Log24

"Business-wise, Magic is working—Bloomberg reported 
that the game brought in $500 million in revenue last year.
Hasbro owns Monopoly and Scrabble, but Magic  is its top
game brand. . . . 

The idea of using a card mechanic to generate story has
precedent—the Italian postmodern writer Italo Calvino
generated an entire novel based on drawing from a
tarot card deck. Games provide frameworks that miniaturize
and represent idealized realities; so do narratives."

— Adam Rogers, Sunday, July 21, 2019, at Wired

"The Esper party began . . ." —

Adam Rogers at Wired  as quoted above —

"The idea of using a card mechanic to generate story
has precedent. . . ."

See The Greater Trumps .

This post's title is that of a book in the 1958 film
"Bell Book and Candle." 

See also …

An alternative to Davos —

From a professor at Grand Valley —

* Title suggested by Thomas Mann's 1924 novel about Davos

An artist mentioned in  a NY Times  obituary  this morning —

(Click for the source.)

I prefer some not-so-magic circles —

Click for related posts tagged root circle.

"I am trying to introduce a narrative,
something magical and seductive…."

— Oslo artist Josefine Lyche, translated
from the Norwegian by Google

Perhaps something like Arcade Fire or
Taylor Swift? (Click links for related posts.)

This post was suggested by the December 4th death
of modernist composer Jonathan Harvey, 73,
and by Harvey's reflections on his 2007 opera
Wagner Dream .

For related reflections, see the Oct. 10 post on
the Dürer magic square in Mann's Doctor Faustus .

See also a December 2nd post on the Nov. 18 death of
chess grandmaster Elena Akhmilovskaya Donaldson.

In a Jewish Cathedral

From The New York Times Magazine  of Sunday, April 6, 1986—

"David Rayfiel's Script Magic" by Alex Ward

WHEN THE CALL came last year to revise ''The Morning After,'' Rayfiel was working on a screenplay about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire for Barbra Streisand and Jane Fonda. He has now resumed work— as the principal writer, not the reviser— on that script. But chances are good that he will have further interruptions. Pollack will probably call and say, as he usually does, ''David, I need access to your brain.'' And Rayfiel will probably say, as he usually does, ''That's O.K., I'm not using it.'' He will revise another script, and be reluctant about taking credit for it.

''I guess it's like the medieval stonecutters who worked on the cathedrals,'' he says. ''There's all that elaborate work. The saints were carved by one guy, the cherubs by someone else. They didn't care about getting credit, they knew what they'd done. I'm like that. I'm the guy who does the cherubs.''

Related material:

Proginoskes in this journal and Abracadabra from the midnight of June 18-19.

See also Rayfiel's obituary in today"s Times .

For some quite different work, also  from April 1986, see—

Oslo: Points and Hyperplanes.

Wikipedia on film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura
(Harvard AB (1980) in Intellectual History*) —

"His tenure at Warner Bros. included discovering and
shepherding The Matrix  into production, and the
purchase of the rights to the Harry Potter  books by 
J. K. Rowling."

From the previous post —

"But he enters into the central myth of
this book at another, higher level as well;
for he is an artist, a potter . . . ."

— Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty on 
Claude Lévi-Strauss, author of 
The Jealous Potter

* See as well "What is Intellectual History?" and
   Magic for Liars .

That university, in Dayton, Ohio, appeared in the previous post.

A curious recent wardrobe choice in Dayton suggests a review
of posts tagged Mathmagic Land.

"Games provide frameworks that miniaturize
and represent idealized realities; so do narratives."

— Adam Rogers, Sunday, July 21, 2019, at Wired

Reviewing yesterday's post Word Magic —

See also a technological framework (the microwave at left) vs. a
purely mathematical framework (the pattern on the towel at right)
in the image below:

For some backstory about the purely mathematical framework, 
see Octad Generator in this journal.

For the Church of Synchronology —

And now, General, time presses; and America is in a hurry.
Have you realized that though you may occupy towns and win battles,
you cannot conquer a nation? — The Devil's Disciple

A figure related to Dürer's "magic" square posted during Devil's Night —

Posts now tagged Spaceman include an image . . .

From March 9 —

Meanwhile . . .

Related material —

“At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light,
an image of unutterable conviction,
the reason why the artist works and lives
and has his being — the reward he seeks —
the only reward he really cares about,
without which there is nothing. It is to snare
the spirits of mankind in nets of magic,
to make his life prevail through his creation,
to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful
substance of his own experience, into the congruence
of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves
the core of life, the essential pattern whence
all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.”

— Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River

* Title suggested by that of a Siri Hustvedt novel.
   See also Blazon in this journal.

"Arnheim was a particularly important source
for Norway's principal architectural theorist,
Christian Norberg-Schulz."

— Andrew Peter Steen, University of Queensland
doctoral thesis, 2015

See

• "Field of Manifestation," 
• "A Study in Art Education," and
• "The Concept of Phenomenology in Architecture as Developed
  by the Norwegian Theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz"

"Nine is a very powerful Nordic number."

— Katherine Neville, The Magic Circle

The two books pictured above are From Discrete to Continuous ,
by Katherine Neal, and Geometrical Landscapes , by Amir Alexander.

Note: There is no Galois (i.e., finite) field with six elements, but
the theory  of finite fields underlies applications of six-set geometry.

The Finkelstein Talisman —

"Before time began, there was the Cube."

— Optimus Prime in "Transformers" (Paramount, 2007)
 

Wikipedia on Hasbro —

Three American Jewish brothers,^[6] Herman, Hillel, and Henry Hassenfeld^[7] 
founded Hassenfeld Brothers in Providence, Rhode Island in 1923 . . . .
 

The Hassenfeld Auction — 

Also on September 16, 2015 —

The Hindman Image —

The Hood Warenkorb —

Under the Hood —

Megan Fox in "Transformers" (2007) —

This Way to the Egress —

See also Ricky Jay in this  journal.

[Revised throughout the day on Sept. 24, 2018.]

"Mathematics may be art, but to the general public it is
a black art, more akin to magic and mystery. This presents
a constant challenge to the mathematical community: to explain
how art fits into our subject and what we mean by beauty."

— Sir Michael Atiyah, quoted here on April 4, 2016

Atiyah's remarks today on the Riemann hypothesis, based on his earlier
remarks on "arithmetic physics" and α, the fine-structure constant,
seem to exemplify the "magic and mystery" approach.

From some previous Log24 posts —

Update of 6:06 PM ET the same day —

https://twitter.com/mpoessel/status/1044131977950109696 —

For related magic and mystery, see Log24 posts tagged on090405.

In memory of  a Manhattan art figure
who reportedly died on
Wednesday, February Seventh, 2018 —

ABOUT 'ASCENSION VARIATIONS'

“Ascension Variations is a magical adventure
woven from grand and pedestrian touches, and
in the end the space itself is the star —
or Ms. Monk's transformation of it.
For an hour, we've lived in a spiral,
where up is down and down is up.
It's a sacred place.”

— Gia Kourlas, The New York Times , March 6, 2009

See also the previous post — yesterday's Into the Upside Down —
and two posts of February Seventh:

Conceptual Art  and  Conceptual Minimalism.

For some related artistic remarks, see this  journal on March 6-7, 2009.

(Title suggested by the TV series Stranger Things )

" 'Untitled' (2016) is the most recent painting in the show
and includes one of Mr. Johns’s recurring images of a ruler."

— Image caption in an article by Deborah Solomon
     in The New York Times  online, Feb. 7, 2018
 

From a Log24 search for "Ruler" —

Related art —

See also, in this journal, Magic Mountain and Davos.

Einstein and Thomas Mann, Princeton, 1938

In her new spiritual memoir . . . .

Armies of the Night —

Armies of the Day —

Cole Porter —

Night and Day —

The previous post discussed an alleged description by
William H. Gass of his fellow author Malcolm Lowry as 
"a black magician."

In defense of Gass, it seems that quote is inaccurate:

An image in memory of a publisher* who reportedly died
on Saturday, August 26, 2017.  

He and his wife wrote a novel, The Twelve , that has been compared to
the classic film "Village of the Damned." (See a sequel in this journal.)

For more on the image, see posts now tagged The Finkelstein Talisman.

*
 

The Seventh Function of Language  A novel by Laurent Binet The New York Times   online Aug. 16, 2017,  in a book review — "What if . . . Barthes was murdered? . . . in order to procure a document that Barthes possessed . . . . That document explained that, beyond the six functions of language proposed by the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson, there was a seventh secret one:  an occult kind of language-use guaranteed to persuade, a 'magic' power of control over a listener."

Schorske mentioned hopefully "the fresh light of
the present" in 1971.

Some later light from Brian Aldiss in his novel
Frankenstein Unbound , first published in 1973 —

"The heart of the doctor's show is a magic mirror that allows
those who go through it to experience another dimension of
their own minds. Once inside, people choose for good or evil,
opting for — to give one example — either the difficult but
rewarding heights of Mt. Parnassus or the easy pleasures of
Mr. Nick's Lounge Bar. As the doctor angrily puts it when asked
what he's playing at, 'We don't play, what we do is deadly serious,' 
which means nothing less than the eternal battle with the devil
for the spirit of man."

— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times  film critic, Christmas Day 2009,
reviewing "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."

In terms that might interest the late museum director of the previous post …

Quoted here from The New Criterion  on June 2, 2017 —

Quoted here from The New York Times  on June 1, 2017 —

MoMA’s Makeover Rethinks the Presentation of Art

"The new design calls for more gallery space and a transformed
main lobby, physical changes that, along with the re-examination
of art collections and diversity, represent an effort to open up MoMA
and break down the boundaries defined by its founder, Alfred Barr.

'It’s a rethinking of how we were originally conceived,' Glenn D. Lowry,
the museum’s director, said in an interview at MoMA. 'We had created
a narrative for ourselves that didn’t allow for a more expansive reading
of our own collection, to include generously artists from very different
backgrounds.'"

"I guess I found my future through Billy Name’s eye.
I saw his pictures of the Warhol Factory when I was
in college and thought, 'Oh that’s the place to get to.
Everyone is so beautiful and it looks brilliant and
complicated – art, music, film, but most of all a kind
of wild life.' It looked like the future as I imagined it."

— The late Glenn O'Brien in The Guardian
     on November 8, 2014.  O'Brien reportedly
     died at 70 yesterday, Friday (April 7) morning,
     in Manhattan.

"… through Billy Name's eye …."
Then there is Kurt Seligmann's eye …

The above-mentioned Billy Name appeared in this journal
in July 2016  in the post "Coterie (for Philip Rieff)." Also
featured in that post was artist Kurt Seligmann.

A Google Search sidebar on Seligmann today:

Synchronology check of this  journal on the above Guardian  date:

See also an 11:59 PM ET post on Thursday, April 6, titled
"Where Entertainment Is God (continues)."

Some related entertainment:

I do not recommend any of the above entertainments,
but they do supply some background for the article
"Fantasy and the Buffered Self" (which is  recommended.)

* For the title, see Sunday morning.

Announcement of a Harvard event:

"The Future of News: Journalism in a Post-Truth Era,"
 Tuesday, January 31, 4 – 6 pm., Sanders Theatre,
 Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass."

The event as reported by The Harvard Crimson —

Related material — This  journal at 12:31 PM ET Tuesday —
"The Devil's Arithmetic," a post with title taken from a 1988
fiction by Jane Yolen.

From the Jan. 28 post Cranking It Up —

"We are rooted in yoga and love the magic
that happens when that practice is
cranked up to eleven." — The late Trevor Tice

From "Core," a post of St. Lucia's Day, Dec. 13, 2016 —

In related news yesterday —

California yoga mogul’s mysterious death:
Trevor Tice’s drunken last hours detailed

"Police found Tice dead on the floor in his home office,
blood puddled around his head. They also found blood
on walls, furniture, on a sofa and on sheets in a nearby
bedroom, where there was a large bottle of Grey Goose
vodka under several blood-stained pillows on the floor."

See as well an image from "The Stone," a post of March 18, 2016 —

Some backstory —

“Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be
purely logical.  Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense,
were the rules of its pure logic?”

—Many Dimensions  (1931), by Charles Williams

Literature marches on …

"Don't do anything I would  do.
And definitely don't do anything I wouldn't do.
There's a little gray area in there
and that's where you operate."

See as well "Spirit and Space" (Nov. 25, 2016) —

A sequel to last night's Chess Problem —

See as well a related CV .

See All Saints 2014 in this journal and listen to 
the new Stevie Nicks reissue of Bella Donna.

Related religious imagery —

The New Yorker , issue dated Feb. 9, 2015 —

"After trying magic mushrooms in Cuernavaca, in 1960,
Leary conceived the Harvard Psilocybin Project, to study
the therapeutic potential of hallucinogens. His involvement
with LSD came a few years later."

Related viewing —

For some philosophical background, see (for instance) Jeremy Butterfield,
"Some Aspects of Modality in Analytical Mechanics," and …

 .

For those who prefer entertainment —

(Continued, in memory of the late meteorologist William Gray,
from August 10, 2010, and from April 16, 2016.)

For some backstory, see Huàn, the Flood and Impact Award.

"… Mathematics may be art, but to the general public
it is a black art, more akin to magic and mystery."

— Sir Michael Atiyah, "The Art of Mathematics"
     in the AMS Notices , January 2010, quoted in
     Log24 on April 4, 2016.

Related material:  Gray Space and …

"Have you ever thought about
 the properties of numbers?"

 — "The Maiden" in Shaw's
 Back to Methuselah , quoted in
 the Fritz Leiber Changewar  story
“No Great Magic” (1963), Part V

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…."

— Edgar Allan Poe, 1845 (link added)

"The infamous pseudohistorian Eric Temple Bell
begins his book 'The Magic of Numbers' as follows:

The hero of our story is Pythagoras…."

— John Baez, June 20, 2006

Related material —

See also "Temple Bell" in this  journal.

"Tell me the news, something I can use
Something red hot to light my fuse"

— Motörhead, "Bad Magic" album

Illustration from Oct. 25, 2013.

This journal on Saturday, Dec. 19 —

In memory of Madame Claude, who
reportedly died in Nice December 19:

"There were fairies and spirits."

Amen.

Under the Volcano:
A Bottle, a Door, a Box

See also Glory Season (Nov. 12, 2005) and Unique Figure (April 12, 2011).

Update of 11:22 AM —

Today in History —

"On December 21, 1937, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'
premiered to a record-breaking audience at the Carthay Circle
Theatre in Los Angeles."

Related material:  The Red Book.

Continued from November 26.

“She was absolutely magical.”

The above quote is from the obituary of a British actress.

Her birth date was July 19.  Her death date was November 25.

The above book, a tribute by admirers of the late Michael Weinstein
(not, as a campus obituary states, by Weinstein himself),
was reportedly published by Routledge on December 19, 2014.

This journal on that date had a post on an early Greek philosopher who
supposedly was killed because he discovered irrational numbers.

A later approach to academic life —

Emma Stone being directed by Woody Allen in the recent "Irrational Man":

Fans of Allen and Stone may also enjoy Magic in the Moonlight.

Part I:        Magic Moonlight

Part II:    To Walk the Night 

Cover from a 1944 edition of
the 1937 novel by William Sloane —

Part III:   Sept. 18, 2015, review by Stephen King
                of the works of William Sloane 

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."

Continued from December 5, 2002 —

Un-magical realism for Montevideo.

From the Associated Press today —

"It's a magic wonderland," said Miriam Leibowitz,
a Jerusalem resident, as she reached a snow-filled
city park with her family. "In the middle of Jerusalem
we felt like we're in Switzerland."