A followup to the previous post:
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"No esthetic theory, pursued Stephen relentlessly, — James Joyce, Stephen Hero |
. . . And then there is esthetic apprehension dressed in all four colors . . . .
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Annals of Inception:
Notes for an Academic’s Coloring Book
Notes for an Academic’s Coloring Book
Monday, April 13, 2026
Annals of Inception:
Cuttin’ Z’s in Vienna
260413-Falls_ich_Pabst-search-AI_Mode.jpg
Cuttin’ Z’s in Vienna
Friday, May 16, 2025
Wag the Dogma Continues:
Inception! — On Yesterday’s Broadway Dies Natalis
The above image is from a Log24 post of August 22, 2024.
Related reading for Broadway theologians —
Death Working Backwards (Hat Tip to C. S. Lewis)
The May 15 date above is from the previous post.
Inception! — On Yesterday’s Broadway Dies Natalis
Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Inception
"The inception of critical thought, of a philosophic
anthropology, is contained in the archaic Greek definition
of man as a 'language-animal'…."
— George Steiner, Real Presences
A schoolgirl in 1961 —
"Non, rien de rien…"
— Edith Piaf
"I get a kick though it's clear to see,
You obviously don't adore me."
— Cole Porter
Thursday, April 19, 2018
Inception
Peter Woit in his weblog today —
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"Keating’s book is very much in the tradition of Watson’s The Double Helix, giving a portrayal of himself and others that doesn’t leave out the very human aspects of ambition, competitiveness and jealousy. Unlike the Watson book, which is about a great scientific achievement, the unusual aspect of Keating’s story is that what he was involved in was not a success, but the biggest fiasco in the history of his field. On March 17th, 2014, the New York Times reported on its front page that Space Ripples Reveal Inflation’s Smoking Gun, and this same story was reported by most media outlets." |
This weblog on that date, St. Patrick's Day 2014 —
The New York Times front page story linked to above —
Monday, April 20, 2015
Immaculate Inception
Continued from a post of April 10, 2015 —
Maya Angelou stamp with
misattributed quote and
Oprah on April 7, 2015
Trailer for "Welcome to Me" published on Feb. 23, 2015 —
Related material: Manifest O (April 1, 2015).
Friday, April 10, 2015
Immaculate Inception
See also Midnight Purple
and today's previous post.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Inceptions
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Inception
"… a wake-initiated lucid dream occurs when the dreamer goes from a normal
waking state directly into a dream state with no apparent lapse in consciousness."
Not necessarily a good idea.
"Show me all the blueprints."
– Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Aviator" (2004)
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Camp Inception
With a nod to Larry Doyle's "Sleeper Camp"—
From the Mathcamp Reunion Schedule for Saturday, July 24, 2010—
2:30-3:30 PM — John Conway Colloquium
3:30-5:30 PM — Relays: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory!
In this journal on Saturday, July 24—
Playing with Blocks (noon) and The Leonardo Code (1 PM).
A happy Mathcamper defines Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory—
…Heaven and Hell relays. your team starts in hell, when you get one right, one person can go to heaven and work on heaven questions, but first they have to pass through purgatory. aka this means entertain the people running purgatory. for me this meant dancing in the middle of the gym. i danced and sung the YMCA, which they deemed sufficient (thankfully).
— Imaginary Thoughts and Irrational Ideas weblog
Note in the Mathcamp schedule the Friday night Shabbat dinner and the religious activity on Sunday— a "mini-puzzle hunt."
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Annals of Cultural Appropriation:
Waymark for Erewhon
260127-Elliott_Smith-memorial-mural-in-LA.jpg
In 2004 —
See as well this journal on the above upload date, 7 August 2010 —
Waymark for Erewhon
Monday, August 22, 2022
Tokens/Totems
See Ballet Blanc and Black Art in this journal.
From the former:
"A blank underlies the trials of device."
— Wallace Stevens
From the latter:
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Grothendieck at Chapman …
Last two days of the conference, May 27 and 28, 2022 —
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27th Friday
9:00 – 10:00 Andrés Villaveces (Univ. Nacional de Colombia):
10:00 – 11:00 Olivia Caramello (Univ. of Insubria; by Zoom): 1:00 – 11:15 Coffee Break
1:15 – 12:15 Mike Shulman (Univ. of San Diego):
12:15 – 1:15 José Gil-Ferez (Chapman Univ.) 1:15 – 2:30 Lunch
2:30 – 3:30 Oumar Wone (Chapman) :
3:30 – 4:30 Claudio Bartocci (Univ. of Genova):
4:30 – 5:30 Christian Houzel (IUFM de Paris): 28th Saturday
9:00 – 10:00 Silvio Ghilardi (Univ. degli Studi, Milano):
10:00 – 11:00 Matteo Viale (Univ. of Turin; by zoom): 11:00 – 11:15 Coffee Break
11:15 – 12:15 Benjamin Collas (RIMS, Kyoto Univ.):
12:15 – 1:15 Closing: general discussion |
Friday, November 26, 2021
DOM
The title can mean the protagonist of the classic film "Inception"
or Document Object Model or Dirty Old Man. Related material:
Click the above image for related material.
Tuesday, May 4, 2021
Annals of Advertising: May Tag
Eames in Inception , about planting an idea—
“It’s not just about depth.
You need the simplest version of the idea,
the one that will grow naturally
in the subject’s mind.
It’s a very subtle art.”
The above quote is from this journal on Jan. 9, 2014,
a date suggested by the New York Times business section:
“Always with a little humor.” — Dr. Yen Lo
Friday, August 23, 2019
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Real Presences
The "Real Presences" title is from the Aug. 20 post "Inception."
See also the real presences in a recent book by J. D. Vance —
"Mom was, everyone told me, the smartest person
they knew. And I believed it. She was definitely the
smartest person I knew."
— Vance, J. D., Hillbilly Elegy (pp. 65-66).
Harper Paperbacks. Kindle Edition.
And not so real . . .
Saturday, January 12, 2019
Friday, July 14, 2017
Black Art
A search for posts in this journal on the actress Ellen Page
in the film "Inception" was suggested by Bastille Day (today),
by her character's name, Ariadne, and by the concluding image
of the previous post —
.
That search yielded the following image …
… which in turn suggests a "loop" back to this date last year —
.
The New York Times seems to prefer another sort of black art.
A 9 AM illustration from the Times Wire this morning is a misleading
attempt at humor that links to a very dark poem —
.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
ART WARS Koan*
“Show me all the blueprints.”
— Howard Hughes, according to Hollywood
From an old Dick Tracy strip —
This journal in April 2006 —
Cleaning out her studio, Oslo artist Josefine Lyche
has found some frames from an old art-school audition video —
(Click to enlarge.)
* Search for "st.+peter"+eve+adam+"first+words"
Friday, March 31, 2017
Women’s History Month
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Iacta Est
"Though realism is excellent rhetoric, maybe the best,
in a purely technical or instrumental sense,
that cannot be an adequate reason to accept it
as a serious intellectual position. In its tropes of
Death and Furniture we see a rhetoric that refuses
to acknowledge its own existence; a politics that
can claim a critical-radical credibility only by
the selective use of its opponents' analytic tools;
and a theology which is deeply conservative and
seeks nothing less than the death of disruptive,
disturbing inquiry. While tedium, good taste, political
and moral sensibility will properly determine what
sorts of given realities are thought worthy of inquiry,
those considerations are no grounds for promoting
a realist ontology for social science, nor any other
science, nor for rejecting relativism. On the contrary,
relativism is social science par excellence . . . ."
Loughborough University
— Edwards, D., Ashmore, M., and Potter, J. (1995),
"Death and furniture: The rhetoric, politics and theology
of bottom line arguments against relativism,"
History of the Human Sciences , 8, 25-49.
Related material:
Platonic realism in this journal, yesterday's post Ripples, and …
Gravity's Shadow , 2004 —
Gravity's Ghost , 2010 —
See also an "Inception"-related object —
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Core Structure
For the director of "Interstellar" and "Inception" —
At the core of the 4x4x4 cube is …
Cover modified.
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Depth Haiku
From yesterday's 2 PM post —
From "Inception" —
Paraphrase of remarks by "Inception" director Christopher Nolan
at Princeton on June 1, 2015 —
"If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Sunday, March 9, 2014
At Play in the Fields of Brazil
From Facebook, a photo from the Feast of St. Francis, 2013:
Neantro Saavedra-Rivano, author of the 1976 paper “Finite
Geometries in the Theory of Theta Characteristics,” in Brasilia—
On the same date, art from Inception and from Diamonds Studio
in Brazil —
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Depth Psychology
Suggested, in part, by a Jan. 8 post of David Justice—
Eames in Inception , about planting an idea—
“It’s not just about depth.
You need the simplest version of the idea,
the one that will grow naturally
in the subject’s mind.
It’s a very subtle art.”
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Sermon
Suggested by a poem in the current New Yorker.
Today's text —
"We have no more beginnings.
Incipit : that proud Latin word
which signals the start
survives in our dusty 'inception'."
— George Steiner, beginning of
Grammars of Creation
Reply in the Latin tradition—
.
Cast
(From the Log24 posts
of August 23-24, 2013)
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Zero Theorem
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The Kick
George Steiner, Real Presences , first published in 1989—
The inception of critical thought, of a philosophic anthropology,
is contained in the archaic Greek definition of man as a
'language-animal'….
Richard Powers, The Gold Bug Variations , first published in 1991—
Botkin, whatever her gifts as a conversationist, is almost as old
as the rediscovery of Mendel. The other extreme in age,
Joe Lovering, beat a time-honored path out of pure math
into muddy population statistics. Ressler has seen the guy
potting about in the lab, although exactly what the excitable kid
does is anybody's guess. He looks decidedly gumfooted holding
any equipment more corporeal than a chi-square. Stuart takes
him to the Y for lunch, part of a court-your-resources campaign.
He has the sub, Levering the congealed mac and cheese.
Hardly are they seated when Joe whips out a napkin and begins
sketching proofs. He argues that the genetic code, as an
algorithmic formal system, is subject to Gödel's Incompleteness
Theorem. "That would mean the symbolic language of the code
can't be both consistent and complete. Wouldn't that be a kick
in the head?"
Kid talk, competitive showing off, intellectual fantasy.
But Ressler knows what Joe is driving at. He's toyed with similar
ideas, cast in less abstruse terms. We are the by-product of the
mechanism in there. So it must be more ingenious than us.
Anything complex enough to create consciousness may be too
complex for consciousness to understand. Yet the ultimate paradox
is Lovering, crouched over his table napkin, using proofs to
demonstrate proof's limits. Lovering laughs off recursion and takes
up another tack: the key is to find some formal symmetry folded
in this four-base chaos. Stuart distrusts this approach even more.
He picks up the tab for their two untouched lunches, thanking
Lovering politely for the insight.
Edith Piaf—
See last midnight's post and Theme and Variations.
"The key is to find some formal symmetry…."
