"Before time began . . . ." — Optimus Prime
Monday, May 13, 2019
Star Cube
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Star Wars
See also in this journal “desmic,” a term related
to the structure of Heidegger’s Sternwürfel .
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Star Wars (continued)
The New York Times today has an
obituary of poet Harvey Shapiro—
See also the following image
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Star Wars
Source: Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs
The American Mathematical Society
(AMS) yesterday:
Lars Hörmander (1931-2012) Hörmander, who received a Fields Medal in 1962, |
Some related material:
- A 1990 AMS review of a book by another mathematician,
Harmonic Analysis in Phase Space , that is closely
related to Hörmander's research (and perhaps more
accessible to the nonspecialist than his books), - Mathematical Imagery (Log24, Jan. 19, 2012),
- The Eight-Pointed Star, and yesterday's
- Point.
See also posts on Damnation Morning and, from the
date of Hörmander's death,
- Will and Representation.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Star Quality
A search in memory of Gerry Rafferty,
a talented singer-songwriter who died today at 63.
"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!"
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
Friday, August 24, 2012
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Chapman’s Homer
Louis Sahagun in today's Los Angeles Times—
The late Professor Marvin W. Meyer
"was our Indiana Jones," said James L. Doti,
president of Chapman University in Orange,
where Meyer held the Griset Chair in Bible
and Christian Studies and was director of
the Albert Schweitzer Institute.
Meyer reportedly died on August 16.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
|
Monday, February 27, 2012
Reflection
"But even if the religious note is dissonant to some of us,
it seems hard to come up with a better formulation
of what a college should strive to be: an aid to reflection…."
— Andrew Delbanco, Chronicle of Higher Education , Feb. 26, 2012
Another aid to reflection—
The logo of an institution that advertised today in the Chronicle
next to Delbanco's article—
Click logo for context. The institution's original name
was Hesperian College.
For some background, see Evening Star in this journal.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Thursday April 23, 2009

Sweden Speedy |
…&uid=37798719 | 4/23/2009 4:33 PM |
Related material:
Vide today’s midday PA lottery number, 177, the 1919 edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse, and the time (interpreted, in a Joycean manner, as a date) of this morning’s first entry.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday March 22, 2009
for Natasha Richardson
“Family and friends of Natasha Richardson said their final farewells to the late actress Sunday afternoon during a small, private funeral held near her Millbrook home in upstate New York….
Richardson died on Wednesday [March 18, 2009] at the age of 45 from a head injury she suffered [on Monday, March 16, 2009] while skiing in Canada.
The funeral began after the family arrived in a police-escorted motorcade at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lithgow, where Neeson and her sons are members….”
For what it’s worth…
Background image
for the E! story:
Related images —
Midsummer Night
in the Garden of
Good and Evil.
See also:
“God as Trauma,”
by a former vicar
of the Lithgow church,
and Drunkard’s Walk.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
For Mask Aficionados
Saturday, September 17, 2016 |
For those who prefer comedy —
Other toys: Archimedes at Hiroshima and related posts.
Tony Award
“Tony Stark: That’s how I wished it happened.
Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing, or BARF.
God, I gotta work on that acronym.
An extremely costly method of hijacking the
hippocampus to . . . clear traumatic memories. Huh.”
Another acronym — AIEEE !
Monday, March 2, 2020
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Exploring Schoolgirl Space…
"Old men ought to be explorers." — T. S. Eliot.
Rose the Hat in her younger days.
See as well Barsotti in this journal.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Doris Day at the Hudson Rock
" 'My public image is unshakably that of
America’s wholesome virgin, the girl next door,
carefree and brimming with happiness,'
she said in Doris Day: Her Own Story ,
a 1976 book . . . ."
From "Angels & Demons Meet Hudson Hawk" (March 19, 2013) —
From the March 1 post "Solomon and the Image," a related figure —
Friday, March 1, 2019
Solomon and the Image
"Maybe an image is too strong
Or maybe is not strong enough."
— "Solomon and the Witch,"
by William Butler Yeats
Friday, September 30, 2016
Desmic Midrash
The author of the review in the previous post, Dara Horn, supplies
below a midrash on "desmic," a term derived from the Greek desme
( δεσμή , bundle, sheaf, or, in the mathematical sense, pencil —
French faisceau ), which is apparently related to the term desmos , bond …
(The term "desmic," as noted earlier, is relevant to the structure of
Heidegger's Sternwürfel .)
The Horn midrash —
(The "medieval philosopher" here is not the remembered pre-Christian
Ben Sirah (Ecclesiasticus ) but the philosopher being read — Maimonides:
Guide for the Perplexed , 3:51.)
Here of course "that bond" may be interpreted as corresponding to the
Greek desmos above, thus also to the desmic structure of the
stellated octahedron, a sort of three-dimensional Star of David.
See "desmic" in this journal.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Articulation
Cassirer vs. Heidegger at Harvard —
A remembrance for Michaelmas —
A version of Heidegger's "Sternwürfel " —
From Log24 on the upload date for the above figure —
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Chemistry 101
Apocalypse Wow (continued)
For fans of the Holy Bible —
“I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant
little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than
anything else in the English language— and it is not because
I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but
because I love the wild power of the language and the purity
of the madness that governs it and makes it music.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Author’s Note, Generation of Swine
(Requoted from White Stone, a Log24 post of March 2, 2005.)
See also the work of another psychopharmacologist
in today's noon post.
Looney Tune
For the late psychopharmacologist Joel Elkes and
the late songwriter P. F. Sloan —
" Inspired by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
and other events, he wrote 'Eve of Destruction.'
He later said, 'I was arguing with this voice that seemed to
know the future of the world.' "
— Terence McArdle in last night's online Washington Post
See also Tuesday's posts Tab Icons from the Clearing —
— and, later, Meditation on an Icon:
The above image may be viewed
as a midrash on a picture by
the late Dr. Elkes —
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Mathematics and Narrative (continued)
Angels & Demons meet Hudson Hawk
Dan Brown's four-elements diamond in Angels & Demons :
The Leonardo Crystal from Hudson Hawk :
Mathematics may be used to relate (very loosely)
Dan Brown's fanciful diamond figure to the fanciful
Leonardo Crystal from Hudson Hawk …
-
Compare Brown's fictional Illuminati Diamond to the
nonfictional figures in The Diamond Theorem and
Theme and Variations. -
Compare the fictional Leonardo Crystal to Hudson's
nonfictional desmic system of tetrahedra (above), and
see, in Rosenhain and Göpel Tetrads in PG(3,2), how
the diamond theorem is related to Hudson's work.
For the tetrads ' relationship to tetrahedra , see
Hudson's own book.
"Giving himself a head rub, Hawk bears down on
the three oddly malleable objects. He TANGLES
and BENDS and with a loud SNAP, puts them together,
forming the Crystal from the opening scene."
— A screenplay of Hudson Hawk
Happy birthday to Bruce Willis.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Mathematical Imagery
From the Crafoord Prize website—
Related meta -mathematical image from Diamond Theory—
Mathematical image related to combinatorics—
See also permutahedron in this journal.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Sunday July 13, 2008
C. P. Snow in A Mathematician's Apology :
FOREWORD
"It was a perfectly ordinary night at Christ's high table, except that Hardy was dining as a guest. He had just returned to Cambridge as Sadleirian professor, and I had heard something of him from young Cambridge mathematicians. They were delighted to have him back: he was a real mathematician, they said, not like those Diracs and Bohrs the physicists were always talking about: he was the purest of the pure. He was also unorthodox, eccentric, radical, ready to talk about anything. 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."
Perhaps now also at Christ's high table– Scarlett O'Hara's Younger Sister , Evelyn Keyes, who died on July 4, 2008:
"… the memory of Evelyn Keyes looking at herself on the screen, exclaiming: 'There's star quality! Look at those tits!'"

Evelyn Keyes in 99 River Street
Wednesday, March 2, 2005
Wednesday March 2, 2005
White Stone
"I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language– and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music."
— Hunter S. Thompson, Author's Note, Generation of Swine
"And I will give him a white stone…."
Related material:
2003 2/17: "immortal diamond"
2004 2/17: "hard core"
2005 2/17: "the diamond"
For an "elegant starburst," see
"Starflight," from 10/10, 2004 —
the date of
Christopher Reeve's death.
See also
Revelation 10:10 —
"And I took the little book
out of the angel's hand,
and ate it up; and it was in my mouth
sweet as honey: and as soon as I had
eaten it, my belly was bitter."
For the relationship of this verse to
the style of Hunter Thompson, see
From the Department of Justice:
"LSD generally is taken by mouth.
The drug is colorless and odorless
but has a slightly bitter taste."
Among the street terms for LSD
is "Superman."
Saturday, April 12, 2003
Saturday April 12, 2003
2:23 PM
Sequel
to the previous two entries
"This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond…."
— Emily Dickinson
Today's birthday: dancer/actress Ann Miller.
"In 1937, she was discovered by Lucille Ball…."
Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz,
and Ann Miller, cast photo
from Too Many Girls (1940)
"Just goes to show star quality shines through…."
— Website on Too Many Girls"It'll shine when it shines."
— Folk saying, epigraph to The Shining"Shine on, you crazy diamond."
— Pink Floyd"Well we all shine on…"
— John Lennon, "Instant Karma"