Log24

Sunday, February 21, 2016

The Masonic Mandorla

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:45 pm

A post for Tom Hanks and Dan Brown

Fictional Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon, as portrayed by Tom Hanks

Yahoo! President and CEO Marissa Mayer delivers a keynote
during the Yahoo Mobile Developers Conference on February 18,
2016, at Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco, California.
Credit: Stephen Lam

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

For Judy Chicago, Née Cohen

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:03 pm

From the University of Chicago Press

The Nutshell:

    Related Narrative:

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Sunday, January 22, 2023

The Stillwell Dichotomies

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 1:18 am

Number Space
Arithmetic  Geometry
Discrete  Continuous

Related literature —

IMAGE- History of Mathematics in a Nutshell

Bourbaki on arithmetic and geometry

From a "Finite Fields in 1956" post —

The Nutshell:

    Related Narrative:

Thursday, May 13, 2021

USC President Exits

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:19 am

Related material for the Magisterium — The Charleston Mandorla.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

At the Intersection…

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:43 pm

Continues.   The Chanel mandorla in the previous post
suggests a review of a more complex figure — The Venn Lotus.

The Jewel in Venn's Lotus (photo by Gerry Gantt)

Politically correct leftists may be reminded of Intersectionality.

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Schoolgirl Problem

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:40 pm

For Pagan Moore

http://www.log24.com/log/pix18/180825-Wicker_Man-scene.jpg

See also "as frivolous as a willow on a tombstone."

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Damnation… Or Not?

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm

Related material —

Faust Vivifies Death with Wit and Humor
by April H. N. Yee, Harvard Crimson , Feb. 7, 2008.

See as well all posts now tagged Willow and Mandorla.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Shema, Faust

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm

"The quotes create the illusion
that the dead are still speaking
to the reader. Faust writes about
the efforts of spiritualists to believe
in an afterlife for their slain kin, but
she’s the one summoning spirits."

April Yee, Harvard Crimson
     staff writer, February 7, 2008

"0! = 1" 

Quine's Shema

See also yesterday's Into the Woods 
and posts now tagged Willow and Mandorla.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Metaphors

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:19 pm

A rose on a Harvard University Press book cover (2014) —

A Log24 post's "lotus" (2004) —

A business mandorla (2016) —

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Arsenal

The previous post discussed some fundamentals of logic.

The name “Boole” in that post naturally suggests the
concept of Boolean algebra . This is not  the algebra
needed for Galois geometry . See below.

IMAGE- Logic related to 'the arsenal of algebraic analysis tools for fields'

Some, like Dan Brown, prefer to interpret symbols using
religion, not logic. They may consult Diamond Mandorla,
as well as Blade and Chalice, in this journal.

See also yesterday’s Universe of Discourse.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Lincoln Porn

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

Tablet  magazine, November 9th, 2012,
on Spielberg's Lincoln :

"… the movie’s lone Rocky moment
of ecstatic self-congratulation
is reserved for the amendment’s climactic
passage with the victorious congressmen
spontaneously bursting into
'The Battle Hymn of the Republic.' "

IMAGE- From Wikipedia, Venn diagram for NAND operator (cf. 'Mandorla')

"Mine eyes have seen the glory…"

IMAGE- Chris Pirillo, T-Mobile ad, 'Life Without Limits'

Both images above refer to this morning's post
 Professor Lavery's Sunday School.

For other porn from Tablet  magazine, see
Minimalist Whirl.

For other porn from Lincoln's seat of government, see
Physical Poetry and All In .

For further blasphemy, see The Apotheosis of Washington:

IMAGE- Blasphemous interior of the U.S. Capitol Dome

Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Purloined Diamond

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

(Continued)

The diamond from the Chi-rho page
of the Book of Kells —

The diamond at the center of Euclid's
Proposition I, according to James Joyce
(i.e., the Diamond in the Mandorla) —

Geometry lesson: the vesica piscis in Finnegans Wake

The Diamond in the Football

Football-mandorla

“He pointed at the football
  on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
         – Glory Road
   

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Synergy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:48 am

"Examples are the stained-glass windows of knowledge." —Nabokov

Suggested by yesterday's evening NY lottery

Post 4248: The Hunt for Exemplary October, and
Post   942: Links for St. Benedict

Related material—

three-point landing n

1. (Engineering / Aeronautics) an aircraft landing
in which the two main wheels and the nose or tail wheel
all touch the ground simultaneously

— Collins English Dictionary

See also…

     Tiffany Case and…

 The Diamond
in the Mandorla

Football-mandorla with link to 'Heaven Can<br />
Wait'

“He pointed at the football
  on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
     – Glory Road
    

Thursday, July 14, 2011

ART WARS continued:

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:01 am

The Bauhaus Dance

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110714-BauhausRoof.jpg

See also The Ya Ya Mandorla

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110714-VesicaXOR.jpg

 

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110714-Michelangelo.jpg

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Happy Bastille Day…

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

To the leftist philosophers of Villanova

From "Make a Différance"
(Women's History Month, 2005)—

Frida Saal's 

Lacan The image 
“http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Diamond.gif” cannot be displayed,
 because it contains errors. Derrida:

"Our proposal includes the lozenge (diamond) in between the names, because in the relationship / non-relationship that is established among them, a tension is created that implies simultaneously a union and a disjunction, in the perspective of a theoretical encounter that is at the same time necessary and impossible. That is the meaning of the lozenge that joins and separates the two proper names….  What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of the main issues in this presentation."

Football-mandorla (vesica piscis) with link to 'Heaven Can 
Wait'

“He pointed at the football
  on his desk. ‘There it is.’”
Glory Road
    

Quodlibet* 

Compare and contrast
the diamond in the football
with the jewel in the lotus.

* "A scholastic argumentation upon a subject chosen at will, but almost always theological. These are generally the most elaborate and subtle of the works of the scholastic doctors." —Century Dictionary

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Sunday July 5, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am

Sermon

Football-mandorla with link to 'Heaven Can Wait'

7/01 

“He pointed at the football
on his desk. ‘There it is.'”
Glory Road   

See also
Hieron Grammaton
and
Epiphany 2007.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Friday April 25, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 am
Destabilizing
the Locus

 
"It is the intention
 of this piece
 to destabilize the locus
  of that authorial act…."

— Yale art student
    Aliza Shvarts,
quoted today in
The Harvard Crimson

From Log24 on
March 14:



Rite of Spring

From the online 
Harvard Crimson

Anatomy exhibit at the Harvard Women's Center

Related material:

A figure from  
Monday's entry

Mandorla from center of ovato tondo

— and  
June 30, 2007's
Annals of Theology,
with a link to a film:
The Center of the World.

The center referred
to in that film is the
same generic "center"
displayed at Harvard
and in the above
mandorla: not the
Harvard Women's
Center, but rather

the women's center.

See also Yeats —
"the centre cannot hold,"

Stevens —
"the center of resemblance,"

and Zelazny —
"center loosens,
forms again elsewhere
."

Related material
from Google:

JSTOR: Killing Time
with Mark Twain's Autobiographies

frame "writing" within his own writing in order to destabilize the locus of his authorial voice and to promote a textual confusion that doubly displaces
links.jstor.org/…Similar pages

Other ways
of killing time:

From Log24 on April 21, the date of Mark Twain's death–

Psychoshop, by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny:

His manner was all charm and grace; pure cafe society….

He purred a chuckle. "My place. If you want to come, I'll show you."

"Love to. The Luogo Nero? The Black Place?"

"That's what the locals call it. It's really Buoco Nero, the Black Hole."

"Like the Black Hole of Calcutta?"

"No. Black Hole as in astronomy. Corpse of a dead star, but also channel between this universe and its next-door neighbor."

The Pennsylvania Lottery
yesterday, April 24, 2008:

Mid-day 923, Evening 765….

and hence Log24, 9/23 (2007), and page 765 of From Here to Eternity (Delta paperback, 1998):

He stayed that way for eight days, never what you could really call drunk, but certainly never anywhere near sober, and always with a bottle of Georgette's expensive scotch in one hand and a glass in the other. He did not talk at all except to say "Yes" or "No," mostly "No," when confronted with a direct question, and he never ate anything when they were there. It was like living in the same house with a dead person.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Friday March 14, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
Rite of Spring

From the online 
Harvard Crimson

Anatomy exhibit at the Harvard Women's Center

Related material:

A figure from  
Monday's entry

Mandorla from center of ovato tondo

— and  
June 30, 2007's
Annals of Theology,
with a link to a film:
The Center of the World.

The center referred
to in that film is the
same generic "center"
displayed at Harvard
and in the above
mandorla: not the
Harvard Women's
Center, but rather
the women's center.

See also Yeats —
"the centre cannot hold,"

Stevens —
"the center of resemblance,"

and Zelazny —
"center loosens,
forms again elsewhere
."

Monday, March 10, 2008

Monday March 10, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm
Mani Padme
(Jewel in the Lotus):
 
Part I

“Raiders of the Lost Stone”
(March 10, 2006)

Part II

“Raiders of the Lost…”
(Feb. 17, 2006)

Part III

The Further
Adventures of
Tony Rome
(March 7, 2008)

Parts I and II above
may be summarized by
the famous phrase
“jewel in the lotus”–
which, some say, has
a sexual meaning–
and by the diagram

Diamond, diamond in lotus/mandorla, and structure of St. Peter's Square-- 'ovato tondo'

For discussions
of this structure
in Western thought,
see
the ovato tondo
and
Last to the Lost.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Thursday February 21, 2008

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am
Class
Galore

The New Yorker's Anthony Lane reviewing the new film "Jumper"–

"I wasn’t expecting Ernst Gombrich, but surely three writers, among them, could inject a touch of class."

The "Jumper" theme, teleportation, has been better developed by three other writers– Bester, Zelazny, and King–

"As a long-time fan of both Alfie Bester and Roger Zelazny, I was delighted to find this posthumous collaboration. Psychoshop is, I think, true to both authors' bodies of work. After all, Bester's influence on Zelazny is evident in a a number of works, most notably Eye of Cat with its dazzling experimental typography so reminiscent of what Bester had done in The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination."

— Amazon.com customer review

"'This is the last call for Jaunt-701,' the pleasant female voice echoed through the Blue Concourse of New York's Port Authority Terminal."

— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
 

 
From another
"Jaunt-701"–
Log24, Feb. 7:
 

The Football
Mandorla

New York Lottery, 2008:

NY Lottery Feb. 6, 2008: Mid-day 064, Evening 701

The Mandorla (vesica piscis) as Football

7/01 

"He pointed at the football
  on his desk. 'There it is.'"
Glory Road   

"The
Wu  Li
Masters know
that physicists are
doing  more  than
'discovering  the endless
 diversity of nature.' They
 are  dancing with Kali,
 the Divine Mother of
 Hindu  mythology."
 — Gary Zukav,
 Harvard
 '64


"What happened?"
  one of the scientists shouted….

"It's eternity in there,"
 he said, and dropped dead….

— Stephen King, "The Jaunt"
 

As
for  Ernst
Gombrich, see
his  link in  the
Log24 entries
of June 15,
 2007.

Related material:
the previous entry.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Thursday February 7, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 am
The Football
Mandorla

New York Lottery, 2008:

NY Lottery Feb. 6, 2008: Mid-day 064, Evening 701

The Mandorla as Football

7/01 

"He pointed at the football
  on his desk. 'There it is.'"
Glory Road   

 

  "The Rock" — 

Goodspeed:
"I'll do my best."

Mason:

"Your best. Losers
always whine about
their best. Winners
go home and …."

 

"The
Wu  Li
Masters know
that physicists are
doing  more  than
'discovering  the endless
 diversity of nature.' They
 are  dancing with Kali,
 the Divine Mother of
 Hindu  mythology."
 — Gary Zukav,
 Harvard
 '64
 

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Sunday July 1, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 pm
Object Lesson
continued…

"Three times the concentred
     self takes hold, three times
The thrice concentred self,
     having possessed
The object, grips it
     in savage scrutiny,
Once to make captive,
     once to subjugate
Or yield to subjugation,
     once to proclaim
The meaning of the capture,
     this hard prize,
Fully made, fully apparent,
     fully found."

— "Credences of Summer," VII,
    by Wallace Stevens, from
    Transport to Summer (1947)

 

Mathematics of the football mandorla (vesica piscis)

For a religious
interpretation
of 265, see
Sept. 30, 2004.

For a religious
interpretation
of 153, see
Fish Story.
 
A quotation from
the Eater of Souls:

"That's how it is, Easy," my Coach went on, his voice more in sorrow than in anger. "Yardage is all very well but you don't make a nickel unless you cross that old goal line with the egg tucked underneath your arm." He pointed at the football on his desk. "There it is. I had it gilded and lettered clear back at the beginning of the season, you looked so good and I had so much confidence in you– it was meant to be yours at the end of the season, at a victory banquet."

Glory Road,
by Robert A. Heinlein
 

Sunday July 1, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:06 am
At the still point,
there the dance is.
— T. S. Eliot

Humphrey Carpenter in The Inklings, his book on the Christian writers J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, says that

“Eliot by his own admission took the ‘still point of the turning world’ in Burnt Norton from the Fool in Williams’s The Greater Trumps.”

The Inklings, Ballantine Books, 1981, p. 106

Today’s Birthdays: …. Actress-dancer Leslie Caron is 76…. Movie director Sydney Pollack is 73….  Dancer-choreographer Twyla Tharp is 66. –AP, “Today in History,” July 1, 2007

The Diamond within the Mandorla

The Diamond
in the Mandorla

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Saturday June 30, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:04 pm
Where
 Entertainment
is God

Frank Rich in
The New York Times
:

 November 2004–

Desperate Housewives ad on Monday Night Football

Controversial
"Desperate Housewives"
ad on "Monday
Night Football"

"Desperate Housewives"… ranks No. 5 among all prime-time shows for ages 12-17. ("Monday Night Football" is No. 18.) This may explain in part why its current advertisers include products like Fisher-Price toys, the DVD of "Elf" and the forthcoming Tim Allen holiday vehicle, "Christmas With the Kranks."

Those who cherish the First Amendment can only hope that the Traditional Values Coalition, OneMillionMoms.com, OneMillionDads.com and all the rest send every e-mail they can to the F.C.C. demanding punitive action against the stations that broadcast "Desperate Housewives." A "moral values" crusade that stands between a TV show this popular and its audience will quickly learn the limits of its power in a country where entertainment is god.

— "The Great Indecency Hoax," a New York Times column by Frank Rich quoted in Log24 on Nov. 26, 2004

The entertainment continues.  A rabbi's obituary in today's New York Times (see previous entry) served as ad-bait for "Joshua," a Fox Searchlight film opening July 6.

A search for a less sacrilegious memorial to the rabbi yields the following:

Project MUSE link on Rabbi Abraham Klausner

The "Project MUSE" link above
works only at
subscribing libraries.

  It seems that here, too,
the rabbi is being
used as bait.

  For a perhaps preferable
 reference to bait, in the
context of St. Peter as
a "fisher of men," see
the Christian "mandorla"
or "vesica piscis,"
a figure hidden within
the geometry of Rome's
St. Peter's Square–
which, despite its name,
is an oval:

Mandorla and ovator tondo in St. Peter's Square” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For the geometric
construction of the
 Roman oval, see
"ovato tondo" in
Rudolf Arnheim's
The Power of the Center.

For a less theoretical account
of the religious significance
of the mandorla, see
the 2001 film
The Center of the World.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Thursday March 8, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:13 pm
Introduction to Logic
for International Women's Day

"The logic behind such utterances is the logic
of binary opposition, the principle of non-contra-
diction, often thought of as the very essence of
Logic as such….

Now, my understanding of what is most radical
in deconstruction is precisely that it questions
this basic logic of binary opposition….

Instead of a simple 'either/or' structure,
deconstruction attempts to elaborate a discourse
that says neither "either/or", nor "both/and"
nor even "neither/nor", while at the same time
not totally abandoning these logics either."

Harvard professor Barbara Johnson
in "Nothing Fails Like Success."
(See the previous entry, Day Without Logic.)

The 16 Binary Connectives, with Venn Diagrams

Click to enlarge.

Those who value literary theory
more than they value truth
may prefer, on this
International Women's Day,
the "mandorla" interpretation
of the above diagrams.

For this interpretation, see
Death and the Spirit III,
Burning Bright,
and
The Agony and the Ya-Ya.

Thursday, March 2, 2006

Thursday March 2, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 1:06 pm
Father Figure

Women’s History Month
continues…

“My father is, of course,
as mad as a hatter.”

— Diana Rigg in “The Hospital,”
as transcribed at
script-o-rama.com

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060302-Eureka.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“A vesicle pisces* is the name that author Philip K. Dick gave to a symbol he saw (on February 2**, 1974) on the necklace of a delivery woman.

PKD was probably conflating the names of two related symbols, the ichthys consisting of two intersecting arcs resembling the profile of a fish… used by the early Christians as a secret symbol, and the vesica piscis, from the centre of which the ichthys symbol can be drawn.”

Wikipedia

Related material at Wikipedia:

Related material at Log24:

Related material elsewhere:

* Wikipedia’s earliest online history for this incorrect phrase is from 25 November, 2003, when the phrase was attributed to Dick by an anonymous Wikipedia user, 216.221.81.98, who at that time apparently did not know the correct phrase, “vesica piscis,” which was later supplied (16 February, 2004) by an anonymous user (perhaps the same as the first user, perhaps not) at a different IP address, 217.158.203.103Wikipedia authors have never supplied a source for the alleged use of the phrase by Dick. This comedy of errors would be of little interest were it not for its strong resemblance to the writing process that resulted in what we now call the Bible.

** Other accounts (for instance, Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick, by Lawrence Sutin,  Carroll & Graf paperback (copyright 1989, republished on August 9, 2005), page 210) say Dick’s encounter was not on Groundhog Day (also known as Candlemas), but rather on February 20, 1974.

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Thursday July 29, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:09 am

In loving memory of
Fred “Bubba” LaRue,
architect of Nixon’s
   “southern strategy” —

Part of a Log24 entry
for Saturday, July 24,
LaRue’s apparent
date of death —

Southern
Strategy
Galore:

The Agony
and the Ecstasy

and

a mandorla,
symbol of the Episcopal
Diocese of South Carolina.

The New York Times quotes
LaRue’s son as saying,
“His heart failed while he was
reading a book.”
The title is unknown.

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Saturday July 24, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:09 am

Is Nothing Sacred
(3/09
), continued…

"With a holy host of others
     standing 'round me
Still I'm on the dark side
     of the moon
And it seems like it goes on
     like this forever
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to
     Carolina in my mind."

— James Taylor

"The town of Mount Pleasant
is known for its excellent
public schools, some of the best
in the Charleston School District
and in the State."

The Agent-Owned Realty Co.

Assignments from
a Mount Pleasant high school
summer honors course
….

  1. READ the first two chapters
    of The Source
    by James Michener.
     (1-111)….
  2. WATCH one of the
    following movies:
    The Agony and the Ecstasy,
    A Man for All Seasons,
    Ben Hur,
    Spartacus,
    or
    The Lion in Winter.

The Agony
and the Ecstasy

and

a mandorla,
symbol of the Episcopal
Diocese of South Carolina,
from Log24 entries,
Oct. 4-7, 2002

Friday, October 4, 2002

Friday October 4, 2002

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:17 am

ART WARS:
The Agony and the Ya-Ya

Today's birthdays:

  • Charlton Heston
  • Anne Rice
  • Patti LaBelle

To honor the birth of these three noted spiritual leaders, I make the following suggestion: Use the mandorla as the New Orleans Mardi Gras symbol.  Rice lives in New Orleans and LaBelle's classic "Lady Marmalade" deals with life in that colorful city.

What, you may well ask, is the mandorla? This striking visual symbol was most recently displayed prominently at a meeting of U.S. cardinals in the Pope's private library on Shakespeare's birthday.  The symbol appears in the upper half of a painting above the Pope.

From Church Anatomy:

The illustration below shows how Barbara G. Walker in her excellent book "The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" describes the mandorla.

 

 

 

The Agony
and the Ecstasy

Based on a novel by Irving Stone, this 1965 movie focuses on the relationship between Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) and Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison), who commissioned the artist to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Vesica piscis

Mandorla, "almond," the pointed-oval sign of the yoni, is used in oriental art to signify the divine female genital; also called vesica piscis, the Vessel of the Fish. Almonds were holy symbols because of their female, yonic connotations.

Christian art similarly used the mandorla as a frame for figures of God, Jesus, and saints, because the artists forgot what it formerly meant. I. Frazer, G.B., 403

 

 

 
For further details on the mandorla (also known as the "ya-ya") see my June 12, 2002, note The Ya-Ya Monologues.
 
A somewhat less lurid use of the mandorla in religious art — the emblem of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, taken from the website of St. Michael's Church in Charleston — is shown below.
 

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