. Religion is above the level of the ‘gods.’ There are no gods and no God either. Neo-Platonic thinkers made the identification (of God with good) possible; and the Judaeo-Christian tradition has made it easy and natural for us to gather together the aesthetic and consoling impression of Good as a person (1992, 38)**.

As she understands Plato:

The Form of the Good as creative power is not a Book of Genesis creator ex nihilo … Plato does not set up the Form of the Good as God, this would be absolutely un-Platonic, nor does he anywhere give the sign of missing or needing a real God to assist his explanations. On the contrary, Good is above the level of the gods or God (ibid., 475)**.

Mary Warnock, her friend and fellow-philosopher, sums up Murdoch’s metaphysical view of the Vision of the Good:

She [Murdoch] holds that goodness has a real though abstract existence in the world. The actual existence of goodness is, in her view, the way it is now possible to understand the idea of God.

Or as Murdoch herself puts it, ‘Good represents the reality of which God is the dream.’ (1992, 496)**”

*Weil, Simone. 1952. Intimations of Christianity Among The Ancient Greeks. Ark Paperbacks, 1987/1952.

**Murdoch, Iris. 1992. Metaphysics As A Guide To Morals. London: Chatto and Windus. 

From the conclusion of Lila,
by Robert M. Pirsig:

“Good is a noun. That was it. That was what Phaedrus had been looking for. That was the homer over the fence that ended the ballgame.”

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