Friday, March 14, 2003

The Producers, Part Deux: The Consumers Sidney Lippman, Hit Songwriter, Dies at 89 From THE NEW YORK TIMES Sidney Lippman, the composer and songwriter who wrote the music for "A — You're Adorable," died on Tuesday, March 11, 2003, in New Jersey.  He was 89. He teamed up with lyricists Buddy Kaye and Fred Wise to write "A — You're Adorable (The Alphabet Song)" which became a No. 1 hit in 1949 as an RCA Victor recording with Perry Como and the Fontane Sisters. See also my Tuesday, March 11, entry, The Producers, and my entry from 2001, Random Thoughts for St. Patrick's Eve. The illustration above, a tribute to Meg Ryan on Einstein's birthday, may serve as a counterpoint to the "Producers" entry of March 11, the date of Lippman's death. The St. Patrick's Eve note contains a rather different meditation on the letter "A."  See too The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, an intriguing speculation by Leonard Shlain, who claims to show that "patriarchy and misogyny have moved contrapuntually to goddess veneration." Well, maybe not quite yet; but blessed are the peacemakers. 2:20 am Comments on this post: Alphabet versus the Goddess is the next book on my reading list! Posted 3/14/2003 at 12:44 pm by NickyJett

Thursday, March 13, 2003

ART WARS: From The New Yorker, issue of March 17, 2003, Clive James on Aldous Huxley: “The Perennial Philosophy, his 1945 book compounding all the positive thoughts of West and East into a tutti-frutti of moral uplift, was the equivalent, in its day, of It Takes a Village: there was nothing in it to object to, and that, of course, was the objection." For a cultural artifact that is less questionably perennial, see Huxley's story "Young Archimedes." Plato, Pythagoras, and the diamond figure Plato's Diamond in the Meno Plato as a precursor of Gerard Manley Hopkins's "immortal diamond." An illustration shows the ur-diamond figure. Plato's Diamond Revisited Ivars Peterson's Nov. 27, 2000 column "Square of the Hypotenuse" which discusses the diamond figure as used by Pythagoras (perhaps) and Plato. Other references to the use of Plato's diamond in the proof of the Pythagorean theorem: Huxley: "... and he proceeded to prove the theorem of Pythagoras -- not in Euclid's way, but by the simpler and more satisfying method which was, in all probability, employed by Pythagoras himself.... 'You see,' he said, 'it seemed to me so beautiful....' I nodded. 'Yes, it's very beautiful,' I said -- 'it's very beautiful indeed.'" -- Aldous Huxley, "Young Archimedes," in Collected Short Stories, Harper, 1957, pp. 246 - 247 Heath: Sir Thomas L. Heath, in his commentary on Euclid I.47, asks how Pythagoreans discovered the Pythagorean theorem and the irrationality of the diagonal of a unit square. His answer? Plato's diamond. (See Heath, Sir Thomas Little (1861-1940), The thirteen books of Euclid's Elements translated from the text of Heiberg with introduction and commentary. Three volumes. University Press, Cambridge, 1908. Second edition: University Press, Cambridge, 1925. Reprint: Dover Publications, New York, 1956. Other sites on the alleged "diamond" proof of Pythagoras Colorful diagrams at Cut-the-Knot Illustrated legend of the diamond proof Babylonian version of the diamond proof For further details of Huxley's story, see The Practice of Mathematics, Part I, by Robert P. Langlands, from a lecture series at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. From the New Yorker Contributors page for St. Patrick's Day, 2003: "Clive James (Books, p. 143) has a new collection, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002, which will be published in June." See also my entry "The Boys from Uruguay" and the later entry "Lichtung!" on the Deutsche Schule Montevideo in Uruguay. 4:44 pm

Thursday, March 13, 2003

Death Knell In memory of Howard Fast, novelist and Jewish former Communist, who died yesterday, a quotation: "For many of us, the geometry course sounded the death knell for our progress — and interest — in mathematics." — "Shape and Space in Geometry" © 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved. Legal Policy See also Geometry for Jews. Added March 16, 2003: See, too, the life of John Sanford, blacklisted Jewish writer, who died on March 6, 2003 — Michelangelo's birthday and the date of "Geometry for Jews." 5:24 am Comments on this post: I agree...After 6 years of math, Its the only math class I aced in High school and college.  As a matter of fact I got a "B+" on the Geometry Regents exam...YAAY for Geometry! Posted 3/13/2003 at 9:02 am by NickyJett

Thursday, March 13, 2003

Birthday Song Today is the birthday of the late Jewish media magnate and art collector Walter H. Annenberg, whose name appears on a website that includes the following text: Shape and Space in Geometry "Making quilt blocks is an excellent way to explore symmetry. A quilt block is made of 16 smaller squares. Each small square consists of two triangles. Study this example of a quilt block: This block has a certain symmetry. The right half is a mirror image of the left, and the top half is a mirror of the bottom." © 1997-2003 Annenberg/CPB. All rights reserved. Legal Policy Symmetries of patterns such as the above are the subject of my 1976 monograph " Diamond Theory," which also deals with "shape and space in geometry," but in a much more sophisticated way.  For more on Annenberg, see my previous entry, "Daimon Theory."  For more on the historical significance of March 13, see Neil Sedaka, who also has a birthday today, in " Jews in the News." Sedaka is, of course, noted for the hit tune "Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen," our site music for today. See also Geometry for Jews and related entries. For the phrase "diamond theory" in a religious and philosophical context, see Pilate, Truth, and Friday the Thirteenth. "It's quarter to three...." — Frank Sinatra 2:45 am

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Daimon Theory Today is allegedly the anniversary of the canonization, in 1622, of two rather important members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits): Ignatius Loyola...   Click here for Loyola's legacy of strategic intelligence. Francis Xavier...   Click here for Xavier's legacy of strategic stupidity. We can thank (or blame) a Jesuit (Gerard Manley Hopkins) for the poetic phrase "immortal diamond."  He may have been influenced by Plato, who has Socrates using a diamond figure in an argument for the immortality of the soul.  Confusingly, Socrates also talked about his "daimon" (pronounced dye-moan).  Combining these similar-sounding concepts, we have Doctor Stephen A. Diamond writing about daimons — a choice of author and topic that neatly combines the strategic intelligence of Loyola with the strategic stupidity of Xavier. The cover illustration is perhaps not of Dr. Diamond himself. A link between diamond theory and daimon theory is furnished by the charitable legacy of the non-practicing Jew Walter Annenberg. For Annenberg and diamond theory, see this site on the elementary geometry of quilt blocks, which credits the Annenberg Foundation for support. For Annenberg and daimon theory, see this site on Socrates, which has a similar Annenberg support credit. Advanced disciples of Annenberg can learn much from the Perseus site about daimon theory. Let us pray that Abrahamic religious bigotry does not stand in their way.  Less advanced disciples of Annenberg may find fulfillment in teaching children the beauty of elementary 4x4 quilt-block symmetry.  Let us pray that academic bigotry does not prevent these same children, when they have grown older, from learning the deeper, and more difficult, beauties of diamond theory.   Daimon Theory   Diamond Theory 2:03 am

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

ART WARS: The Producers Broadway City Arcade "Aryan Christ" Carl G. Jung Bloomberg & Bernstein, Mayor & Producers' Head Simon and Garfunkel's Tribute to Synchronicity: Fools, said I,    you do not know Silence like    a cancer grows. Hear my words    that I might teach you. Take my arms    that I might reach you.... Dummköpfe, sagte ich,    ihr wißt nicht, daß die Stille wie    ein Krebs wächst. Hört meine Worte,    die ich euch sage. Nehmt meine Hände,    die ich euch reiche.... And the people    bowed and prayed To the neon god    they made. Und die Menschen    verbeugten sich vor dem Neon-Gott, den sie schufen,    und beteten zu ihm.                    — Paul Simon For more on Jung, see (pro) The C. G. Jung Page and (con) The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung. See also the Synchronicity album of The Police, inducted last night into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 4:09 pm

Monday, March 10, 2003

ART WARS: Art at the Vanishing Point Two readings from The New York Times Book Review of Sunday, March 9, 2003 are relevant to our recurring "art wars" theme.  The essay on Dante by Judith Shulevitz on page 31 recalls his "point at which all times are present."  (See my March 7 entry.)  On page 12 there is a review of a novel about the alleged "high culture" of the New York art world.  The novel is centered on Leo Hertzberg, a fictional Columbia University art historian.  From Janet Burroway's review of What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt: "...the 'zeros' who inhabit the book... dramatize its speculations about the self.... the spectator who is 'the true vanishing point, the pinprick in the canvas.''' Here is a canvas by Richard McGuire for April Fools' Day 1995, illustrating such a spectator. For more on the "vanishing point," or "point at infinity," see "Midsummer Eve's Dream." Connoisseurs of ArtSpeak may appreciate Burroway's summary of Hustvedt's prose: "...her real canvas is philosophical, and here she explores the nature of identity in a structure of crystalline complexity." For another "structure of crystalline complexity," see my March 6 entry, "Geometry for Jews." For a more honest account of the New York art scene, see Tom Wolfe's   The Painted Word. 5:45 am

Sunday, March 09, 2003

Symbols — Broadway: The Sound of Silence Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again. (See previous entry, Mar. 7, "Lovely, Dark and Deep.)  And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made. (See CNN.com   Broadway City Arcade club story of Mar. 9) The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. (See picture in NY Times Book Review, Mar. 9, page 31.) See also the footnote on the Halmos "tombstone" symbol in the previous entry, the entry "Dustin in Wonderland" of Feb. 24, the film "Marathon Man," and the entry "Geometry for Jews" of March 6. 4:01 pm

Friday, March 07, 2003

Lovely, Dark and Deep On this date in 1923, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," by Robert Frost, was published.  On this date in 1999, director Stanley Kubrick died.  On this date in 1872, Piet Mondrian was born. "....mirando il punto a cui tutti li tempi son presenti" — Dante, Paradiso, XVII, 17-18  Chez Mondrian Kertész, Paris, 1926  6:23 PM Friday, March 7: From Measure Theory, by Paul R. Halmos, Van Nostrand, 1950: "The symbol is used throughout the entire book in place of such phrases as 'Q.E.D.' or 'This completes the proof of the theorem' to signal the end of a proof." 4:00 am Comments on this post: That is lovely, dark and deep. I wish I had seen the above first picture earlier this week.  It would have made my set design for Lady Wishforts house much easier. "The Way of the World" by William Congreve.  We open next Friday. Posted 3/8/2003 at 6:57 am by oOMisfitOo

Thursday, March 06, 2003

ART WARS: Geometry for Jews Today is Michelangelo's birthday. Those who prefer the Sistine Chapel to the Rothko Chapel may invite their Jewish friends to answer the following essay question: Discuss the geometry underlying the above picture.  How is this geometry related to the work of Jewish artist Sol LeWitt? How is it related to the work of Aryan artist Ernst Witt?  How is it related to the Griess "Monster" sporadic simple group whose elements number  808 017 424 794 512 875 886 459 904 961 710 757 005 754 368 000 000 000? Some background: From Nobel Prize Women in Science, by Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Second Edition (2001), Joseph Henry Press: "Storm trooper Ernst Witt, resplendent in the Brownshirt uniform of Hitler's paramilitary, knocked on a Jew's apartment door in 1934.  A short, rotund woman opened the door. Emmy Noether smiled, welcomed the young Nazi into her home, and started her underground math class. The Brownshirt was one of her favorite pupils." On this date in 1962, Frank Sinatra recorded "I Gotta Right To Sing The Blues" for Capitol Records. This was his last recording for Capitol. He had already started recording for Reprise Records. Related reading: A Beauty Really Bare, by Robert Hughes, and The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe 2:35 am Comments on this post: Thank goodness I am not Jewish, (I think) because I couldn't begin to answer the question. Or at least I don't want to think that hard today. Btw, Michangelo's work was shown here in Chicago, during the late fall. Posted 3/6/2003 at 3:55 pm by NickyJett I was just listening to that release of Frank's yesterday (he was a good friend of my paternal grandmother for many years). I love coming here. Your posts make me think. Few do. And thanks for the guestbook comment. That meant a lot. Posted 3/6/2003 at 5:54 pm by william_f_house

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Eat at Joe's In honor of the 50th anniversary of the death of Joseph Stalin: National Student Strike * March 5th Courtesy of the Young Communist League 11:38 pm Comments on this post: Irony, you have to love it. The kids walked out here too...unfortunately, no one in power is listening.  Posted 3/6/2003 at 4:30 pm by NickyJett

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Ash Wednesday Sermon "Teach us to care and not to care." — T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday" From The Jerusalem Post, August 6, 2001: In the movie Godfather II there is a scene when Michael Corleone is in Batista-ruled Havana. A Marxist rebel is arrested, and rather than be taken alive he explodes a grenade he had hidden in his jacket, killing himself and the officers arresting him. His partner says: "Those rebels, you know, they're lunatics." "Maybe so," Michael Corleone says. "But it occurred to me. The soldiers are paid to fight - the rebels aren't." "What does that tell you?" asks his partner. "They can win," he replies. — Analysis by Arieh O'Sullivan The date of the above analysis, August 6, was the date of the Christian Feast of the Transfiguration and the anniversary of the first use in warfare of a nuclear weapon. "And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word* the unstilled world still whirled About the centre of the silent Word.... Where shall the word be found, where will the word Resound?" — T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday," 1930 Hiroshima, perhaps? See also my entries for Transfiguration 2002. * Eliot does not say what "Word" he is talking about.  Perhaps it is "Arieh," the name of the journalist who wrote the perceptive Havana passage above.  A search for the meaning of this word reveals that it means "an adult lion, having paired, in search of his prey (Nahum 2:12; 2 Sam 17:10; Num 23:24)."  This is from The Witness of the Stars, a work that views the constellation Leo as a symbol of the Messiah.  A particularly relevant passage: "The brightest star... marks the heart of the Lion (hence sometimes called by the moderns, Cor Leonis, the heart of the Lion)."  Cor Leonis, Corleone.  Is this the "Word" you meant, T. S.? 5:38 pm Comments on this post: I meant to comment on this yesterday...I did realize that TS' Eliot's works were so interwined with religion. Quite interesting. Posted 3/6/2003 at 4:44 pm by NickyJett

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Ash Wednesday Brace Yourself, Maureen From Maureen Dowd's New York Times column today: "During the innocent summer before 9/11, the defense secretary's office sponsored a study of ancient empires — Macedonia, Rome, the Mongols — to figure out how they maintained dominance. What tips could Rummy glean from Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan?" Saddle up! Background briefing, added at 6:29 AM: See also the use of the hyperbolic paraboloid in Mexican church architecture by Félix Candela and an essay on saddle surfaces by Joseph F. MacDonnell, Society of Jesus, who spent eight years in Iraq teaching physics and mathematics at two Jesuit schools in Baghdad: Baghdad College and Al Hikma University.  He writes that "since the 1968 Baathi takeover of the two Jesuit schools and expulsion of all Jesuits from Iraq in 1969" he has been teaching mathematics at Fairfield University.  MacDonnell notes that there are only three doubly ruled surfaces (in real 3-space): the hyperboloid (used for nuclear cooling towers), the hyperbolic paraboloid (used, as noted, for Mexican churches), and the plane (used widely).  The geometry here is perhaps less relevant than the existence of the Society of Jesus as a sort of intelligence agency within the Church -- an agency the current Pope has never understood how to use.  Opus Dei is a greatly inferior substitute. 12:07 am Comments on this post: Erm...can anyone say "fall of the roman empire"? Posted 3/5/2003 at 8:42 am by NickyJett

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Fearful Symmetry I just Googled this phrase and found the following site, which turns out to be related to my previous entry on the Bead Game and the death of John P. Thompson. Fearful Symmetry: The Music Master's Lecture, by Daniel d'Quincy. This in turn links to an excerpt from The Glass Bead Game that includes this passage:  "I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created." It is very easy to get dangerously confused about holiness, but here are some relevant quotes: "You will have to allow me to digress a bit in order to bring ourselves to a sufficiently elevated perspective... I warn you, it will require an attitude of playfulness on your part. Our approach will aim more at sincerity than seriousness. The attitude I'm aiming at is best expressed, I suppose, in the playing of a unique game, known by its German name as Das Glasperlenspiel, and which we may translate as the Glass Bead Game." — Daniel d'Quincy, Fearful Symmetry  "7:11" — God himself said this, at least according to the previous entry and to my Jan. 28 entry, State of the Communion. "Seven is heaven." — See my web page Eight is a Gate. "An excellent example of a 'universal' in the sense of Charles Williams, Jung, or Plato is Hexagram 11 in China's 3,000-year-old classic, the I Ching: 'Heaven and earth unite:  the image of PEACE.'   (Wilhelm/Baynes translation,  Princeton University Press, 1967)"  — S. H. Cullinane, Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star Thus we may associate the numbers 7 and 11 with the notions of heaven and peace; for a somewhat darker association of the time 7:11 with Kali as Time the Destroyer, see my last entry and also my previous entries Fat Man and Dancing Girl (Feb. 18, 2003), and  Time and Eternity (Feb. 1, 2003). 9:25 pm Comments on this post: Actually isn't the number 11 associated with chaos. Further, I never understood why the number 7 is considered the number of completion? Posted 3/5/2003 at 9:49 am by NickyJett

Sunday, March 02, 2003

7:20 PM CALI Time The Bus and the Bead Game:   The Communion of Saints as  the Association of Ideas On this date in 1955, "Bus Stop," a play by William Inge, opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. "I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street." — C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, opening sentence Today's birthdays: Sam Houston Dr. Seuss Kurt Weill Mikhail Gorbachev Tom Wolfe Desi Arnaz Jennifer Jones Karen Carpenter and many others. Today is the feast day of   St. Randolph Scott,  St. Sandy Dennis,  St. D. H. Lawrence, and St. Charlie Christian. "Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear..." — Karen Carpenter singing "Superstar" "And if I find me a good man,  I won't be back at all." — C. C. Rider lyrics See (and hear) also "Seven Come Eleven," played by St. Charlie Christian. One might (disregarding separation in time and space -- never major hindrances to the saints) imagine C. S. Lewis in Heaven listening to a conversation among the four saints listed above.  For more on the communion of saints, see my entry "State of the Communion" of Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003.  This entry, quoting an old spiritual, concluded with "Now hear the word of the Lord"  -- followed by this notation:   7:11 PM. See also the N.Y. Times obituary of John P. Thompson of Dallas, former 7-Eleven chairman, who died, as it happened, on that very day (Jan. 28).  See also Karen Carpenter's "first take luck." The sort of association of ideas described in the "Communion" entry is not unrelated to the Glasperlenspiel, or Glass Bead Game, of Hermann Hesse.  For a somewhat different approach to the Game, see "The Glass Bead Game," by John S. Wilson, group theorist and head of the Pure Mathematics Group at the University of Birmingham in England. Wilson is "not convinced that Hesse's... game is only a metaphor." Neither am I. For the association-of-ideas approach, see the page cited in my "Communion" entry, "A Game Designer's Holy Grail," and (if you can find a copy) one of the greatest forgotten books of the twentieth century, The Third Word War, by Ian Lee (A&W Publishers, Inc., New York, 1978).  As Lee remarks concerning the communion of saints and the association of ideas, "The association is the idea."   10:20 pm Comments on this post: Sometimes, the best thing to do is wait...do nothing just wait until the right bus comes along.  Posted 3/3/2003 at 12:56 pm by NickyJett