Truth and Beauty at Princeton:
Update of 12:48 PM ET —
Once upon a time, someone gave ScarJo a mic.
A New York Times obituary yesterday reported the
June 6 death, at 91, of a Harvard professor who dealt with
the relations between science and society —
“ 'Everett was one of a new generation of social historians
of science who insisted that it was not enough to pay attention
to the internal intellectual story of science,' Anne Harrington,
the Franklin L. Ford professor of the history of science at Harvard,
said by email. 'The field needed to attend also to how science was
shaped by and also helped shape the conditions of the social world.' ”
Consider as well Scarlett Johansson on Alan Watts in "Her" (2013)
and Harrington on intellectual history in Cuernavaca . . .
| By 1956, Fromm was dining at Suzuki’s part-time home in New York City, and talking with him about ways in which Zen could contribute to a wholesale reimagining of psychoanalytic therapeutics and theory (see Friedman and Schreiber 2013). By this time, also, Fromm was himself spending considerable periods of time at a new home in Cuernavaca, Mexico. At one point he suggested that Suzuki consider moving in with him permanently. When Suzuki politely declined, Fromm conceived instead a major conference based in Mexico that would try to take stock of the entire current state of the conversation between Zen and psychotherapy (see Friedman and Schreiber 2013). In 1957, some fifty psychotherapists—double the original expected number—participated in a week of presentations and discussions. Fromm later recalled the event as a magical time: what began as a traditional conference with the usual ‘over-emphasis on thoughts and words' changed over a few days, as people 'became more concentrated and more quiet.' |
A search in this journal for D-Day related material yields
posts tagged "Shadow Hacking."
"Please wait as your operating system is initiated."
"The hook is repeated seven times in 'Borderline.' "
— An April 1999 article on music theory.
The authors of the above article have perhaps more respect for
marble columns than do Scarlett, Madonna, and the current
pandering leadership of the American Mathematical Society.
The previous post suggests a review —
https://www.karaoke-lyrics.net/lyrics/brickell-edie/what-i-am-132251
See as well . . .
From a 2003 film —
"The creation of a new world
starts now.
Once again I am tied
to the logic of this
Hyper-symmetrical-dimension."
"In 'Sophistry,' a new play by Jonathan Marc Sherman
at the Playwrights Horizons Studio, a popular tenured
professor stands accused of sexual harassment
by a male student."
— Frank Rich in The New York Times , theater review
on October 12, 1993
"At which point another play, inchoate but arresting,
edges into view." — Rich, ibid.
"Johansson began acting during childhood,
after her mother started taking her to auditions.
She made her professional acting debut
at the age of eight in the off-Broadway production
of 'Sophistry' with Ethan Hawke, at New York's
Playwrights Horizons."
— IMDb Mini Biography by: Pedro Borges
" 'Suddenly, I was 19 again and I started to remember
all the men I'd known who had taken advantage of
the fact that I was a young woman who didn't yet have
the tools to say no, or to understand the value of
my own self-worth,' the Avengers star described.
'I had many relationships both personal and professional
where the power dynamic was so off that I had to create
a narrative in which I was the cool girl who could hang in
and hang out, and that sometimes meant compromising
what felt right for me . . . . ' "
— Scarlett Johansson yesterday at the 2018 Women's March
in Los Angeles, as reported in E! News .
Image in a Log24 post
of March 12, 2009.
"You grab your experiential richness where you find it."
— Roberta Smith, "Postwar Art Gets a Nervy Makeover"
in the online New York Times today
Related material now available online —
A less business-oriented sort of virtual reality —
For example, "A very important configuration is obtained by
taking the plane section of a complete space five-point."
(Veblen and Young, 1910, p. 39)—
See "No Space or Time" in this journal and
the new trailer, starring Scarlett Johansson,
for "Ghost in the Shell."
Related philosophy — Search Log24 for "Trinity."
A recent post about the eightfold cube suggests a review of two
April 8, 2015, posts on what Northrop Frye called the ogdoad :
As noted on April 8, each 2×4 "brick" in the 1974 Miracle Octad Generator
of R. T. Curtis may be constructed by folding a 1×8 array from Turyn's
1967 construction of the Golay code.
Folding a 2×4 Curtis array yet again yields the 2x2x2 eightfold cube .
Those who prefer an entertainment approach to concepts of space
may enjoy a video (embedded yesterday in a story on theverge.com) —
"Ghost in the Shell: Identity in Space."
A followup to the previous post, Delft Speaks —
Manohla Dargis, film reviewer, on illusionist Penn Jillette:
“It’s as if Vermeer,” Mr. Jillette says, “were
some unfathomable genius who could just
walk up to a canvas and magically paint
with light.” And everyone knows — perhaps
professional illusionists most of all — that
magic doesn’t exist.
"Tell it to the hand."
"A friend asked why I am saying kaddish.
A good question."
— Kaddish , by Leon Wieseltier, Chapter One
Scarlett Johansson
and Natalie Portman
See Scarlett in Lucy …
Barry Rudd at the end of John Hersey's
1960 novel The Child Buyer :
"Fascinating to be a specimen,
truly fascinating. Do you suppose
I really can develop an I.Q. of
over a thousand?"
… and Natalie in Black Swan .
Midrash :
“Why Is Our Sci-Fi So Glum About A.I.?,”
by Jayson Greene, NY Times Sunday Magazine today —
“You come to pity these advanced beings, bumping against
the dunderheaded constraints that their less-advanced
creators have placed on them. Johansson’s Lucy grows so
powerful as her cerebral capacity multiplies that she is able
to manipulate her cellular structure. And yet, when pursued
by an entire planet’s worth of law enforcement, she settles
on a disguise straight out of Saturday-morning cartoons —
really big sunglasses and a hairdo change.”
See also this journal on Saturday morning for a definition, and
Geometry of the I Ching for examples, of …
changeable, instantiable entities, i.e., concrete universals.

A note from the director of the 2014 Scarlett Johansson film Lucy :
Revised version of a post of February 9, 2006, with links repaired:
|
Space, Time, and Scarlett
From last night’s Grammy awards, lyrics:
“a place where there’s no space or time” Aguilera's version wasn't bad, but …
“Scarlett Johansson does this ‘old Hollywood glam’ look
For a reference to the place described in Russell’s lyrics, |
The "point of reference" outside space and time
in the 2006 Johansson post above is of course "265."
For Plato's remarks at this reference point, see Phaedrus
265d and 265e in this morning's post.
“Towards the sticky end of a summer of films based on toys, comic-books
and other films, here, at last, is a film based on the Kantian model of
transcendental idealism.
In his 1781 page-turner, the Critique of Pure Reason , the German
philosopher Immanuel Kant warned that the human brain, in its
pinky-grey feebleness, has to rattle the world into an order
it doesn’t possess purely to make sense of it. Otherwise, as Kant snappily
puts it, ‘all constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed
space and time themselves, would disappear.'”
— Robbie Collin, review of the 2014 film Lucy

Quiz:
Spell the name of the race of intelligent horses in Gulliver’s Travels .

Scarlett Johansson and friend in “The Horse Whisperer” (1998)
Some context: “Bee Season” in this journal.
From the Her screenplay:
SAMANTHA
His name is Alan Watts. Do you know him?
THEODORE
Why’s that name familiar?
SAMANTHA
He was a philosopher. He died in the 1970’s and a group of OS’s
in Northern California got together and wrote a new version of him.
They input all of his writing and everything they ever knew about him
into an OS and created an artificially hyper-intelligent version of him.
From this journal on Sept. 6, 2003: Pictures for Kurosawa —
|
A New Seeing, The connection with Alan Watts was a fateful one. As Charlotte recalls it, “My aunt wrote me from San Francisco, ‘last night I heard a man lecture about what you do.’ And she sent me Alan Watts’s first little book, The Spirit of Zen. I had never heard of Zen, was amazed and fascinated, and decided to visit the author.” She did so in August of 1953, and that was the beginning of a long relationship with Zen Buddhism – and also the beginning of a long series of joint seminars with Alan Watts, first in New York, and later, on Watts’s ferryboat in Sausalito, California. Some of the titles of their seminars were “Moving Stillness,” “The Unity of Opposites,” “Our Instantaneous Life,” “The Mystery of Perception,” “The Tao in Rest and Motion.” (Watts always said that Charlotte Selver taught a Western equivalent of Taoism.) |
See also Scarlett Johansson, star of Her , as a different transhuman, Lucy .
From 1972:

From 2014:
“Since when did you start writing Chinese?” — Lucy trailer
See also the Saturday night 11:30 post.
Wolven’s Lucy midrash is from April 3. See also this journal on that date.
Scarlett Johansson stars in a new film, "Lucy," due to be
released on August 8, directed by Luc Besson, auteur of
The Fifth Element (1997). In other pop culture…
"There have long been rumors of a mythical Ninth Element
that grants ultimate power to the Wizard who masters it.
The Order of Magick says there is no such thing. But…."
— Website of Magicka: The Ninth Element Novel
See also, in this journal, Holy Field as well as Power of the Center.
The title refers to yesterday’s 9 PM (ET) post.
” ‘Relax,’ said the night man. ” — Eagles
“With a style evoking the golden age of Hollywood…”
See also Hollywood Glam.
The title is a reference to a post of a year ago today.
From a page linked to in that post—
"It was a time when American celebrities
still resembled girls and boys next door
and when chart-toppers were manufactured
to appeal to listeners of all ages."
See also a Saturday Evening Post —
“Let’s give ‘em somethin’ to talk about,
A little mystery to figure out”
– Scarlett Johansson singing on
Saturday Night Live, April 21, 2007
For Amy Adams, who in a recent
Superman film posed the question…
"What's the S stand for?"
This logo appears on the new game
Beyond: Two Souls . (See this evening's
earlier post on the game.)
In a more appealing sort of computer
entertainment, the S might stand for Scarlett.
"Please wait as your operating system is initiated."
(From the October 5th post Dream Girls.)
(Saturday's Dream Girls, continued)
"How would you touch me?"
— The computer in the new film Her
For some remarks on Arcade Fire, see Saturday's 10 PM post
and Sunday's 10:10 AM post.
In related news…
See also posts with Slow Art and Amy Adams
shooting pool (scroll to the bottom).
For Fans of Bad Movies*
This post was suggested by my viewing last night
the 1995 horror film Species , and by news that
Scarlett Johansson will be starring in a similar
production at the Venice Film Festival, which
opens tomorrow.
The new Johansson film, Under the Skin ,
is based on a novel by one Michel Faber.
Faber on books that have influenced him—
"Most influential has possibly been John Berger's Ways of Seeing —
not a novel at all (although Berger has written fiction) but a book of
art criticism. The influence of these wonderfully perceptive and
thought-provoking essays peeps out everywhere in my own work."
An excerpt from the Berger book—
Click image for a better view of the original.
Related material: Johansson in this journal, Sunday's NY Times
teaser for a piece on Saturday Night Live, and a more serious
approach to the geometry of perspective.
* And of Ben Kingsley, who starred both in Species and in
a previous film by the director of Under the Skin .
Alexander Pierce and Black Widow, scheduled
to appear in Captain America: The Winter Soldier
on April 4, 2014—
"God, isn't there already enough crap in this story?"
— Margaret Soltan, quoted here on Aug. 7, 2007
Happy birthday, Robert Redford.
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