Log24

Material related to the previous post and to Alfred Bester's
1981 followup to The Stars My Destination  titled The Deceivers —

The New York Times  has a skateboarder obit with a URL date of July 9.

Here is an earlier version from the LA Times—

July 4, 2011

By Keith Thursby, Los Angeles Times

Chris Cahill, one of the original Dogtown Z-Boys
who brought seismic changes to skateboarding
with their style and attitude, has died. He was 54.

Cahill was found June 24 at his Los Angeles home,
said Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles County
coroner's office. A cause of death has not been
determined and tests are ongoing, Dietz said.

More…

Related material from Midsummer Day, June 24, the day Cahill was found dead—

The Gleaming and The Cube.

    An illustration from the latter—

    The above was adapted from a 1996 cover—

 Vintage Books, July 1996. Cover: Evan Gaffney.

For the significance of the flames,
see PyrE in the book. For the significance
of the cube in the altered cover, see
The 2×2×2 Cube and The Diamond Archetype.

Notes on Mathematics and Narrative

Background—

1. The Burning Man in Bester's classic The Stars My Destination,
2. The not-so-classic Hitler Plans Burning Man, and
3. The cult film The Wicker Man

Commentary on The Wicker Man—

Originally The Wicker Man  was not well-received by critics in the UK. It was considered
to be bizarre, disturbing, and uncomfortable, with the hasty editing making the story confusing
and out of order…. Today this movie is considered a cult classic and has been called
the “Citizen Kane  of horror films” by some reviewers. How did this film become a cult classic?

Real estate motto— Location, Location, Location.

Illustration— The fire leap scene from Wicker Man, filmed at Castle Kennedy—

From August 27—

In today's New York Times, Michiko Kakutani reviews a summer thriller
by Kevin Guilfoile.  The Thousand  is in the manner of Dan Brown's
2003 The Da Vinci Code  or of Katherine Neville's 1988 The Eight .

From the review—

What connects these disparate events, it turns out, is a sinister organization
called the Thousand, made up of followers of the ancient Greek mathematician
and philosopher Pythagoras (yes, the same Pythagoras associated with
the triangle theorem that we learned in school).

As Mr. Guilfoile describes it, this organization is part Skull and Bones,
part Masonic lodge, part something much more twisted and nefarious….

The plot involves, in part,

… an eccentric artist’s mysterious masterwork, made up of thousands of
individually painted tiles that may cohere into an important message….

Not unlike the tiles in the Diamond Theory cover (see yesterday's post)
or, more aptly, the entries in this journal.

A brief prequel to the above dialogue—

In lieu of songs, here is a passage by Patrick Blackburn
more relevant to the art of The Thousand—

See also the pagan fire leaping in Dancing at Lughnasa.

If Cullinane College were Hogwarts–

Last-minute exam info:

The Lapis Philosophorum

"The lapis was thought of as a unity and therefore often stands for the prima materia in general."
— Aion, by C. G. Jung

"Its discoverer was of the opinion that he had produced the equivalent of the primordial protomatter which exploded into the Universe."
— The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester

And from Bester's The Deceivers:

Meta Physics

"'… Think of a match.  You've got a chemical head of potash, antimony, and stuff, full of energy waiting to be released.  Friction does it.  But when Meta excites and releases energy, it's like a stick of dynamite compared to a match.  It's the chess legend for real.'

'I don't know it.'

'Oh, the story goes that a philosopher invented chess for the amusement of an Indian rajah.  The king was so delighted that he told the inventor to name his reward and he'd get it, no matter what.  The philosopher asked that one grain of rice be placed on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, and so on to the sixty-fourth.'

'That doesn't sound like much.'

'So the rajah said. …'"

Related material:

Geometry of the I Ching