Log24

From Dan Brown's novel Angels & Demons  (2000)—

Trinity Song —

"For ten years we've been on our own . . . ."

See as well a post of ten years ago:  Angels, Demons, "Symbology"

Illuminati Song —

"Far from the shallow now."

From a search in this journal for Desmic  —

"As the chaos grew . . . ."

"We have, in fact, the corners of a cube . . . ."

Click the above for some music and literary-philosophical remarks.

Related material: This journal on February 3 and 4, 2010.

For Robert Langdon  (Angels & Demons )…

See Final Club (Wikipedia) and Kiss Club (this journal).

At Heaven’s Gate

Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011, RSS at 23:59 EDT:
Peter Woit's weblog Not Even Wrong—

"Lisa Randall’s new book is about to come out, it’s entitled
Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking
Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World."

Angels & Demons  (the film)—

As she enters the lab she reacts in horror
as she sees an eyeball lying on the floor…

Click images for some backstory —

Woit on Randall—

"She has taken on the role of a public face of physics,
 and has written a book which is in part a very general defense
 of science and the materialist, rationalist world-view
 that modern science is based on."

See also yesterday's "The Stone" column in The New York Times—

"What Is Naturalism?"

I prefer philosophy enacted by Reba.

* A reference to Dan Brown, not Marianne Williamson

In today's Wall Street Journal , Peter Woit reviews a new book on dark matter and dark energy.

For a more literary approach, see "dark materials" in this  journal.

Before thir eyes in sudden view appear
The secrets of the hoarie deep, a dark
Illimitable Ocean without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth,
And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, Ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal Anarchie, amidst the noise
Of endless warrs and by confusion stand.
For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four Champions fierce
Strive here for Maistrie, and to Battel bring amidst the noise
Thir embryon Atoms....
                                ... Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wilde Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage....

-- John Milton, Paradise Lost , Book II

From the 7/20 Harvard Crimson—

"The scholarly expeditions undertaken by modern-day explorer and Harvard Foundation Director S. Allen Counter will be featured in a biopic produced by actor Will Smith.

…. Debbie Allen is also producing the film, and Farhad Safinia will be penning the script, Variety  magazine reported.

…. Counter said that Debbie Allen described his character as 'a mixture of Indiana Jones and Robert Langdon,' the fictional Harvard professor of symbology in Dan Brown’s novels."

Farhad Safinia is co-writer and co-producer, with Mel Gibson, of "Apocalypto."

From "The Envelope: The Awards Insider" at the LA Times, a review of the film based on Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons"—

"The script tips its hand too early, and can't quite turn Langdon into Indiana Langdon on his Last Crusade."

—  Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel  movie critic, May 15, 2009

Related material:

The Robert Jones Code—

(Click for video.)

Meanwhile, back at the AMS–

Ready for His Closeup

Closeup–

For instance…

"You're talking about…
the moment of creation!"

See also
Rebecca Goldstein
and the Number 36

A NY Times review dated Jan. 20 has the headline

Trying to Paint the Deity by Numbers
Against a Backdrop of Jewish Culture

By JANET MASLIN

"…this novel’s bracing intellectual energy never flags. Though it is finally more a work of showmanship than scholarship, it affirms Ms. Goldstein’s position as a satirist…."

The title of the book under review is
36 Arguments for the
Existence of God: A Work of Fiction.

Related "by the numbers" material–

From the I Ching, commentaries on the lines of Hexagram 36–

"Here the Lord of Light is in a subordinate place and is wounded by the Lord of Darkness…."

"The dark power at first held so high a place that it could wound all who were on the side of good and of the light. But in the end it perishes of its own darkness, for evil must itself fall at the very moment when it has wholly overcome the good, and thus consumed the energy to which it owed its duration."

The Times review of 36 Arguments notes that the book's chapters of fiction number 36, as do the 36 philosophical arguments in the book's title and appendix.

The reviewer– "So much for structure. It is not Ms. Goldstein’s strong suit…."

Some structure related to the above occurrence of 36 in the I Ching—

Another example of eightfold symmetry:

The Large Hadron Collider

See also Angels & Demons in
Hollywood and in this journal.

Thanks to Jillian’s Specials for the following quotation:

“… faith is…. validated by individual experience and inspired by epiphanies.”

— “Where Physics Meets Faith,” by Robert C. Cowen, Oct. 21, 2004

Individual Experience:

See, for instance, the link in last Sunday’s entry to a remarkable group-theoretic map.

Epiphanies:

Part I: For Jillian —

(with a nod to Matthew McConaughey and his films Contact and, more recently, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past).

Part II: For a mountaineer–

(with a nod to Tom Hanks and to Gian-Carlo Rota and the Black Hole of Rome (cf. Psychoshop) as well as to the mountains, both real and imagined, in last Sunday’s link “a remarkable group-theoretic map“).

“Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman’s decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island. It is the first part of the trilogy that comprises Winter Light and The Silence, films which are generally seen as addressing Bergman’s increasing disillusionment with the emotional coldness of his inherited Lutheran religion. In particular here, Bergman focuses on the absence of familial love which might perhaps have pulled Karin (Andersson) back from the brink; while Karin’s mental disintegration manifests itself in the belief that God is a spider. As she slips inexorably into madness, she is observed with terrifying objectivity by her emotionally paralyzed father (Björnstrand) and seemingly helpless husband (von Sydow).”

— Nigel Floyd, Time Out, quoted at Bergmanorama

Related material:

1. The “spider” symbol of Fritz Leiber’s short story “Damnation Morning”–

2. Hollywood’s “Angels & Demons” (to open May 15), and

3. The following diagram by one “John Opsopaus”–

“Preserving a strict unity of time and place, this stark tale of a young woman’s decline into insanity is set in a summer home on a holiday island. It is the first part of the trilogy

that comprises Winter Light and The Silence, films which are generally seen as addressing Bergman’s increasing disillusionment with the emotional coldness of his inherited Lutheran religion. In particular here, Bergman focuses on the absence of familial love which might perhaps have pulled Karin (Andersson) back from the brink; while Karin’s mental disintegration manifests itself in the belief that God is a spider. As she slips inexorably into madness, she is observed with terrifying objectivity by her emotionally paralyzed father (Björnstrand) and seemingly helpless husband (von Sydow).”

— Nigel Floyd, Time Out, quoted at Bergmanorama

Related material:

1. The “spider” symbol of Fritz Leiber’s short story “Damnation Morning“–

2. The Illuminati Diamond of Hollywood’s “Angels & Demons” (to open May 15), and

3. The following diagram by one “John Opsopaus“–

Babar’s Dream

In memory of Cécile de Brunhoff, discoverer of
Babar, who died yesterday at the age of 99.