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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Metaphysics of Quality

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

News story: Quality Markets will shut down 53 stores

Related material:

Metaphysics + Quality

Sinatra + Orpheus

Like the beat beat beat of the tom-tom
When the jungle shadows  fall….

Night and Day

Wednesday, April 2, 2003

Wednesday April 2, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 2:30 pm

Symmetries…. May 15, 1998

The following journal note, from the day after Sinatra died, was written before I heard of his death.  Note particularly the quote from Rilke.  Other material was suggested, in part, by Alasdair Gray's Glasgow novel 1982 Janine.  The "Sein Feld" heading is a reference to the Seinfeld final episode, which aired May 14, 1998.  The first column contains a reference to angels — apparently Hell's Angels — and the second column provides a somewhat more serious look at this theological topic.

Sein Feld

                        

1984 Janine

"But Angels love their own
And they're reaching out
    for you
Janine… Oh Janine
— Kim Wilde lyric,
    Teases & Dares album,
    1984, apparently about
    a British biker girl

 

"Logos means above all relation."
— Simone Weil,
    Gateway to God,
    Glasgow, 1982

"Gesang ist Dasein….
 Ein Hauch um nichts.
 Ein Wehn im Gott.
 Ein Wind
."
— Not Heidegger but Rilke:
Sonnets to Orpheus, I, 3

Geometry and Theology

PA lottery May 14, 1998:
256
   

S8  The group of all projectivities and correlations of PG(3,2).

The above isomorphism implies the geometry of the Mathieu group M24.

"The Leech lattice is a blown-up version of
S(5,8,24)."
— W. Feit

"We have strong evidence that the creator of the universe loves symmetry."
— Freeman Dyson

"Mackey presents eight axioms from which he deduces the [quantum] theory."
— M. Schechter

"Theology is about words; science is about things."
— Freeman Dyson, New York Review of Books, 5/28/98

What is "256" about?



Tape purchased 12/23/97:
 

Django
Reinhardt

      Gypsy Jazz

"In the middle of 1982 Janine there are pages in which Jock McLeish is fighting with drugs and alcohol, attempting to either die or come through and get free of his fantasies. In his delirium, he hears the voice of God, which enters in small print, pushing against the larger type of his ravings.  Something God says is repeated on the first and last pages of Unlikely Stories, Mostly, complete with illustration and the words 'Scotland 1984' beside it. God's statement is 'Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation.'  It is the inherent optimism in that statement that perhaps best captures the strength of Aladair Gray's fiction, its straightforwardness and exuberance."
— Toby Olson, "Eros in Glasgow," in Book World, The Washington Post, December 16, 1984

 For another look at angels, see "Winging It," by Christopher R. Miller, The New York Times Book Review Bookend page for Sunday, May 24, 1998. May 24 is the feast day of Sara (also known by the Hindu name Kali), patron saint of Gypsies.

For another, later (July 16, 1998) reply to Dyson, from a source better known than myself, see Why Religion Matters, by Huston Smith, Harper Collins, 2001, page 66.

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