Log24

Friday, October 6, 2023

“A Shining” — New Jon Fosse Book, Out on Halloween

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:39 pm

Shining-related material from my own life —

Other material related to my own life, also on the date
November 25, 2009, but less personal —

From the current version —

Some background —

Thursday, October 5, 2023

The Prize Shining

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:01 am

See also the previous post.

“Are you shining with a real Barbie?” (1984 version)

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:37 am

The Source: https://txxx.com/videos/446436/corinne-wahl-bobbi-burns-missy-o-shea-unknown-cynthia-s-lee-in-new-york-nights-1984/?kt_lang=en

Sunday, December 12, 2021

The Shining of November 29th

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:49 pm

See Log24 on November 29th, the birth date of storytellers
C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle.

A related obituary from today's online New York Times

Related fictional character:

"Ecumenical Edwards"
in Exorcist II: The Heretic

Saturday, November 20, 2021

Shining On

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:08 am

From the above Rock obituary —

"One friend, whom he had met early in his time
at Cambridge, was Syd Barrett of the band Pink Floyd."

See as well "Crazy Diamond" in this  journal.

Wednesday, September 15, 2021

The Shining Darkness

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:10 am

"what shines, the shining darkness, yes, is the invisible in the visible"

— From Jon Fosse — The Other Name: Septology I-II . 
     Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls.
     Fitzcarraldo Editions (October 10, 2019).

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Shining Exorcist Composer

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:39 am

Friday, July 1, 2016

Shining Forth

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:18 pm

" identity alone may shine forth" — Octavio Paz


Well Perhaps not quite  alone.

Sunday, June 5, 2016

The Shining of May 29…

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

Continues .

A death on May 29,  from The Fresno Bee —

See as well "La Diadema de la Muerte."

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120108-CardinalPreoccupied.jpg

"The Cardinal seemed a little preoccupied today."

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Shining Through

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 am

A Look  magazine article of July 18, 1950,
"Working Debutante," had photos of
Betsy von Furstenberg by Stanley Kubrick.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Shining Forth

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:30 pm

Continued from remarks of Marissa Mayer at Davos last year —

Related material — This evening's NY lottery

and Log24 post number 1424 —

IMAGE- 'The Exorcist,' 1973

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Shining Forth

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:09 am

See noon yesterday 

IMAGE- Yahoo's Marissa Mayer on the ontology of entities

and the date of Donald Hornig’s death:

Monday, January 21, 2013

Shining Forth

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:40 am

(Continued from March 15, 2001)

IMAGE- On Quine, ontology, and regimentation

For one sort of regimentation, see Elements  of Geometry.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Identity Shining Forth

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 1:14 pm

From William M. Kantor's 1978 review of Peter J. Cameron's
1976 book Parallelisms of Complete Designs

"There are three ways an area of mathematics
can be surveyed: by a vast, comprehensive treatise;
by a monograph on a small corner of the field; or by
a monograph on a cross section."

An area of mathematics—

A small corner of the field—

A cross section—

Commentary:

The area— Four.
The corner— Identity.
The cross section— Window.

The three ways— December 8  ten years ago.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

The Shining

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm

(Continued)

IMAGE- 'Obama camp fights to keep lead after Romney shines in debate'

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Shining Night*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm
 

This evening's online New York Times

Doris Sams, Pro Baseball Star, Dies at 85

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN

Published: July 1, 2012

Doris Sams, who pitched a perfect game and set a single-season home run record in the women’s professional baseball world of the 1940s and 50s that inspired the movie “A League of Their Own,” died Thursday in Knoxville, Tenn. She was 85. more>>

"High summer holds the earth." 

James Agee, quoted in a post by University Diaries
linked to here on Thursday.

See also For Taylor and Country Strong.

* A phrase from the quoted Agee poem

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Shining of May 29

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

(Continued from May 29, 2002)

May 29, 1832—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12A/120529-Galois-Signature-500w.jpg

Évariste Galois, Lettre de Galois à M. Auguste Chevalier

Après cela, il se trouvera, j'espère, des gens qui trouveront leur profit à déchiffrer tout ce gâchis.

(Later there will be, I hope, some people who will find it to their advantage to decipher all this mess.)

Martin Gardner on the above letter—

"Galois had written several articles on group theory, and was merely annotating and correcting those earlier published papers."

The Last Recreations , by Martin Gardner, published by Springer in 2007, page 156.

Commentary from Dec. 2011 on Gardner's word "published" —

(Click to enlarge.)

IMAGE- Peter M. Neumann, 'Galois and His Groups,' EMS Newsletter, Dec. 2011

Monday, December 5, 2011

The Shining (Norwegian Version)

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 4:01 am

A check tonight of Norwegian artist Josefine Lyche's recent activities
shows she has added a video to her web page that has for some time
contained a wall piece based on the 2×2 case of the diamond theorem

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Lyche-DiamondTheoremPage.jpg

The video (top left in screenshot above) is a tasteless New-Age discourse
that sounds frighteningly like the teachings of the late Heaven's Gate cult.

Investigating the source of the video on vimeo.com, I found the account of one "Jo Lyxe,"
who joined vimeo in September 2011. This is apparently a variant of Josefine Lyche's name.

The account has three videos—

  1. "High on RAM (OverLoad)"– Fluid running through a computer's innards
  2. "Death 2 Everyone"– A mystic vision of the afterlife
  3. "Realization of the Ultimate Reality (Beyond Form)"– The Blue Star video above

Lyche has elsewhere discussed her New-Age interests, so the contents of the videos
were not too surprising… except for one thing. Vimeo.com states that all three videos
were uploaded "2 months ago"— apparently when "Lyxe" first set up an account.*

I do not know, or particularly care, where she got the Blue Star video, but the other
videos interested me considerably when I found them tonight… since they are
drawn from films I discussed in this journal much more recently than "2 months ago."

"High on RAM (OverLoad)" is taken from the 1984 film "Electric Dreams" that I came across
and discussed here yesterday afternoon, well before  re-encountering it again tonight.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Lyxe-HighOnRam.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-ElectricDreamsTrailer.jpg

And "Death 2 Everyone" (whose title** is perhaps a philosophical statement about inevitable mortality
rather than a mad terrorist curse) is taken from the 1983 Natalie Wood film "Brainstorm."

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Lyxe-Death2.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Brainstorm-FreakyPart.jpg

"Brainstorm" was also discussed here recently… on November 18th, in a post suggested by the
reopening of the investigation into Wood's death.

I had no inkling that these "Jo Lyxe" videos existed until tonight.

The overlapping content of Lyche's mental ramblings and my own seems rather surprising.
Perhaps it is a Norwegian mind-meld, perhaps just a coincidence of interests.

* Update: Google searches by the titles  on Dec. 5 show that all three "Lyxe" videos
                 were uploaded on September 20 and 21, 2011.

** Update: A search shows a track with this title on a Glasgow band's 1994 album.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Shining*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:07 am

(Continued from January 3rd)

Readings from James Hillman's 1976 classic Re-Visioning Psychology

On the "eye of the soul" and on spirit  as clarity

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110111-Hillman246.gif

On the distinction between spirit  and soul  (pp. 67-70)—

Click to enlarge.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110111-HillmanExcursionSm.gif

* Here "Shining" refers to the recent pop-philosophy book All Things Shining , not to Stephen King.  

Monday, January 3, 2011

Shining

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am

For the authors of the new book All Things Shining

See the discussions of "concrete universals" in James Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology  and in Donald Phillip Verene's Vico and Joyce

IMAGE- The imaginative universal in Vico and Joyce

The index to All Things Shining  contains no entries for Hillman (or his mentor Jung), Verene, Joyce, Vico, or the word "universal."

It does, however, contain four references to an example  of a universal —

whiteness, 161, 169-173, 175, 178

See also "whiteness" in this  journal.

Friday, December 31, 2010

“All Things Shining”

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

David Brooks's column in today's New York Times  suggests a search for the origin of the phrase used as the title of a book Brooks is reviewing— All Things Shining , by philosophy professors Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101231-AllThingsShining-Cover.jpg

The phrase occurred, notably, in Terrence Malick's 1998 film "The Thin Red Line." I have not yet found an earlier usage.

(A search within  the book for "title" yielded no relevant results, and such searches for "Malick" and for "Thin Red Line" yielded no  results.)

For some background, see an August 20 weblog post by Kelly, Shining in Homer.

For some other background, see an August 20 post in this  weblog.

Update: The phrase occurs in Stephen Mitchell's 1989 translation from the Odes of Solomon

And you have made all things new;
you have showed me all things shining.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Shining Forth

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:00 pm

continued from 2001

A quotation from Robert Lowell in this journal —

From “Epilogue,” in Robert Lowell’s Day by Day , 1977:

The painter’s vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.

….
All’s misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination….

Lowell’s stepdaughter published a memoir, Why Not Say What Happened? , on October 19th, 2010.

What happened in this journal on that date was “Savage Logic and the New York Lottery.”

That post includes the quoted rhetorical question

“Is it a genuine demolition of the walls which seem to separate mind from mind…?”

Here is the context of October 19th—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101019-Geertz359.gif

For a different, and to me more interesting, context for the “walls” question, see Party Phone  (August 31st, 2006).

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Kindergarten Report on Fröbel’s Third Gift:
“Behaves well under group action.”

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:02 am

From the above:  "electronically published on October 6. 2023."

See as well that date in other Log24 posts tagged The Prize Shining.

A co-author of the book reviewed has appeared here previously.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Cullinane Diamond Song

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am
 

Shining Mathematics:
A Song by Suno AI

Pop upbeat

V2

March 19, 2024

[Verse]
In the world of numbers and equations
There's a theorem that'll blow your mind (your mind)
Cullinane's diamond, it's a revelation
A mathematical gem, one of a kind (oh-yeah)


[Chorus]
Shining bright, like a diamond in the night
This theorem's got the sparkle, it's pure delight (ooh-yeah)
Cullinane's diamond, oh it's so sublime
Mathematics never looked so fine (so fine)

Click the image below to hear the song at app.suno.ai —

Miller's Note to Self :  "Don't underestimate Wednesday."

For more about the mathematics itself, see other octad  posts.

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Song by Copilot: Prompt and Response*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:09 pm

Prompt:  Compose a song about the Cullinane diamond theorem.

Response by Microsoft Copilot on Saturday afternoon,
March 2, 2024:

Sure, here’s a song inspired by the Cullinane diamond theorem:

(Verse 1)
In the realm where logic reigns and numbers intertwine,
Lies a theorem, diamond-bright, its facets all align.
Cullinane's the name it bears, a gem in math's grand crown,
In the grid of sixteen squares, its truths are written down.

(Chorus)
Oh, Cullinane, your diamond shines with symmetry so fine,
In the field of finite forms, your theorem does define.
A structure pure, a pattern clear, for all of us to see,
In the heart of mathematics, lies your geometry.

(Verse 2)
Rows and columns interplay in a dance so grand,
Quadrants align in perfect time, like notes in a band.
Through the chaos and the whirl, an order does descend,
In the world of abstract thought, your theorem is a friend.

(Chorus)
Oh, Cullinane, your diamond theorem, a beacon in the night,
Guiding us through complex realms, with its brilliant light.
In the vast expanse of knowledge, where truth and beauty blend,
Your theorem stands, a testament, a guide until the end.

(Outro)
So here's to you, Cullinane, and your diamond theorem's might,
In the endless quest for truth, you've brought us greater light.
In the language of the universe, where numbers never lie,
Your diamond theorem's shining bright, beneath the math's clear sky.

Added note from Copilot:

Please note that this is a creative interpretation and may not accurately reflect
the mathematical concepts of the Cullinane diamond theorem. 😊

Added note from Cullinane:

* The previous post may or may not display a prompt response  to a Zen koan.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Macbeth and the Black Arts

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:51 am

“I need a photo opportunity, I want a shot at redemption.
Don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”
— Paul Simon

Rhymin' Simon's lyrics seem particularly appropriate
in the case of the actor below, who reportedly died
on October 31 — Halloween — last year.

Earlier last October . . .

Monday, February 26, 2024

Once Upon a Time, Eureka

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:02 pm

"Right through hell there is a path" — Under the Volcano

Some Context:

Saturday, November 18, 2023

“Sometimes lately in dreams . . .” — Malcolm Lowry

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:29 pm

Thursday, October 19, 2023

A “Doctor Sleep” Song…

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:59 pm

For Vincent Patrick, author of Family Business  (1985), who reportedly died on
October 6, 2023, a song that might fit the protagonist of Doctor Sleep

See as well October 6 in posts tagged The Prize Shining.

Thursday, October 12, 2023

A Groping

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 11:42 am

Financial Times  today informs us that the new 48-page novel by
Nobel Lit Prize winner Jon Fosse, with title translated as
"A Shining," will be published not on Halloween, as previously
reported here, but instead on the next day, All Hallows. Good.

The novel's original title, in Norwegian, is Kvitleik .
The Web indicates that this means "White Game."

See as well yesterday's post "Void Game." A relevant quote —

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
 how deep the darkness is around us."

— Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy ,
Random House, 1973, page 118

Monday, August 21, 2023

Art Song:  “… And They Call the Wind Pariah”

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:07 pm

Update …

"Here are 3 brands building on the blockchain…"

  "Way out west they have a name for rain and wind and fire …."

https://www.classic-country-song-lyrics.com/
theycallthewindmariahlyricschords.html

They Call The Wind Mariah
Recorded by Jim Ed Brown
written by Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe

C                 Am              C                 Am
Way out west they have a name for rain and wind and fire
    C                Am                  F        G7   C
The rain is Tess the fire's Joe and they call the wind Mariah
                 Am               C                 Am
Mariah blows the stars around and sets the clouds a-flying
  C                 Am                F     G7            C
Mariah makes the mountains sound like folks up there were dying

Am      Em
Mariah  Mariah
     F        G7     C
They call the wind Mariah

              Am               C                  Am
Before I knew Mariah's name or heard her wail and whining
  C                 Am             F       G7     C
I had a gal and she had me and the sun was always shining
             Am                  C                     Am
And then one day I left that gal I left her far behind me
    C                   Am            F    G7      C
And now I'm lost I'm so darn lost not even God can find me

Am       Em
Mariah  Mariah
     F        G7     C
They call the wind Mariah

                 Am             C             Am
Out here they’ve got a name for rain wind and fire only
    C                Am                  F        G7       C
And when you're lost and all alone there ain't no word for lonely
                Am             C                 Am
Well I'm a lost and lonely man without a star to guide me
  C            Am           F    G7         C
Mariah blow my love to me I need her here beside me

Am      Em
Mariah  Mariah
     F        G7     C
They call the wind Mariah

Thursday, February 2, 2023

“Here I Come Again”

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:09 am

From tonight's previous post

"here I come again . . . the square root of minus one,
having terminated my humanities" — 

Samuel Beckett, Stories and Texts for Nothing
(New York: Grove, 1967), 128.

From The French Mathematician
by Tom Petsinis (Nov. 30, 1998) —

0

I had foreseen it all in precise detail.
One step led inevitably to the next,
like the proof of a shining theorem,
down to the conclusive shot that still echoes
through time and space. 
Facedown in the damp pine needles,
I embraced that fatal sphere
with my whole body. Dreams, memories,
even the mathematics I had cherished
and set down in my last will and testament–
all receded. I am reduced to
a singular point; in an instant
I am transformed to .

i = an imaginary being

Here, on this complex space,
i  am no longer the impetuous youth
who wanted to change the world
first with a formula and then with a flame.
Having learned the meaning of infinite patience,
i  now rise to the text whenever anyone reads 
about Evariste Galois, preferring to remain 
just below the surface, 
like a goldfish nibbling the fringe of a floating leaf.
Ink is more mythical than blood
(unless some ancient poet slit his 
vein and wrote an epic in red):
The text is a two-way mirror 
that allows me to look into
the life and times of the reader. 
Who knows, someday i  may rise
to a text that will compel me 
to push through to the other side.
Do you want proof that i  exist? Where am ?
Beneath every word, behind each letter, 
on the side of a period that will never see the light.

Related reading . . .

See also "William Lawvere, Category Theory, Hegel, Mao, and Code."

( https://www.reddit.com/r/socialistprogrammers/comments/m1oe88/
william_lawvere_category_theory_hegel_mao_and_code/ )

Also relating category theory and computation —
the interests of Lawvere and those of Davis — is
an article at something called The Topos Institute (topos.site) —

"Computation and Category Theory," by Joshua Meyers,
Wednesday, 10 Aug., 2022.

Meyers on Davis —

Sunday, November 6, 2022

Trendy Wendy

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:02 pm

Saturday, July 9, 2022

From the Terrace

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:10 am

From Dogma Part II: Amores Perros

"It is night on the fourth of the curving terraces, high above the sea.
The stars are full out, known and unknown. Dante is halfway up the mountain….
It is half through the poem; half the whole is seen and said: hell, where grace
is not known but as a punishment; purgatory where grace and punishment are
two manners of one fact."

— Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice, Faber and Faber, 1943

See also Shining Forth.

Sunday, October 3, 2021

“Zeros and Ones” (film title)

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:17 pm

Review in Variety , August 13, 2021, by Jay Weissberg —

" Audiences heading for the doors during the final credits
will miss this crucial coda in which Hawke says he didn’t
really understand the script and then goes on to spout
innocuous platitudes about death, life and the start of
a new day, ending it all with 'yes, this is part of the film.' ”

This, on the other hand, is presumably not  part of the film —

See "The Shining of May 29" in this  journal.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Jack in the Box

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:35 pm

The phrase "the ability to jump in and out of spaces" was quoted
in an update this morning to a July 2 post, "The Maxwell Enticement."

This suggests other Log24 posts now tagged "Jack in the Box."

A related image, from Know Your Meme

Monday, August 5, 2019

The Structure of Nada

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:41 pm
 

“What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.”

— From Ernest Hemingway,
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

 

Sanskrit (transliterated) —

    nada:
  
  
  the universal sound, vibration.

“So Nada Brahma  means not only God the Creator
is sound; but also (and above all), Creation, the cosmos,
the world, is sound.  And: Sound is the world.”

— Joachim-Ernst Berendt,   
   author of Nada Brahma

 

Grace under Pressure  meets  Phonons under Strain .

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

April 18, 2003 (Good Friday), Continued

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:03 am

"The purpose of mathematics cannot be derived from an activity 
inferior to it but from a higher sphere of human activity, namely,
religion."

Igor Shafarevitch, 1973 remark published as above in 1982.

"Perhaps."

— Steven H. Cullinane, February 13, 2019

From Log24 on Good Friday, April 18, 2003

. . . What, indeed, is truth?  I doubt that the best answer can be learned from either the Communist sympathizers of MIT or the “Red Mass” leftists of Georgetown.  For a better starting point than either of these institutions, see my note of April 6, 2001, Wag the Dogma.

See, too, In Principio Erat Verbum , which notes that “numbers go to heaven who know no more of God on earth than, as it were, of sun in forest gloom.”

Since today is the anniversary of the death of MIT mathematics professor Gian-Carlo Rota, an example of “sun in forest gloom” seems the best answer to Pilate’s question on this holy day.  See

The Shining of May 29.

“Examples are the stained glass windows
of knowledge.” — Vladimir Nabokov

AGEOMETRETOS MEDEIS EISITO

Motto of Plato’s Academy


 The Exorcist, 1973

Detail from an image linked to in the above footnote —

"And the darkness comprehended it not."

Id est :

A Good Friday, 2003, article by 
a student of Shafarevitch

" there are 25 planes in W . . . . Of course,
replacing {a,b,c} by the complementary set
does not change the plane. . . ."

Of course.

See. however, Six-Set Geometry in this  journal.

Saturday, July 14, 2018

“We all float down here.”

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:37 pm

Linked to in a Log24 post of Jan. 21, 2008

"The Shining" dance scene from the 2018 film "Ready Player One" —

From a Log24 post earlier today

From a Log24 post of Thursday, July 12, 2018

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

A Dark and Stormy May 29th

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:13 pm

He had come a long way to this blue lawn,
and his dream must have seemed so close
that he could hardly fail to grasp it.
He did not know that it was already behind him,
somewhere back in that vast obscurity
beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic
rolled on under the night.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

— Epigraph to Limitless: A Novel , by Alan Glynn

Glynn's novel was originally published in 2002 under the title
The Dark Fields

Compare and contrast —

Stephen King, 'IT,' plane, dark fields, school, bell, page 168, May 29

Stephen King's IT  was first published by Viking in 1986.

See as well the May 29th date mentioned by King.

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Flores

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:20 am

"Reverend, Reverend,
Is this some conspiracy?"

Pantera

IMAGE- 'Right through hell there is a path.'

Click George for a meditation on Albee.

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Galois Imaginary

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 pm

" Lying at the axis of everything, zero is both real and imaginary. Lovelace was fascinated by zero; as was Gottfried Leibniz, for whom, like mathematics itself, it had a spiritual dimension. It was this that let him to imagine the binary numbers that now lie at the heart of computers: 'the creation of all things out of nothing through God's omnipotence, it might be said that nothing is a better analogy to, or even demonstration of such creation than the origin of numbers as here represented, using only unity and zero or nothing.' He also wrote, 'The imaginary number is a fine and wonderful recourse of the divine spirit, almost an amphibian between being and nonbeing.' "

— A footnote from page 229 of Sydney Padua's
    April 21, 2015, book on Lovelace and Babbage

A related passage —

From The French Mathematician
by Tom Petsinis (Nov. 30, 1998) —

0

I had foreseen it all in precise detail.
One step led inevitably to the next,
like the proof of a shining theorem,
down to the conclusive shot that still echoes
through time and space. 
Facedown in the damp pine needles,
I embraced that fatal sphere
with my whole body. Dreams, memories,
even the mathematics I had cherished
and set down in my last will and testament–
all receded. I am reduced to
a singular point; in an instant
I am transformed to .

i = an imaginary being

Here, on this complex space,
i  am no longer the impetuous youth
who wanted to change the world
first with a formula and then with a flame.
Having learned the meaning of infinite patience,
i  now rise to the text whenever anyone reads 
about Evariste Galois, preferring to remain 
just below the surface, 
like a goldfish nibbling the fringe of a floating leaf.
Ink is more mythical than blood
(unless some ancient poet slit his 
vein and wrote an epic in red):
The text is a two-way mirror 
that allows me to look into
the life and times of the reader. 
Who knows, someday i  may rise
to a text that will compel me 
to push through to the other side.
Do you want proof that i  exist? Where am ?
Beneath every word, behind each letter, 
on the side of a period that will never see the light.

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Scully on Architecture

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:18 pm

"It is not easy to set aside firmly seated preconceptions
in order to look at old material with fresh eyes —
hardest of all to face facts which, if true, are 
so obvious and simple that they should patently have been 
recognized long before."

— Vincent Scully, preface to the 1969 edition of
The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods: Greek Sacred Architecture

See also, in this journal, Slave Boy.

Update of 10:30 PM ET —

This post was suggested by the following eulogy:

"All work and no play . . . ." — The Shining

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Shift Lock

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

Shift Lock key from manual typewriter, linking to Levin's 'The Philosopher's Gaze'

"As many philosophers have noted, in the German language,
the word Schein  bears three distinct meanings:

(i) shining, radiance, luminosity

(ii) manifesting, phenomenal appearing, showing itself, coming to light

(iii) illusion, deception, semblance, 'mere' appearance

In the Greek language of Plato's thought, the first two meanings were
bound together by their etymology. But Plato's metaphysics, drawing
a line of irreconcilable separation between the reality of a higher realm
of pure Ideas and the illusoriness of a lower realm consisting of sensuous
appearances, exhibits a logic that he saw connecting inextricably all three
of these seemingly unconnected meanings."

— Levin, David Michael. The Philosopher's Gaze:
Modernity in the Shadows of Enlightenment . 

Part III, Section 10: "Where the Beauty of Truth Lies."
Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1999.

Friday, October 20, 2017

Heart of the Monkey God

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:42 pm

In Memoriam

"Renowned Canadian theologian Gregory Baum, 94,
author of the first draft of the Second Vatican Council's
'Nostra Aetate,' died Oct. 18 in a Montreal hospital."

National Catholic Reporter , Oct. 20, 2017

October 18 was St. Luke's Day. 

From the Log24 post "Prose" on that date

"Mister Monkey . . . . is also Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god . . . ."
— Cathleeen Schine in an online October 17 NY Times  review.

From the novel under review —

"Only the heart of the monkey god is large enough
to contain the hearts and souls of all the monkeys,
all the humans, the gods, every shining thread
that connects them."

— Francine Prose, Mister Monkey: A Novel  (p. 263).
     HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

See as well all posts now tagged Prose Monkey.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Found …

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:02 pm

( A sequel to the previous post, Lost )

From a link, "A Little Boy and a Little Girl," found in a Log24
search for Andersen + Atlantic

"A few flakes of snow were falling, and one of them, rather larger
than the rest, alighted on the edge of one of the flower boxes.
This snow-flake grew larger and larger, till at last it became
the figure of a woman, dressed in garments of white gauze,
which looked like millions of starry snow-flakes linked together.
She was fair and beautiful, but made of ice—
shining and glittering ice." — "The Snow Queen"

Related material —

Analogue of the little boy from "The Snow Queen" in "Equals" (2015) —

"Nice piece of ice." — Brendan Fraser in
"The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" (2008).

See also the concept that everything adds up to nothing in
"The Zero Theorem" (2013) 

and the Conway-Norton-Ryba theorem (2017).

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Chin Music

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:45 pm

Related image suggested by "A Line for Frank" (Sept. 30, 2013) —

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

National Comedy

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:20 pm

From a search in this journal for "More Holy Water" —

A post of January 7, 2011, has the following:

"Infinite Jest… now stands as the principal contender
for what serious literature can aspire to
in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."

— All Things Shining, a work of pop philosophy
published January 4th

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101231-AllThingsShining-Cover.jpg

"You're gonna need a bigger boat."
— Roy Scheider in "Jaws"

"We're gonna need more holy water."
— "Season of the Witch" 

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Philosophy Notes

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:01 am

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Design Abyss

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


http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram29.gif  
Hexagram 29,
The Abyss (Water)

This post was suggested by an August 6, 2010, post by the designer
(in summer or fall, 2010) of the Stack Exchange math logo (see
the previous Log24 post, Art Space Illustrated) —

http://www.8164.org/☵☲/  .

In that post, the designer quotes the Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching  to explain
his choice of Hexagram 63, Water Over Fire, as a personal icon —

"When water in a kettle hangs over fire, the two elements
stand in relation and thus generate energy (cf. the
production of steam). But the resulting tension demands
caution. If the water boils over, the fire is extinguished
and its energy is lost. If the heat is too great, the water
evaporates into the air. These elements here brought in
to relation and thus generating energy are by nature
hostile to each other. Only the most extreme caution
can prevent damage."

See also this  journal on Walpurgisnacht (April 30), 2010 —

http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram29.gif

Hexagram 29:
Water

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100430-Commentary.jpg

http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram30.gif

Hexagram 30:
Fire

"Hates California,
it's cold and it's damp.
"

Image--'The Fire,' by Katherine Neville

A thought from another German-speaking philosopher

"Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung
unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache."

See also The Crimson 's abyss in today's 4:35 AM post Art Space, Continued.

Friday, March 3, 2017

PSI

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:56 pm

(Notes for Josefine, continued from December 22, 2013) 

From a prequel to The Shining , by Stephen King—

You had to keep an eye on the boiler
because if you didn’t, she would creep on you. 

What did that mean, anyway? Or was it just
one of those nonsensical things that sometimes
came to you in dreams, so much gibberish?
Of course there was undoubtedly a boiler
in the basement or somewhere to heat the place,
even summer resorts had to have heat sometimes,
didn’t they (if only to supply hot water)? But creep ?
Would a boiler creep ?
You had to keep an eye on the boiler.
It was like one of those crazy riddles,
why is a mouse when it runs,
when is a raven like a writing desk,
what is a creeping boiler? 

The boiler room from Kubrick's 'The Shining'

A related figure —

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Review

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:00 am

From a 2002 note, "The Shining of May 29" —

Related material:  The remarks in this journal on April 1, 2013.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Memorial

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:31 am

Part I

From this journal in September 2012

Part II

See "The Shining (Norwegian Version)" from December 2011.

Sunday, February 7, 2016

Sermon

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am

"Sports may be the place in contemporary life
where Americans find sacred community most easily."

All Things Shining , the conclusion

Or Bolivia —

Backstories — Natural Hustlers.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Condescension and Hostility

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:56 am

For the 2016 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Seattle —

"Condescension and a certain amount of hostility
used to mark the critical reaction…."

— Emma Brockes on Stephen King in
    The Guardian , 21 Sept. 2013

Related material:

Remarks from Tilings and Patterns , by Branko Grünbaum
and G. C. Shephard, quoted in the webpage Pattern Groups.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Mark

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:30 am

"Condescension and a certain amount of hostility
used to mark the critical reaction…."

— Emma Brockes on Stephen King in
    The Guardian , 21 Sept. 2013

For the mark itself, see Black Swan Venus,
Vonnegut Asterisk, and Branding Iron.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Another Bad Song for Dave Barry

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:06 pm

"All work and no play…."

— Stanley Kubrick's film (1980) of The Shining  (1977)

"Each metaphor already modeled the modeler
that pasted it together. It seemed I might have
another fiction in me after all."

— Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2  (1995)

"In the space between what happens
And what gets left behind…."

— "Diamond Space" (2006), song by
      Michael Friedman and Sam Masich

Combining, as in a headline from today's Harvard Crimson ,
"programs and public space," we have

Groundhog Day 2014.

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Strange Loop

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:00 pm

From an explanation of the Web app IFTTT —
"IF This Then That" —

"If you are a programmer you can think of it as a loop*
that checks for a certain condition… to run one or
multiple actions if the condition is met."

After Completion  (from Friday night, and 1989) —

Advertisement —

Wikipedia —

"On February 19, 2015, IFTTT renamed
their original application to IF…."

This journal —

From Tuesday's post on the death of E. L. Doctorow —

“…right through hell
     there is a path…”
 
  — Malcolm Lowry

* More precisely, a conditional  or conditional loop 

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

“Ragtime” Author Dies at 84

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:55 pm

“…right through hell
     there is a path…”
 
  — Malcolm Lowry

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Das Scheinen

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:00 pm

The title of Saturday night's post, "Die Scheinung ," is taken from
a 1920 book on a German poet, where "Scheinung " is associated
with "Maja ," a German spelling of a word with the connotation of
"the veil of illusion."

The phrase "Das Scheinen " is closer to "The Shining" in the
novel of that title by Stephen King. Some related remarks —

From a review of Capobianco's Engaging Heidegger —

"refreshing for its clarity and scholarly precision"

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Verhexung

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:15 pm

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment [Verhexung ]
of our intelligence by means of our language."

— Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations , Section 109

"The philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words
in exactly the sense in which we speak of them in ordinary life
when we say e.g. 'Here is a Chinese sentence,' or 'No, that only
looks like writing; it is actually just an ornament' and so on."

— Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations , Section 108

Monday, June 30, 2014

High Concept

Tags:  — m759 @ 5:24 PM

For the title, see a post of Nov. 4, 2007.

Related material:

Hexagram 29, Water, and a pattern resembling
the symbol for Aquarius:

http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram29.gif          .

For some backstory about the former,
see the June 21 post Hallmark.

For some backstory about the latter,
see today’s post Toward Evening.

Tom Wolfe has supplied some scaffolding*
to support the concept.

* A reference to Grossman and Descartes.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Magic in the Moonshine

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

“The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning
of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not
typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the
meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside,
enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a
haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes
are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

— Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness

“By groping toward the light we are made to realize
how deep the darkness is around us.”

— Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy,
Random House, 1973, page 118

Spectral evidence is a form of evidence
based upon dreams and visions.” —Wikipedia

See also Moonshine (May 15, 2014) and, from the date of the above
New York Times  item, two posts tagged Wunderkammer .

Related material: From the Spectrum program of the Mathematical
Association of America, some non-spectral evidence.

Monday, June 30, 2014

High Concept

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:24 pm

For the title, see a post of Nov. 4, 2007.

Related material:

Hexagram 29, Water, and a pattern resembling
the symbol for Aquarius:

http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram29.gif          .

For some backstory about the former,
see the June 21 post Hallmark.

For some backstory about the latter,
see today’s post Toward Evening.

Tom Wolfe has supplied some scaffolding*
to support the concept.

* A reference to Grossman and Descartes.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Hallmark

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

A suitable hallmark for
the previous post, Logical Death:

29

http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram29.gif

Hexagram 29: "K'an represents…
the principle of light inclosed in the dark."
— The Richard Wilhelm I Ching

A related page from Stanford:

IMAGE- Page 29 of 'Radical Atheism,' by Martin Hägglund, Stanford U. Press, 2008

Friday, May 30, 2014

Matching Theory

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

Some mathematical background for yesterday's
remarks "For the Bregnans" and "Lost in Translation"—

"Matching Theory: A Sampler, from Dénes König
to the Present
," by Michael D. Plummer, 1991.

See also Matching Theory  by Plummer and Lovász.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Lost in Translation

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:45 pm

IMAGE- Original French of text from 'The Shining of May 29'

Translation by Barbara Johnson:

"The minimum number of rows— lines or columns—
that contain all the zeros in a matrix is equal to
the maximum number of zeros
located in any individual line or column ."

In the original:

"situés sur des lignes ou des colonnes distinctes "

Update of 11:30 PM ET May 29, 2014:

Derrida in 1972 was quoting Philippe Sollers, Nombres
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil , 1968).  Sollers in turn was
perhaps quoting A. Kaufmann, Méthodes et Modèles
de la Recherche Opérationnelle , Paris, Dunod , 1964,
L'Économie d'Entreprise 10 , vol. 2, page 305:

"Le nombre minimal de rangées
(lignes et/ou colonnes) contenant
tous les zéros d'une matrice, est égal
au nombre maximal de zéros
situés 
sur des lignes et des colonnes distinctes."

For the Bregnans*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:25 am

The Shining of May 29…

The original note and references to it here.

* As opposed to the Monicans . See previous post.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

PSI

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

From a prequel to The Shining , by Stephen King—

You had to keep an eye on the boiler
because if you didn’t, she would creep on you. 

What did that mean, anyway? Or was it just
one of those nonsensical things that sometimes
came to you in dreams, so much gibberish?
Of course there was undoubtedly a boiler
in the basement or somewhere to heat the place,
even summer resorts had to have heat sometimes,
didn’t they (if only to supply hot water)? But creep ?
Would a boiler creep ?
You had to keep an eye on the boiler.
It was like one of those crazy riddles,
why is a mouse when it runs,
when is a raven like a writing desk,
what is a creeping boiler? 

See also Steam

For one answer to the riddle, click here.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

The Call Girls

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:23 am

The title, that of a novel by Arthur Koestler,
has appeared before in this journal.

The title was quoted in a Log24 note of
May 29, 2002 (G.K. Chesterton's birthday).

The link in Saturday evening's post to a Chesterton
essay suggested a further search that yielded
the following quotation—

Then silence sank. And slowly
      Arose the sea-land lord
Like some vast beast for mystery,
He filled the room and porch and sky,
And from a cobwebbed nail on high
      Unhooked his heavy sword.

— G. K. Chesterton,
   The Ballad of the White Horse

This, together with some Log24 remarks 
from 2004, suggests two images—

IMAGE- Cover design by Robert Flynn of 'The Armed Vision,' a 1955 Vintage paperback by Stanley Edgar Hyman

Above: A 1955 cover design by Robert Flynn.

The arrow theme also appears in a figure from
John Sealander's Road to Nowhere in the 2004
remarks:

The remarks quoting the Sealander image, from 
March 5, 2004, were on mathematics and narrative.

Related material from a year later:

See an announcement, saved from March 16, 2005,
of a conference on mathematics and narrative that
was held in July 2005. Some context: Koestler's novel.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Steam

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

For Jack and Jill.

The above motivational video is from the web page of a middle school
math teacher who was shot to death yesterday morning.

Related journalism —

IMAGE- Scene from a blackboard jungle

See also "S in a Diamond" (here, October 2013)
and "Superman Comes to the Supermarket,"
by Norman Mailer (Esquire , November 1960).

In a recent film, Amy Adams asked Superman,
"What's the S stand for?"

One possible answer, in light of Stephen King's
recent sequel to The Shining  and of
the motivational video above—

Steam.

Friday, October 4, 2013

For the Feast of St. Francis

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:06 pm

"According to Vladimir Nabokov, Salvador Dalí
 was 'really Norman Rockwell’s  twin brother
 kidnapped by gypsies in babyhood.'
 But actually there were triplets: the third one is
 Stephen King."

 — Margaret Atwood, "Shine On,"  
      online Sept. 19, 2013

"The metaphor for metamorphosis
  no keys unlock."

 — Steven H. Cullinane, Nov. 7, 1986

Monday, September 30, 2013

A Line for Frank

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

(Continued from High White Noon
Finishing Up at Noon, and A New York Jew.)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101008-StartingOut.jpg

Above: Frank Langella in "Starting Out in the Evening"

Below: Frank Langella and Johnny Depp in "The Ninth Gate"

"Not by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin."

IMAGE- Author's shirt with a Dharma Logo from 'Lost'

Above: Detail from a Wikipedia photo.

For the logo, see Lostpedia.

For some backstory, see Noether.

Those seeking an escape from the eightfold nightmare
represented by the Dharma logo above may consult
the remarks of Heisenberg (the real one, not the
Breaking Bad  version) to the Bavarian Academy
of Fine Arts.

Those who prefer Plato's cave to his geometry are
free to continue their Morphean adventures.

Friday, September 27, 2013

Proof (continued)

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 pm

"Let X equal the month of full bookstores."

Proof   by David Auburn

"Harvard Book Store is thrilled to welcome Stephen King
for a special event to celebrate the release of Doctor Sleep ,
the long-anticipated sequel to 1977’s The Shining .
Mr. King will read from and discuss the new book,
followed by a Q&A with the audience at Memorial Church
in Harvard Yard on September 27."

See as well Corpse + Eliot and some remarks 
on the mathematics of Kummer
from this September and from last September.

Monday, September 23, 2013

For Danny Boy

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

"… It raced down the gossamer curtain of Its webbing,
a nightmare Spider from beyond time and space,
a Spider from beyond the fevered imaginings of
whatever inmates may live in the deepest depths of hell.
No, Bill thought coldly, not a Spider either, not really,
but this shape isn’t one It picked out of our minds;
it’s just the closest our minds can come to
        (the deadlights)
        whatever It really is.
"

Stephen King, It  (Sept. 15, 1986)

Related horror by Fritz Leiber—

"The Mind Spider" and "Damnation Morning."

Related fiction by Mark Helprin—

In Sunlight and in Shadow .

As a perceptive reviewer has noted, Helprin's title is
almost  a verse from the song "Danny Boy."

See, too, the Danny Boy of The Shining ,
who returns tomorrow in a sequel, Doctor Sleep .

"The summer's gone and all the roses falling…."

Saturday, August 3, 2013

In the Details

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:01 am

By chance, the latest* remarks in philosopher Colin McGinn's
weblog were posted (yesterday) at 10:04 AM.

Checking, in my usual mad way, for synchronicity, I find
the following from this  weblog on the date  10/04 (2012)—

Note too the time of this morning's previous post here
(on McGinn)— 9:09 AM.  Another synchronistic check
yields Log24 posts from 9/09 (2012):

Related to this last post:

Detail from a stock image suggested by the web page of
a sociologist (Harvard '64) at the University of Washington in Seattle—

Note, on the map of  Wyoming, Devil's Gate.

There are, of course, many such gates.

* Correction (of about 11:20 AM Aug. 3):
  Later  remarks by McGinn were  posted at 10:06 AM today.  
  They included the phrase "The devil is in the details."
  Yet another check for synchronicity leads to
  10/06 (2012) in this  journal with its post related to McGinn's
  weblog remarks yesterday on philosophy and art.
  That 10/06 Log24  post is somewhat in the spirit of other
  remarks by McGinn discussed in a 2009 Harvard Crimson  review.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

For Bright Star*

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

* See Title.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Bright Star

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:30 pm

An earlier (noon) version of this post showed a photo of a
heartbreakingly beautiful young woman I encountered on
the Web today by chance. Perhaps it is best if she remains
anonymous here.

A detail taken today from her Facebook page:

IMAGE- Facebook 'places' nightclub location dated 'about 3 weeks ago'

Location of a nightclub in Bucharest

Related material: Shining Forth by myself and Malcolm Lowry,
and Lucifer  by Mihai Eminescu.

See also this journal "about 3 weeks ago."

Monday, October 29, 2012

Opening Bell

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

Related material:

Hexagram 29: Water

Hexagram 29 and the life of
Robert Palmer Dilworth, who
died on this date in 1993.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Signs

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:48 am

"And so the sentence ceases to be a sentence—
a verbal construct of a certain length, velocity and
rhythm with, at bottom, an unambiguous literal
meaning. It becomes a sign instead that telepathic
communication is about to commence."

— Verlyn Klinkenborg, "The Trouble With Intentions,"
     in The New York Times  last night at 9:30 PM ET

Other signs of the Times  (click to enlarge)—

Signs suggested by Klinkenborg's remarks—

Click the above image for further details.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Die Lichtung

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:30 am

See January 4th, 2012.

(This link resulted from an application of Heidegger's
philosophy of "the opening" and "the shining" (Die Lichtung ).)

See also The Shining of May 29.

Update of 12:19 AM Feb. 3, 2012—
The undated (but cached by Google on January 4th, 2012)
unsigned post from a deleted weblog linked to above as
"an application" is also available in a version that is signed
(but still undated).

Monday, October 31, 2011

Logos at Harvard

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:50 am

From Sean D. Kelly, chairman of Harvard's philosophy department, on Oct. 13, 2011—

"What I’m looking for at the moment is a good reference from Plato to make it clear how he understands the term. I remember that in the Thaeatetus there is discussion of knowledge as true belief with logos, and a natural account here might count logos as something like rational justification or explanation. And perhaps Glaukon’s request in the Republic for an explanation or account (logos) of the claim that Justice is a good in itself is a clue. But there must be other places where the term appears in Plato. Does anyone have them?"

See instances of logos  under "Pl." (Plato) and "Id." (Idem ) in Liddell and Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=lo/gos .

(See also Liddell and Scott's "General List of Abbreviations"—

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Asection%3D5 .)

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Shine On, Edmundo

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:55 pm

"… if you will, a cha-cha on the floor of the Grand Hotel Abyss."

Harvard student's essay on Jack Nicholson in the ballroom of "The Shining"

"At the still point, there the dance is."

Four Quartets

Related material on the transition from "Do" to "Be" on Friday, October 21st—

Starting Out in the Evening (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:48 am

(This post's title was appropriated from a novel by Brian Morton.)

Yesterday's evening New York Lottery— 229 and 9294.

Alex Ross in the online New Yorker  quotes a bad essay he wrote in college titled…

“The Grand Hotel Abyss: History and Violence in ‘The Shining,’”

which purports to analyze the famous scene in which Jack Nicholson
types the phrase “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”:

Nicholson has become a chomping-machine of language,
recycling stock phrases, appropriating whatever
drifts into his path. His words are nothing but echoes….

The lottery's 229 may be interpreted as "2/29." See a post from that date in 2008
involving echoes and the abyss.

The lottery's 9294 may be interpreted as "9/2/94." A search for that date yields
an article from Pacific Stars and Stripes

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111023-StarsAndStrips9294.GIF

That article is echoed  by a later Doonesbury caricature
of a professor discussing echoes  in black rhetoric. That
caricature is from the 2/29 post

http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080229-Doonesbury3.jpg

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Edenville

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

"Put me on to Edenville." — James Joyce, quoted in today's noon post.

The New Yorker 's Book Bench quotes a college essay on "The Shining"—

"In the Gold Room, the fatally disconnected under-zone of play,
he finds a fin-de-siècle soirée in progress; after a drink of
Jack Daniels, he dances about for a bit—if you will,
a cha-cha on the floor of the Grand Hotel Abyss."

If you will! You probably won’t.

Then again…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111022-NYT-teasers.JPG

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111022-Studio54-Sept1981.JPG

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Jack and Jill

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

The New Yorker 's online Book Bench has an entertaining
approach to Jack's "All work and no play…" in "The Shining."
For some background, see this morning's previous Log24
post, The Thing Itself.

That post gives some background for the
Midnight in the Garden post of September 6th.

Also on September 6th… See Jill.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Life Story

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

(Continued from Tuesday's "A Story")

Tuesday's story, a collection of four random posts, was
suggested by Tuesday's NY lottery numbers.

That story leads, by association, to Frame Tale in
a post of 2:02 AM on Sunday, May 23, 2010. For related
material, see Death Story, a post of 9:40 PM that same Sunday.

Wednesday's numbers—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110914-NYlottery.jpg

—suggest a counter-story…

Escape to Pine Mountain

A website on films about Latter-Day Saints (i.e., Mormons) asks

Was "Escape to Witch Mountain"
based on Zenna Henderson's "People" stories?

The lottery numbers above suggest the names of three women—
none, as far as I know, with any Mormon background—
who might rightly be called, without capital letters,
"latter-day saints"…

  1. Madeleine L'Engle (see 529 as the date 5/29),
  2. June Christy (a singer first recorded on 5/4/45), and
  3. Mary Rockwell Hook, architect of Pine Mountain
    Settlement School, who died on 9/8/78.

These three lives, taken together, may serve as
an antidote to the Death Story mentioned above.

"We tell ourselves stories…" — Joan Didion
"Therefore choose life." —God

Monday, May 30, 2011

Darkness at Noon

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

A Meditation on the NY Lottery of May 29

Yesterday's NY Lottery— Midday 981, Evening 275.

As noted in yesterday  morning's linked-to post,
The Shining of May 29

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
how deep the darkness is around us."
— Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy ,
Random House, 1973, page 118

One interpretation of the mystic numbers revealed by the Lottery yesterday—

981 as the final page* of David Foster Wallace's famed novel Infinite Jest

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110529-InfiniteJest981.gif

275 as a page in Wallace's non-fiction book about infinity Everything and More

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110529-DFW-Godel275.gif
  Gregory Chaitin points out that this is nonsense …

IMAGE- Gregory Chaitin on David Foster Wallace

As noted elsewhere in this journal, I have a different concept of "math's absolute
Prince of Darkness"— and, indeed, of a "quest for Omega." (See posts of May 2010.)

Yesterday's numbers indicate a different struggle between darkness and light—

Light —

IMAGE- Rebecca Goldstein's book on Godel- 'Incompleteness'

Darkness —

IMAGE- David Foster Wallace's novel 'Infinite Jest'

* From infinitesummer.org/archives/168 — "A note about editions:
As it turns out, all (physical) editions of Infinite  Jest  have 981 pages:
the one from 1996, the one from 2004, the paperback, the hardcover, etc.
A big thank you to the men and women in the publishing industry who
were kind and/or lazy enough to keep things consistent."

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Sunday School

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

"You think you've seen the sun but you ain't seen it shine."

— "The Best Is Yet to Come," lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, music by Cy Coleman

Related material— The Shining of May 29.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Pasaje

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:28 pm

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110502-PostcardsFromCuernavaca-500w.jpg

From Under the Volcano , Chapter II—

Hotel Bella Vista
Gran Baile Noviembre 1938
a Beneficio de la Cruz Roja.
Los Mejores Artistas del radio en accion.
No falte Vd.

From Shining Forth

"What he sees is something real."
— Charles Williams, The Figure of Beatrice

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Harvard Hicks

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:40 pm

Austin Considine on a Tennessee tourist trap

"It would be easy for a city slicker to assume this place misses its own punch lines."

It probably doesn't, but a certain academic  tourist trap does .

A trio of Harvard hicks—

1. The chairman of the Harvard philosophy department, Sean D. Kelly—

"Football can literally bring meaning to life."

(See also Garry Wills on Kelly, Rite of Spring, and Heisman Trophy.)

2. A professor of English at Harvard, Marjorie Garber, in a deconstructive meditation—

Garber notes that the word "literature" has two meanings– the English department's meaning, and that of other departments' references to "the literature."

"Whenever there is a split like this, it is worth pausing to wonder why. High/low, privileged/popular, aesthetic/professional, keep/throw away. It seems as if the category of literature in what we might inelegantly call the literary sense of the word is being both protected and preserved in amber by the encroachment, on all sides, of the nonliterary literature that proliferates in professional-managerial culture. But literature has always been situated on the boundary between itself and its other."

The Use and Abuse of Literature , published by Pantheon on March 29, 2011

3. The president of Harvard, Drew Faust—

A comment recently made to Faust—

“[A] tyrant wanted a crimson-tinged report that he was running a democracy, and for a price, a Harvard expert obliged…."

Her response—

"Faust replied that for her to say anything about this would make her 'scold in chief.'"

—  University Diaries  today. See the excellent commentary there.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Getting There

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

"Get there fast. Get there first."

— Motto in New York Times  ad (obituaries section).

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110404-NYTobitsAd.jpg

 

"Right through hell
 there is a path."
Under the Volcano ,
quoted here on the day
a religious historian died.

 

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110404-NYTobitsSm.jpg

Friday, March 25, 2011

Combinatorial Delight

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

See Margaret Atwood in this journal.

This link was suggested by the phrase "combinatorial* delight" in last night's quote from Nabokov, which also appears in Douglas Glover's review essay, "Her Life Entire," in Books in Canada , Volume 17, Number 7, October 1988—

Cat's Eye  is Atwood's seventh novel. It is dense, intricate, and superb, as thematically diverse and complex as anything she has written. It is what you might expect from a writer at mid-career, mid-life: a portrait of the artist, a summation of what she knows about art and people. It is also an Atwoodian Under the Volcano , a vision of Toronto as Hell.

See also Under the Volcano  and Toronto in this journal.

"Right through hell there is a path." –Under the Volcano

* Update: Corrected on Dec. 13, 2014, to "combinational  delight."

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Manhattan Project

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:32 am

"Hang a shining star upon the highest bough."

Hugh Martin. Martin died on March 11th, 2011.

"The shaping of a work of art means, paradoxically, preserving some space for ambiguity."

— Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in The Wall Street Journal , December 11th, 2010

From January 16th

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110116-ManhattanStarWarsSm.jpg

Here are links to the source posts: December 3, 2010 and December 4, 2010.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Ask Not

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:20 pm

Background— see Natural Hustler in this journal.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110122-AllThingsShiningNYT.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110122-AskNot.jpg

    This is from All Things Shining— "Conclusion: Lives Worth Living in a Secular Age"

Friday, January 14, 2011

Ironic Butterfly

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 11:07 am

David Brooks's column today quotes Niebuhr. From the same source—
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

Chapter 8: The Significance of Irony

Any interpretation of historical patterns and configurations raises the question whether the patterns, which the observer discerns, are "objectively" true or are imposed upon the vast stuff of history by his imagination. History might be likened to the confusion of spots on the cards used by psychiatrists in a Rorschach test. The patient is asked to report what he sees in these spots; and he may claim to find the outlines of an elephant, butterfly or frog. The psychiatrist draws conclusions from these judgments about the state of the patient’s imagination rather than about the actual configuration of spots on the card. Are historical patterns equally subjective?
….
The Biblical view of human nature and destiny moves within the framework of irony with remarkable consistency. Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden because the first pair allowed "the serpent" to insinuate that, if only they would defy the limits which God had set even for his most unique creature, man, they would be like God. All subsequent human actions are infected with a pretentious denial of human limits. But the actions of those who are particularly wise or mighty or righteous fall under special condemnation. The builders of the Tower of Babel are scattered by a confusion of tongues because they sought to build a tower which would reach into the heavens.

Niebuhr's ironic butterfly may be seen in the context of last
Tuesday's post Shining and of last Saturday's noon post True Grid

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110114-AlderTilleyColored.gif

The "butterfly" in the above picture is a diagram showing the 12 lines* of the Hesse configuration from True Grid.

It is also a reference to James Hillman's classical image (see Shining) of the psyche, or soul, as a butterfly.

Fanciful, yes, but this is in exact accordance with Hillman's remarks on the soul (as opposed to the spirit— see Tuesday evening's post).

The 12-line butterfly figure may be viewed as related to the discussions of archetypes and universals in Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology  and in Charles Williams's The Place of the Lion . It is a figure intended here to suggest philosophy, not entertainment.

Niebuhr and Williams, if not the more secular Hillman, might agree that those who value entertainment above all else may look forward to a future in Hell (or, if they are lucky, Purgatory). Perhaps such a future might include a medley of Bob Lind's "Elusive Butterfly" and Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida."

* Three horizontal, three vertical, two diagonal, and four arc-shaped.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Toy Story Variations

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:30 pm

Where Entertainment Is God  continues...

New York Lottery today— Midday 710, Evening 563.

This suggeests a scientific note from the date 7/10  (2009) and the page number 563 from Dec. 29

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society , October 2002, p. 563:

“To produce decorations for their weaving, pottery, and other objects, early artists experimented with symmetries and repeating patterns.  Later the study of symmetries of patterns led to tilings, group theory, crystallography, finite geometries, and in modern times to security codes and digital picture compactifications.  Early artists also explored various methods of representing existing objects and living things.  These explorations led to… [among other things] computer-generated movies (for example, Toy Story ).”

– David W. Henderson, Cornell University

For a different perspective on Toy Story , see the Dec. 29 post.

Other entertainments — The novel Infinite Jest  and two versions of "Heeere's Johnny !" —

            From Stanley Kubrick and from today's New York Times :

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110111-ShiningJest.jpg

See also All Things Shining  and the lottery theology of Jorge Luis Borges.

Soul and Spirit

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:29 pm

This morning's post, "Shining," gave James Hillman's 1976 remarks
on the distinction between soul  and spirit .

The following images may help illustrate these concepts.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110111-BlockDesignsAndGeometry.jpg

The distinction as illustrated by Jeff Bridges —

Soul

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110110-CrazyHeart225.jpg

Spirit

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110111-BridgesObadiahSm.jpg

The mirror has two faces (at least).

Postscript from a story, "The Zahir," in the Borges manner,
  by Mark Jason Dominus (programmer of the quilt designs above)—

"I  left that madhouse gratefully."

Dominus is also the author of…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110111-HigherOrderPerl.gif

Click for details.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Ayn Sof

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:26 pm

(A continuation of this morning's Coxeter and the Aleph)

"You've got to pick up every stitch… Must be the season of the witch."
Donovan song at the end of Nicole Kidman's "To Die For"

Mathematics and Narrative, Illustrated
http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110107-The1950Aleph-Sm.jpg

Mathematics

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110107-ScriptAlephSm.jpg
Narrative

"As is well known, the Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Its use for the strange sphere in my story may not be accidental.
For the Kabbala, the letter stands for the En Soph ,
the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it takes
the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order to show
that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; for Cantor's
Mengenlehre , it is the symbol of transfinite numbers,
of which any part is as great as the whole."

— Borges, "The Aleph"

From WorldLingo.com

Ein Sof

Ein Soph or Ayn Sof (Hebrew  אין סוף, literally "without end", denoting "boundlessness" and/or "nothingness"), is a Kabbalistic term that usually refers to an abstract state of existence preceding God's Creation of the limited universe. This Ein Sof , typically referred to figuratively as the "light of Ein Sof " ("Or Ein Sof "), is the most fundamental emanation manifested by God. The Ein Sof  is the material basis of Creation that, when focused, restricted, and filtered through the sefirot , results in the created, dynamic universe.
….

Cultural impact

Mathematician Georg Cantor labeled different sizes of infinity using the Aleph. The smallest size of infinity is aleph-null (0), the second size is aleph-one (1), etc. One theory about why Cantor chose to use the aleph is because it is the first letter of Ein-Sof. (See Aleph number)

"Infinite Jest… now stands as the principal contender
for what serious literature can aspire to
in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."

All Things Shining, a work of pop philosophy published January 4th

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101231-AllThingsShining-Cover.jpg

"You're gonna need a bigger boat." — Roy Scheider in "Jaws"

"We're gonna need more holy water." — "Season of the Witch," a film opening tonight

See also, with respect to David Foster Wallace, infinity, nihilism,
and the above reading of "Ayn Sof" as "nothingness,"
the quotations compiled as "Is Nothing Sacred?"

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

The White Itself

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:02 am

The Development of Logic 

IMAGE- Kneale and Kneale on Plato's theory of forms and 'the white itself'

A Universal Etymological English Dictionary

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110104-AlbumEtymology.jpg

Joan Didion —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110104-WhiteAlbum-Sm.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110104-EnlargeThis.jpg

The above readings are related* to All Things Shining , a work of pop philosophy published today.

For a review of the new book, click on the image below.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110104-MobyDick.jpg

* Didion's remarks on James Jones are related to the title  of the new book.
  Jones wrote a novel, The Thin Red Line , on which a film is based that
  contains the phrase "all things shining." The phrase is not in the novel.
  The authors of All Things Shining  credit neither novel nor film.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

The Sound of Music*

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

From Tuesday at the Stephen King Kindergarten

"They had sung that song all together at the Jack and Jill Nursery School…."

— Stephen King, The Shining

A link introducing Tuesday's kindergarten

Fare Thee Well

Images from Fare Thee Well

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101217-SOBintro.jpg

Click for Julie Andrews in the full video.

 
 

  http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060526-JackInTheBox.jpg

Shakespearean Fool

© 2004 Natasha Wescoat

Dear God, I am not a son of a bitch. Please.

Jack Torrance in The Shining

* For Agathe von Trapp

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Insane Symmetry

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:02 am

Continued from yesterday's Church Diamond and from Dec. 17's Fare Thee Well —

The San Francisco Examiner  last year
on New Year's Eve —
 
Entertainment

Discover the modern art of Amish quilts

By: Leslie Katz 12/31/09 1:00 AM

Arts editor

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101228-AmishQuilt.jpg

Quilts made by Amish women in Pennsylvania,
such as this traditional center diamond,
reveal the makers’ keen sense of color and design.

Household handicrafts and heirlooms made by American women seen as precursors to modern art is one underlying thesis of “Amish Abstractions: Quilts from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown,” a provocative exhibit on view at the de Young Museum through June.

Curated by Jill D’Alessandro of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the show features about 50 full-size and crib quilts made between 1880 and 1940 in Pennsylvania and the Midwest during what experts consider the apex of Amish quilt-making production.

Faith and Stephen Brown, Bay Area residents who began collecting quilts in the 1970s after seeing one in a shop window in Chicago and being bowled over by its bold design, say their continued passion for the quilts as art is in part because they’re so reminiscent of paintings by modern masters like Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, Sol LeWitt and Ellsworth Kelly — but the fabric masterpieces came first.

“A happy visual coincidence” is how the Browns and D’Alessandro define the connection, pointing to the brilliance in color theory, sophisticated palettes and complex geometry that characterize both the quilts and paintings.

“There’s an insane symmetry  to these quilts,” says D’Alessandro….

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner .

The festive nature of the date of the above item, New Year's Eve, suggests Stephen King's

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

and also a (mis)quotation from a photographer's weblog— 

"Art, being bartender, is never drunk."

— Quotation from Peter Viereck misattributed to Randall Jarrell in
   Art as Bartender and the Golden Gate.

By a different photographer —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101228-ShiningJack.jpg

See also…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101228-NurserySchool.jpg

We may imagine the bartender above played by Louis Sullivan.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Cruel Star, Part II

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm

Symmetry, Duality, and Cinema

— Title of a Paris conference held June 17, 2010

From that conference, Edward Frenkel on symmetry and duality

"Symmetry plays an important role in geometry, number theory, and quantum physics. I will discuss the links between these areas from the vantage point of the Langlands Program. In this context 'duality' means that the same theory, or category, may be described in two radically different ways. This leads to many surprising consequences."

Related material —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101210-CruelStarPartII.jpg

See also  "Black Swan" in this journal, Ingmar Bergman's production of Yukio Mishima's "Madame de Sade," and Duality and Symmetry, 2001.

This journal on the date of the Paris conference
had a post, "Nighttown," with some remarks about
the duality of darkness and light. Its conclusion—

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
 how deep the darkness is around us."
  — Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy,
      Random House, 1973, page 118

Thursday, October 28, 2010

A Sort of Mirror

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 pm

"Whence God is to be understood as a sort of mirror in which all things succeeding one another in the whole course of time have images shining back, a mirror indeed directly beholding itself and all the images existing in it."

Peter de Rivo, quoted in Wild Materialism , p. 102 (below)

"The stakes were high…. …the status, indeed, the ownership, of logic, a term common to the Faculties of Theology and Art, was in dispute…."

Wild Materialism: The Ethic of Terror and the Modern Republic , by Jacques Lezra, Fordham University Press, 2010, chapter on "The Logic of Sovereignty," page 102

See also Borges on the Aleph.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

After the Fall

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:09 am
 

The Harvard Crimson —

Magic of Numbers:
Summing Up the Fall

Published by Timothy J. Walsh on September 24, 2010 at 8:41AM

Each Thursday, The Crimson will compile a series of unique statistics
about Harvard's sports scene. Welcome to the Magic of Numbers—
without the problem sets. We'll do the math for you.

READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL

Saturday night's game… Harvard vs. Brown at Providence—

Harvard 14, Brown 29.

Related philosophy about divine providence—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/100926-Hexagrams.png

See also, from 2002, a note on "light inclosed in the dark" versus the late Harvard philosopher Barbara Johnson.

For some context on Harvard and "the Magic of Numbers" see Summer Reading from 2007.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Breakthrough

Filed under: General — m759 @ 3:48 pm

A film director's obituary in today's New York Times

"Mr. Donner broke through as a director in 1963 with a low-budget black-and-white film of Harold Pinter’s play 'The Caretaker,' with Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw. Since he couldn’t find traditional backing for the film, a group of well-wishers that included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers and Noël Coward financed it."

   A lower-budget version:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/100909-TheShining.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/100909-Caretaker.jpg

All work and no play 

makes Jack a dull boy.

 

See also "Patrick Blackburn, meet Gideon Summerfield" in Building a Mystery.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

By Chance

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

PA Lottery 7/21— Midday 312, Evening 357.

Related material:

This journal on 3/12

Image-- Group Characters, from 'Symmetry,' Pergamon Press, 1963

and a .357—

Image-- MTV star spotting-- Lindsay Lohan, Nun with a Gun

Related philosophy—

"Character is fate." — Heraclitus

"Pray for the grace of accuracy." — Robert Lowell

Oh, and a belated happy 7/21 birthday to Ernest Hemingway and Robin Williams.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

A Manifold Showing

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 am

"Heidegger suggests that we experience the saying of language as a shining forth:

'It lets what is coming to presence shine forth, lets what is withdrawing into absence vanish.  The saying is by no means the supplemental linguistic expression of what shines forth; rather, all shining and fading depend on the saying that shows.' (pp. 413-414).

But what is the basis and origin of this possibility of saying?  The happening of saying in the clearing, its allowing things to shine forth, can also be called an 'owning.' Owning is the event of a thing’s coming into its own, of its showing itself as itself. Heidegger also calls it 'propriating,' 'en-owning,' or Ereignis:

'Propriation gathers the rift-design of the saying and unfolds it in such a way that it becomes the well-joined structure of a manifold showing. (p. 415)'"

— "Heidegger: On the Way to Language," by Paul Livingston

Page references are apparently to Heidegger's Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, HarperCollins paperback, 1993.

See also Shining Forth.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Mathematics and Narrative, continued

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:14 pm

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
 how deep the darkness is around us."
  — Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy,
      Random House, 1973, page 118

A 1973 review of Koestler's book—

"Koestler's 'call girls,' summoned here and there
 by this university and that foundation
 to perform their expert tricks, are the butts
 of some chilling satire."

Examples of Light—

Felix Christian Klein (1849- June 22, 1925) and Évariste Galois (1811-1832)

Klein on Galois—

"… in France just about 1830 a new star of undreamt-of brilliance— or rather a meteor, soon to be extinguished— lighted the sky of pure mathematics: Évariste Galois."

— Felix Klein, Development of Mathematics in the 19th Century, translated by Michael Ackerman. Brookline, Mass., Math Sci Press, 1979. Page 80.

"… um 1830 herum in Frankreich als ein neuer Stern von ungeahntem Glanze am Himmel der reinen Mathematik aufleuchtet, um freilich, einem Meteor gleich, sehr bald zu verlöschen: Évariste Galois."

— Felix Klein, Vorlesungen Über Die Entwicklung Der Mathematick Im 19. Jahrhundert. New York, Chelsea Publishing Co., 1967. (Vol. I, originally published in Berlin in 1926.) Page 88.

Examples of Darkness—

Martin Gardner on Galois—

"Galois was a thoroughly obnoxious nerd,
 suffering from what today would be called
 a 'personality disorder.'  His anger was
 paranoid and unremitting."

Gardner was reviewing a recent book about Galois by one Amir Alexander.

Alexander himself has written some reviews relevant to the Koestler book above.

See Alexander on—

The 2005 Mykonos conference on Mathematics and Narrative

A series of workshops at Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation between 2003 and 2006. "The meetings brought together professional mathematicians (and other mathematical scientists) with authors, poets, artists, playwrights, and film-makers to work together on mathematically-inspired literary works."

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Nighttown

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:02 pm

Continued from yesterday evening's "Long Day's Journey into Nighttown"—

A detail from that post—

Image-- Detail of New Yorker cover 'Finish Line,' double fiction issue of June 14 & 21, 2010

Related material from Nighttown—
The Sebastian Horsley Guide to Whoring

Image-- YouTube video, 'The Sebastian Horsley Guide to Whoring'

Horsley, the author of Dandy in the Underworld, was
found dead this morning of a suspected heroin overdose.

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
 how deep the darkness is around us."
  — Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy,
      Random House, 1973, page 118

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Holy Geometry

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:31 am

The late mathematician V.I. Arnold was born on this date in 1937.

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
 how deep the darkness is around us."
  — Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy

Light

Image-- AMS site screenshot of V.I. Arnold obituary, June 12, 2010

Darkness

Image-- AMS site screenshot of Martin Gardner tribute, May 25, 2010

Choosing light rather than darkness, we observe Arnold's birthday with a quotation from his 1997 Paris talk 'On Teaching Mathematics.'

"The Jacobi identity (which forces the heights of a triangle to cross at one point) is an experimental fact…."

The "experimental fact" part, perhaps offered with tongue in cheek, is of less interest than the assertion that the Jacobi identity forces the altitude-intersection theorem.

Albert Einstein on that theorem in the "holy geometry book" he read at the age of 12—

"Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point, which– though by no means evident– could nevertheless be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question.  This lucidity and certainty made an indescribable impression upon me.”

Arnold's much less  evident assertion about altitudes and the Jacobi identity is discussed in "Arnol'd, Jacobi identity, and orthocenters" (pdf) by Nikolai V. Ivanov.

Ivanov says, without giving a source,  that the altitudes theorem "was known to Euclid." Alexander Bogomolny, on the other hand, says it is "a matter of real wonderment that the fact of the concurrency of altitudes is not mentioned in either Euclid's Elements  or subsequent writings of the Greek scholars. The timing of the first proof is still an open question."

For other remarks on geometry, search this journal for the year of Arnold's birth.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Brightness at Noon (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"By groping toward the light we are made to realize
 how deep the darkness is around us."
  — Arthur Koestler, The Call Girls: A Tragi-Comedy,
      Random House, 1973, page 118

Continued from Christmas 2009 and from last Sunday

The serious reflection is composed
Neither of comic nor tragic but of commonplace."

Wallace Stevens

Monday, May 17, 2010

Rolling the Stone

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:12 pm

A new NY Times column:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100517-NYT-Stone.jpg

Today's New York Times
re-edited for philosophers:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100517-JonesClue.jpg

See also

Eightfold Symmetry,

John Baez's paper
Duality in Logic and Physics
(for a May 29 meeting at Oxford),

The Shining of May 29, and

Lubtchansky's Key, with its links
to Duelle (French, f. adj., dual)
and Art Wars for Trotsky's Birthday.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Lubtchansky’s Key

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

William Lubtchansky, a cinematographer, was born on October 26, 1937, and died on May 4, 2010.

Yesterday's post included an illustration from this journal on the date of his death.

Here is a Log24 entry from last year on the date of his birth—

Monday, October 26, 2009
The Keys Enigma

Image-- Back Space key from manual typewriter, linking to Babich on Music, Nietzsche, and Heidegger
Image-- Shift Lock key from manual typewriter, linking to Levin's 'The Philosopher's Gaze'

Related material:

Posts of Sept. 21-25

Clicking on the Shift Lock key leads to the following page—

Image-- Page 432 of 'The Philosopher's Gaze'-- Heidegger on Gestell and shining forth

The Philosopher's Gaze,
by David Michael Levin,
University of California Press, 1999

Related images—

Detail from May 4 image:

Image-- The 4-dimensional space over the 2-element field

Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC:

Image-- Holocaust Museum tour group entrance
(http://www.scrapbookpages.com/USHMM/Exterior.html)

See also Lubtchansky's Duelle and
Art Wars for Trotsky's Birthday, 2003.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Brightness at Noon, continued

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

The Galois Quaternion

From The French Mathematician
by Tom Petsinis (Nov. 30, 1998)–

0

I had foreseen it all in precise detail.
One step led inevitably to the next,
like the proof of a shining theorem,
down to the conclusive shot that still echoes
through time and space.
Facedown in the damp pine needles,
I embraced that fatal sphere
with my whole body. Dreams, memories,
even the mathematics I had cherished
and set down in my last will and testament–
all receded. I am reduced to
a singular point; in an instant
I am transformed to i.

i = an imaginary being

Here, on this complex space,
i am no longer the impetuous youth
who wanted to change the world
first with a formula and then with a flame.
Having learned the meaning of infinite patience,
i now rise to the text whenever anyone reads
about Evariste Galois, preferring to remain
just below the surface,
like a goldfish nibbling the fringe of a floating leaf.
Ink is more mythical than blood
(unless some ancient poet slit his
vein and wrote an epic in red):
The text is a two-way mirror
that allows me to look into
the life and times of the reader.
Who knows, someday i may rise
to a text that will compel me
to push through to the other side.
Do you want proof that i exist? Where am i?
Beneath every word, behind each letter,
on the side of a period that will never see the light.

 

Related material:
The Galois Quaternion

The Galois Quaternion

Click for context.
(See also Nativity and the end
of this morning's post.)

Epiphany Revisited

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

January 06, 2007
ART WARS: Epiphany

Picture of Nothing
On Kirk Varnedoe’s
2003 Mellon Lectures,
Pictures of Nothing“–

“Varnedoe’s lectures were ultimately about faith, about his faith in the power of abstraction, and abstraction as a kind of anti-religious faith in itself….”

Related material:

The more industrious scholars will derive considerable pleasure from describing how the art-history professors and journalists of the period 1945-75, along with so many students, intellectuals, and art tourists of every sort, actually struggled to see the paintings directly, in the old pre-World War II way, like Plato’s cave dwellers watching the shadows, without knowing what had projected them, which was the Word.”

— Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

Log24, Aug. 23, 2005:

“Concept (scholastics’ verbum mentis)–  theological analogy of Son’s procession  as Verbum Patris, 111-12″ — Index to Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, S.J., Yale University Press 1957,  second printing 1963, page 162

“So did God cause the big bang? Overcome by metaphysical lassitude, I finally reach over to my bookshelf for The Devil’s Bible. Turning to Genesis I read: ‘In the beginning there was nothing. And God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was still nothing, but now you could see it.'”
— Jim Holt, Big-Bang Theology, from Slate‘s “High Concept” department

'In the beginning' according to Jim Holt

“Bang.”

“…Mondrian and Malevich are not discussing canvas or pigment or graphite or any other form of matter. They are talking about Being or Mind or Spirit. From their point of view, the grid is a staircase to the Universal….”

For properties of the “nothing” represented by the 3×3 grid, see The Field of Reason. For religious material related to the above and to Epiphany, a holy day observed by some, see Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star and Shining Forth.


Some Context:

Quaternions in Finite Geometry

Click to enlarge.

See also Nativity.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

H is for Hogwarts, continued

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:48 am

A Sequel to Koestler's
The Call Girls

Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990,
Columbia University Press paperback, 1997, p. 137–

"Academics' lives are seldom interesting."

But then there is Matt Lee of the University of Greenwich.

See his weblog subtitled "notes and thoughts on philosophy"… particularly his post "Diamond time, daimon time," of August 20, 2009.

See also my own post of August 20, 2009– "Sophists"– and my earlier post "Daimon Theory" of March 12, 2003:


Daimon Theory


Diamond Theory

More about Lee:

"Chaos majik is a form of modern witchcraft."

More about magick:

Noetic Symbology
(Log24 on October 25, 2009)

Some Related Log24 Posts

Monday, September 21, 2009

Monday September 21, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 2:56 am
Keys

A Google search for "Das Scheinen," a very rough translation into Heidegger's German of "The Shining," leads to a song. A search for the English version of the song leads to a site with a sidebar advertising Pearl Jam's new (Sept. 20) album "Backspacer."
 

Packaging:

Pearl Jam 'Backspacer' album released Sept. 20, 2009

Happy birthday,
 Stephen King.

Background:

Yesterday's entries
and the plot of
L'Engle's classic
A Wrinkle in Time.
(See this journal's entries
for March 2008.)

The Pearl Jam album cover art
is of particular interest in light
of King's story "Apt Pupil" and
of Katherine Neville's remark
"Nine is a very powerful
Nordic number.
"

Those who prefer more sophisticated
aesthetic theory may click on the
following keys:

Back Space key from manual typewriter, linking to Babich on Music, Nietzsche, and Heidegger
Shift Lock key from manual typewriter, linking to Levin's 'The Philosopher's Gaze'

Monday, September 7, 2009

Monday September 7, 2009

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

Magic Boxes

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas– only I don't exactly know what they are!…. Let's have a look at the garden first!"

— A passage from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. The "garden" part– but not the "ideas" part– was quoted by Jacques Derrida in Dissemination in the epigraph to Chapter 7, "The Time before First."

Commentary
 on the passage:

Part I    "The Magic Box,"  shown on Turner Classic Movies earlier tonight

Part II: "Mimsy Were the Borogoves," a classic science fiction story:

"… he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small enough to cup in his palm– much too small to contain the maze of apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people, for example– They moved. Like clockwork automatons, though much more smoothly. It was rather like watching a play."

Part III:  A Crystal Block

Cube, 4x4x4

Four coloring pencils, of four different colors

Image of pencils is by
Diane Robertson Design.

Related material:
"A Four-Color Theorem."

Part IV:

David Carradine displays a yellow book-- the Princeton I Ching.

"Click on the Yellow Book."

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Thursday August 27, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:09 pm
The Shining
of Lucero

For John Cramer’s
daughter Kathryn

(continued from
September 24, 2002)

“Mathematical relationships were
enough to satisfy him, mere formal
relationships which existed at
all times, everywhere, at once.”

Broken Symmetries, 1983

X
X
X

See also Art Wars at
The New Criterion

(Jan. 19, 2007) and the
 four entries preceding it.

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