Saturday, August 31, 2002

Today's birthday: Dr. Maria Montessori   THE MONTESSORI METHOD: CHAPTER VI HOW LESSONS SHOULD BE GIVEN "Let all thy words be counted." Dante, Inf., canto X. CONCISENESS, SIMPLICITY, OBJECTIVITY. ...Dante gives excellent advice to teachers when he says, "Let thy words be counted." The more carefully we cut away useless words, the more perfect will become the lesson.... Another characteristic quality of the lesson...  is its simplicity. It must be stripped of all that is not absolute truth.... The carefully chosen words must be the most simple it is possible to find, and must refer to the truth. The third quality of the lesson is its objectivity. The lesson must be presented in such a way that the personality of the teacher shall disappear. There shall remain in evidence only the object to which she wishes to call the attention of the child.... Above: Dr. Harrison Pope, Harvard professor of psychiatry, demonstrates the use of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale "block design" subtest.  Mathematicians mean something different by the phrase "block design." A University of London site on mathematical design theory includes a link to my diamond theory site, which discusses the mathematics of the sorts of visual designs that Professor Pope is demonstrating. For an introduction to the subject that is, I hope, concise, simple, and objective, see my diamond 16 puzzle.  3:36 am

Friday, August 30, 2002

The Number of the Beast "He's a Mad Scientist and I'm his Beautiful Daughter." -- Deety in Heinlein's The Number of the Beast. For more on this theme, see my Journal Note of December 21, 2001.  See also the film classic "Forbidden Planet," and the play "The Tempest," by William Shakespeare, on which it is based. Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday.... -- Bernard Holland, The New York Times of  Monday, May 20, 1996 The New York midday lottery number for Monday, August 26, 2002, was 666, the biblical "number of the beast." For the beast's Friday response to the calling of its number by New York State on Monday, see Lucifer Media Corporation. 12:12 pm

Friday, August 30, 2002

For Mary Shelley, on her birthday: A Chain of Links The creator of Frankenstein might appreciate the following chain of thought. Lucifer.com Lucifer Media Corporation Lucifer Media Sites The Extropy Institute: International Transhumanist Solutions Why Super-Human Intelligence Would Be Equivalent To Precognition, by Marc Geddes: "Consider the geometry of multiple dimensions as an analogy for mental abilities... ...if there is a 4th dimension of intelligence, to us ordinary humans stuck with 3 dimensional reasoning, this 4th dimension would be indistinguishable from precognition. Post-humans would appear to us ordinary humans as beings which could predict the future in ways which would be inexplicable to us. We should label post-humans as 'Pre-Cogs.' In the Steven Speilberg [sic]  film Minority Report, we encounter genetically engineered humans with precisely the abilities described above." Internet Movie Database page on "Minority Report" IMDb page on "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick IMDb biography of Philip K. Dick, where our chain of links ends.  Here Dick says that "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."   On the other hand, Dick also says here that "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." These two quotations summarize, on the one hand, the cynical, relativistic nominalism of the postmodernists and, on the other hand, the hard-nosed realism of the Platonists. What does all this have to do with "the geometry of multiple dimensions"?  Consider the famous story for adolescents, A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle.   The author, a well-meaning Christian, tries, like all storytellers,  to control her readers by controlling the meaning of words.   The key word in this book is "tesseract," a term from multi-dimensional geometry.   She insists that a tesseract has mystic properties and cannot be visualized.  She is wrong (at least about the visualizing).  See The Tesseract: A look into 4-dimensional space, by Harry J. Smith. See also the many revealing comments in Harry J. Smith's Guestbook. One of Smith's guests remarks, apropos of Smith's comments on St. Joseph, that he has his own connection with St. Augustine.  For a adult-level discussion of Augustine, time, eternity, and Platonism, see the website Time as a Psalm in St. Augustine, by A. M. Johnston. See also the remark headlining Maureen Dowd's New York Times column of August 28, 2002, Saint Augustine's Day: "I'm with Dick."  Whether the realist Dick or the nominalist Dick, she does not say.  As for precognition, see my series of journal notes below, which leads up to two intriguing errors in an Amazon.com site on the "Forbidden Planet" soundtrack.   The first two audio samples from this soundtrack are (wrongly) entitled "Birdland" and "Flamingo."  See also the West Wing episode rebroadcast on Wednesday, August 28, 2002, The Black Vera Wang    C. J. Cregg (Allison Janney), who models a black Vera Wang dress in that episode, has the Secret Service codename Flamingo.   "...that woman in black She's a mystery She's everything a woman should be Woman in black got a hold on me" (Foreigner 4 in my August 28 note below) 2:30 am

Thursday, August 29, 2002

For the feast day of St. Ingrid Bergman: Like Shakespeare, Ingrid Bergman was born and died on the same date... In her case, August 29. To honor her performance in "Spellbound," here is a copy of the first crossword puzzle ever published.  The Reversible Diamond Puzzle "This puzzle appeared in the November 1874 number of 'St. Nicholas.' ACROSS, from top to bottom: 1. A consonant. 2. A number. 3. Measures of distance. 4. An abyss. 5. A consonant. DOWN, from right to left: 1. A consonant. 2. A snare. 3. A name. 4. The point of anything small. 5. A consonant.     S     T E N     M I L E S     P I T     M The across words are different from the down words, but there is a direct relation between them: one is the reversible form of the other." One might also compare an eerie sound clip from the  Oscar-winning score of "Spellbound" with a weird clip from "Selim," by the World Saxophone Quartet.  The latter is from the album "Selim Sivad" (Miles Davis backwards). One reviewer claims that this album displays "astonishing, telepathic group interplay." This may or may not be true; if the services of a psychiatrist are required to help decide the issue, let us hope she is as attractive as Saint Ingrid. The above remarks are, of course, intended as a partial antidote to the music inevitably associated with Bergman... "As Time Goes By."  (Please do not play it again, Sam.)  Of course, the World Saxophone Quartet may be too powerful an antidote... It reminds one, as does the greatly superior weird music from the "Forbidden Planet" soundtrack, of Monsters from the Id.  From such monsters, let us pray to Saint Ingrid for deliverance. 4:40 pm

Thursday, August 29, 2002

Bird's Birthday Clint Eastwood on how his life might have gone differently: "I might be sitting in some piano bar hoping somebody will leave 50 cents in a glass saying 'Play "Melancholy Baby"' for the seven-millionth time." Here's Charlie Parker's version, and a few more notes. 5:02 am

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

The Cobra Strikes High praise for Allison Janney, TV star: "Allison is like the great movie actresses from the '40s," says the creator and executive producer of NBC's The West Wing (Wednesdays, 9 P.M./ET). "She's the best actress working today, and she gives the dead ones a run for their money." As scrappy White House press secretary C.J. Cregg, Janney does seem like a dame who could out-drink Spencer Tracy, slay Bogie with a withering stare, yet still melt seductively in Cary Grant's arms. For C. J. Cregg on Saudi Arabia, click here. For Maureen Dowd (nicknamed "The Cobra" by President George W. Bush) on Saudi Arabia, click here. 2:43 pm

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Requiem for a Critic Sample clips of Thelonious Monk compositions: Four in One, Criss-Cross   A 1999 Mike Melillo Trio album, "Bopcentric," includes the above compositions. "Melillo is a striking pianist, a chameleon who has a Bud Powell touch on a Charlie Parker be bop number, who evokes appropriate echoes of Thelonious Monk". -- John S. Wilson in The New York Times From sleeve notes by Orrin Keepnews at The Thelonious Monk Website: For many years regarded as an awesome genius, but one whose ideas were too far-out for general consumption, Monk now seems finally to be gaining long-deserved acceptance....  some critics feel that he is becoming (as John S. Wilson has put it) "increasingly lucid." From The New York Times of August 28, 2002: John S. Wilson, the first critic to write regularly about jazz and popular music in The New York Times, died yesterday at a nursing home in Princeton, N.J. He was 89 and lived in Princeton. 1:24 pm

Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Music of the Dark Lady Two journal notes below deal with the general mythology of the Dark Lady.  This note, more personal, deals with a particular incarnation of this Lady that certain songs from this 1981 album remind me of. Waiting for a Girl Like You, Urgent, and especially Woman in Black: She draws me in But she teaches me well I never need any explanation From that woman in black She's a mystery She's everything a woman should be Woman in black got a hold on me For sample sound clips of the above, click here. For a summary of the August 27 note below, see the quote from William Congreve on the cover of the September 2002 Vanity Fair magazine: "There is in true beauty, as in courage, somewhat which narrow souls cannot dare to admire." 3:49 am

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

The Hero and the Dark Lady From a Fictionwise eBooks summary of Mike Resnick's novel The Dark Lady...  Leonardo, an art historian of the far future, is given a mission...  "His instructions: Search the galaxy for any piece of art bearing the image of his obsession: the mysterious Dark Lady, a beautiful and somber human female whose exact likeness, he has secretly discovered, appears in paintings and sculptures throughout history--dating all the way back to Earth's ancient Rome. Leonardo's research reveals the link between the artists of the Dark Lady: human men who voluntarily risk their lives. If she appears to men who court death, she may be their Angel of Death ... or, as Leonardo hopes, the female of an ancient... legend--The Mother of All Things." Today, August 27 (or tomorrow, according to some accounts), is the date of death of a great actor, Robert Shaw, who died at 51 in 1978.   If in real life he was anything like the brave men he played... King Henry VIII,  SPECTRE assassin Red Grant, Panzer commander Colonel Hessler, and shark hunter Captain Quint... he, if anyone, deserved to be greeted in heaven by the Dark Lady. For a more scholarly treatment of the Dark Lady, see this Princeton University Press site. 1:31 am

Monday, August 26, 2002

Meditation on the Dark Lady: Doble-V + Doble-V = W.W.   From Carole A. Holdsworth, Dulcinea and Pynchon's V: Tanner may have stated it best: “V. is whatever lights you to the end of the street: she is also the dark annihilation waiting at the end of the street.” (Tony Tanner, page 36, “V. and V-2.” in Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Edward Mendelson. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978. 16-55). W. W. 11:59 pm

Monday, August 26, 2002

Round Lights A link for the August 26 birthdays of Rufino Tamayo and Julio Cortazar: Homage to Thelonious Sphere Monk. See also "Sphere" in Pynchon's V.  4:45 am

Saturday, August 24, 2002

Cruciatus in Crucem From Battlefield Vacations, Edinburgh: On the film "Braveheart" -- If you've ever wondered about what exactly "drawn and quartered" means, there's a good demonstration at the end.   From my journal note of June 28, 2002:   Page 162 of the May 2002 issue of Vanity Fair Magazine -- NIGHT  TABLE READING -- MICHAEL GERSON Head White House speechwriter -- God's Grandeur and Other Poems, by Gerard Manley Hopkins (Dover) "In the last two weeks, I've been returning to Hopkins.  Even in the 'world's wildfire," he asserts that 'this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.' A comfort."   "Cruciatus in crucem." -- President Jed Bartlet, The West Wing  (Episode 2.22 , “Two Cathedrals,” original airdate May 16, 2001, 9:00 PM EST)   For the Latin meaning of this phrase, see Quarreling with God.   For the complete script of this episode, see Two Cathedrals.   See also my journal note of August 3, 2002, "The Cruciatus Curse," below. 2:33 pm

Friday, August 23, 2002

August 23: Feast Day of St. William Wallace See The Great Man Himself and The William Wallace Directory Page. 9:56 am