From the journal of Steven H. Cullinane... 2003 Apr. 1-15

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Green and Burning

After posting the 2:42 PM entry at a public library this afternoon, I picked up the following at a "Friends of the Library" used-book sale:

The Green and Burning Tree:
On the Writing and Enjoyment
of Children's Books, 

by Eleanor Cameron (Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1969).

Cameron, on page 73, gives the source of her title; it is from the Mabinogion:

"And they saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was green and in full leaf."

Cameron finds the meaning of this symbol in Dylan Thomas: His Life and Work, by John Ackerman (Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 6:

"Another important feature of the old Welsh poetry is an awareness of the dual nature of reality, of unity in disunity, of the simultaneity of life and death, of time as an eternal moment rather than as something with a past and future."

For part of a Nobel Prize lecture on this topic — time as an eternal moment — see Architecture of Eternity, a journal note from December 8, 2002.

That lecture is from an author, Octavio Paz, who wrote in Spanish.  Here are some other words in that language:

Mi verso es de un verde claro,
Y de un carmín encendido.

My verse is a clear green,
And a burning crimson.

These lyrics to the song "Guantanamera" (see Palm Sunday) were on my mind this afternoon when Cameron's book caught my eye.

Green and crimson are, of course, also the colors of Christmas, or "Christ Mass."  In view of the fact that Cameron's book is about children's literature, this leads, like it or not, to the following meditation.

From a religious site:

Matthew 18:3 - And said, Truly I say to you, Unless you are converted, and become like little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Mark 10:15 - Truly I say to you, Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter it at all.

Luke 18:17 - Truly I say to you, Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall by no means enter it.

A meditation from a less religious site:

"What I tell you three times is true."

Finally, from what I now consider 

  • in view of the song lyrics quoted above,
  • in view of the fact that it deals with a Cuban movie also titled "Guantanamera,"
  • in view of Cameron's remarks on Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" (p. 129), and
  • in view of my April 7 entry on mathematics and art,

to be an extremely religious site, a picture:



 11:07 pm


Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Once Upon a Time 

On Tuesday, April 15, 2003, at 5:01 PM EST, this place was reserved for later use.

It now seems an appropriate spot to put Maurice Rapf, a screenwriter, a blacklisted Communist fellow-traveler, and later a professor of film studies at Dartmouth, his alma mater. 

Rapf died on April 15, 2003, at the age of 88.

He contributed to the screenplay for Disney's "Cinderella" (1950). According to his Washington Post obituary, "he said he gave the character of Cinderella a spirit of class struggle." 

Rapf described his Hollywood childhood in Back Lot: Growing Up With the Movies, 1999.

"A dream is a wish your heart makes."

Entered Friday, April 18, 2002, 3:24 AM EST.

 5:01 pm


Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Certain Things

by Murray L. Bob

DEATH:

  1. The great equalizer.
  2. The only vacation for which you need no reservation.
  3. Death was more acceptable when people didn't live as long.  More proof, if any was needed, that the more you have, the more you want.
  4. There is something comforting about its finality.  There is nothing unexpected about death except the time, place, and manner of its occurrence.
  5. The solution is dissolution.
  6. Has an undeservedly bad reputation: think of all the sons-of-bitches it's ridden us of.

TAXPAYER COMPLAINT:

The people who benefit the most from research are never the people who pay for it.

Both items above are from

A Contrarian's Dictionary Strikes Again! —
2001 Impudent Definitions For the 21st Century,

by Murray L. Bob.

Murray, a library director, checked out during National Library Week, April 6-12, 2003.  From the work quoted above, two of his classic parting shots:

LIBRARY:

When you look at everything else in this town you know there shouldn't be a great library here.  Fortunately, the librarians don't know this.

LIBRARIANS:

Old librarians never die, they just close the books.



 2:42 pm


Sunday, April 13, 2003

Palm Sunday, Part II:

Cold Mountain

From the notes to the CD of Songs From the Mountain (John Herrmann, Dirk Powell, Tim O'Brien):

"John [Herrmann, banjo player] would like to dedicate his work on this recording to Philip Kapleau Roshi, Kalu Rimpoche, and Harada Tangen Roshi, who all know the way to Cold Mountain...."

 See Buddha's Birthday (April 8) and The Diamond Project.

"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 
  I never know what you are thinking. Think."

— Tom Eliot, The Waste Land 

"I am thinking...
... of the midnight picnic
Once upon a time...."

— Suzanne Vega, "Tom's Diner"

Once upon a time...

See
Later the Same Day
and
Enormous Changes
At the Last Minute 


Grace Paley

"De donde crece la palma" — Song lyric 

From On Beauty, by Elaine Scarry, Princeton University Press, 1999, a quotation from Homer —

"in Delos, beside Apollo's altar --
the young slip of a palm-tree
springing into the light."

See also A Mass for Lucero and The Shining of Lucero.  

"How much story do you want?"

— George Balanchine


 11:59 pm


Sunday, April 13, 2003

3:07 PM

Palm Sunday

"The folk scene, in reality, was a strange coming together of liberal ideals, rural traditions, marketing and youth culture...."

— David Hajdu, review of "A Mighty Wind" in The New York Times of Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003

Those who recognize the church below will understand the caption.

For Peter, Paul, and Murray:
A Palm



 3:07 pm


Saturday, April 12, 2003

2:23 PM
Sequel
to the previous two entries

"This world is not conclusion;
A sequel stands beyond...."
— Emily Dickinson

Today's birthday: dancer/actress Ann Miller.

"In 1937, she was discovered by Lucille Ball...."

Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz,
and Ann Miller, cast photo
from Too Many Girls (1940)

"Just goes to show star quality shines through...."
— Website on Too Many Girls 

"It'll shine when it shines."
— Folk saying, epigraph to The Shining

"Shine on, you crazy diamond."
— Pink Floyd

"Well we all shine on..."
— John Lennon, "Instant Karma"

 2:23 pm


Saturday, April 12, 2003

Rhetoric Happens

"Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall."

— Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, quoted by Douglas Robinson at the site Linguistics and Language

CNN.com headline, Saturday, April 12, 2003, Posted at 12:24 AM EDT:

Rumsfeld on looting in Iraq:
'Stuff happens'

For further rhetoric, see

A Short Comparative Guide to Religion and Philosophy. 

This site has the added attraction of a midi of Lennon's classic, "Instant Karma," mentioned in yesterday's entry "Heaven's Gate."

 1:44 am

Comments on this post:

~chuckling~!

So, uh ... out of the norm for you and yet ...
Ah.  Yesh.  That's it.  YOU are a diamond too.  Multifaceted.

Posted 4/12/2003 at 4:37 am by oOMisfitOo

Steven, try maximizing your screen when surfing the site, and see what happens.  I was a little shocked with that as well ...
Thanks.

Posted 4/12/2003 at 1:43 pm by oOMisfitOo


Friday, April 11, 2003

Heaven's Gate

"Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall."

— Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, quoted by Douglas Robinson at the site Linguistics and Language

Mesopotamian mathematics:

"Location: present-day Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates

Cities: Babylon, founded 2300 BC, 70 miles south of present Baghdad, on the Euphrates....

Babylon = Bab-ilu, "gate of God," Hebrew: Babel or Bavel."

Modern rendition
of "Bab-ilu"

Kenneth
Burke

Perhaps the real heaven's gate is at

Pottawatomie College.

Instant karma update:

 At 5:09 PM I read the following in the New York Review of Books, dated May 1, 2003, which arrived today.

From a review of Terror and Liberalism, by Paul Berman:

"As a general analysis of the various enemies of liberalism, and what ties them together, it is superb.  All — Nazis, Islamists, Bolsheviks, Fascists, and so on — are linked by Berman to the 'ur-myth' of the fall of Babylon."

Speaking of Ur, Berman likes to quote a non-Biblical Abraham, named Lincoln.  The first, Biblical, Abraham was a damned homicidal lunatic, and the later American Abraham also delighted in blood sacrifice.  But that's just my opinion.  For a different view, see the Chautauqua Abrahamic Program.

 

 2:56 pm

Comments on this post:

I can not figure you out.  at all.  it's a fun game.

it's good to see my name invoked.

Posted 4/11/2003 at 4:00 pm by BabalonTheBride


Wednesday, April 09, 2003

The Poet as Prophet

In honor of Wallace Stevens, quoted in
yesterday's entry of 3:07 PM EDT:


April 8, 3:07 PM EDT


April 9, 10:50 AM EDT



4:00 pm

Comments on this post:

am i to infer anything from the juxtaposition of these two items?

Posted 4/9/2003 at 5:38 pm by TheHorseYouRode

btw.... i checked out that checkerboard in photoshop, using the density tool... and they really are the same!!

Posted 4/9/2003 at 5:40 pm by TheHorseYouRode

You may infer that the April 9 pedestal looks rather like the April 8 pedestal. 

Posted 4/9/2003 at 6:00 pm by m759


Wednesday, April 09, 2003

The Shadow and the Valley

Bad news this morning.  An old friend is gone.
In light of last night's entry, the best I can do
at the moment is yet another trilogy of links:



 1:01 pm


Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Hearts of Darkness

Today's birthdays:

Charles Baudelaire, poet, b. 1821

Leopold II, King of Belgium, b. 1835

Tom Lehrer, mathematician, b. 1928

In view of these birthdays and of yesterday's entry quoting Eliot on "the Shadow," the following trilogy of links seems appropriate:

The Lamont Cranston:

Part I   Part II   Part III

Nota bene:

Today is also the birthday of
Paul Robeson and J. William Fulbright,
shadows to respect.

 12:25 am


Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Death's Dream Kingdom

April 7, 2003, Baghdad - A US tank blew a huge statue of President Saddam Hussein off its pedestal in central Baghdad on Monday with a single shell, a US officer said.... "One shot, one kill."

"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals; they always come in handy."

— Stanislaw J. Lec 

"In death's dream kingdom....

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow"

— T. S. Eliot, Harvard 1910, The Hollow Men

"A light check in the shadow
is the same gray as
a dark check outside the shadow."

— Edward H. Adelson, Yale 1974, Illusions and Demos

"point A / In a perspective that begins again / At B"

— Wallace Stevens, Harvard 1901, "The Rock"

See also

Shine On, Hermann Weyl.


 3:07 pm


Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Babar's Dream

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

"Here we see the imagined universe of Babar's Dream by Jean de Brunhoff. In an archetypal battle between good and evil, the graceful winged elephants — the angels of kindness, intelligence, courage, patience, perseverance, knowledge, work, hope, love, health, joy, and happiness — drive out the demons of misfortune, anger, stupidity, discouragement, sickness, spinelessness, despair, fear, ignorance, cowardice, laziness."

— Source cited: Edward R. Tufte, Visual Explanations

Today is Buddha's birthday.  For the
connection with elephants, click here.

 2:56 am


Tuesday, April 08, 2003

x 12:30 am


Tuesday, April 08, 2003

x 12:29 am


Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Buddha's Birthday Song

Backstory

Lyrics:

As I'm listening
To the bells
Of the cathedral
I am thinking
Of your voice...
And of the midnight picnic
Once upon a time....

Thinking of her voice

 12:00 am


Monday, April 07, 2003

Math Awareness Month

April is Math Awareness Month.
This year's theme is "mathematics and art."



 11:59 pm


Monday, April 07, 2003

x 11:11 pm


Monday, April 07, 2003

An Offer He Couldn't Refuse

Today's birthday:  Francis Ford Coppola is 64.

"There is a pleasantly discursive treatment
of Pontius Pilate's unanswered question
'What is truth?'."

— H. S. M. Coxeter, 1987, introduction to Richard J. Trudeau's remarks on the "Story Theory" of truth as opposed to the "Diamond Theory" of truth in The Non-Euclidean Revolution
 
From a website titled simply Sinatra:

"Then came From Here to Eternity. Sinatra lobbied hard for the role, practically getting on his knees to secure the role of the street smart punk G.I. Maggio. He sensed this was a role that could revive his career, and his instincts were right. There are lots of stories about how Columbia Studio head Harry Cohn was convinced to give the role to Sinatra, the most famous of which is expanded upon in the horse's head sequence in The Godfather. Maybe no one will know the truth about that. The one truth we do know is that the feisty New Jersey actor won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his work in From Here to Eternity. It was no looking back from then on."

From a note on geometry of April 28, 1985:



 1:17 pm


Saturday, April 05, 2003

Art Wars:
Mathematics and the
Emperor's New Art

From Maureen Dowd's New York Times column of June 9, 2002: 

"The shape of the government is not as important as the policy of the government. If he makes the policy aggressive and pre-emptive, the president can conduct the war on terror from the National Gallery of Art."

NY Times, April 5, 2003:
U.S. Tanks Move Into Center of Baghdad
See also today's op-ed piece
by Patton's grandson.

Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, another example of great determination and strength of character:

Donald Coxeter Dies: Leader in Geometry

By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 5, 2003

"Donald Coxeter, 96, a mathematician who was one of the 20th century's foremost specialists in geometry and a man of great determination and strength of character as well, died March 31 at his home in Toronto."

From another Coxeter obituary:

In the Second World War, Coxeter was asked by the American government to work in Washington as a code-breaker. He accepted, but then backed out, partly because of his pacifist views and partly for aesthetic reasons: "The work didn't really appeal to me," he explained; "it was a different sort of mathematics."

For a differing account of how geometry is related to code-breaking, see the "Singer 7-cycle" link in yesterday's entry, "The Eight," of 3:33 PM.  This leads to a site titled

An Introduction to the
Applications of Geometry in Cryptography.

"Now I have precisely the right instrument, at precisely the right moment of history, in exactly the right place."

 — "Patton,"
the film

Quod erat
demonstrandum.

Added Sunday, April 6, 2003, 3:17 PM:

The New York Times Magazine of April 6
continues this Art Wars theme.


                 (Cover typography revised)

The military nature of our Art Wars theme appears in the Times's choice of words for its cover headline: "The Greatest Generation." (This headline appears in the paper, but not the Internet, version.)

Some remarks in today's Times Magazine article seem especially relevant to my journal entry for Michelangelo's birthday, March 6.

"...Conceptualism — suddenly art could be nothing more than an idea....

LeWitt moved between his syntax of geometric sculptures and mental propositions for images: concepts he wrote on paper that could be realized by him or someone else or not at all.  Physical things are perishable.  Ideas need not be."

— Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, April 6, 2003

Compare this with a mathematician's aesthetics:

"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.  If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."

— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology (1940), reprinted 1969, Cambridge U. Press, p. 84 

It seems clear from these two quotations that the real conceptual art is mathematics and that Kimmelman is peddling the emperor's new clothes.

 9:49 am

Comments on this post:

I love the clinical description of war in this op-ed piece. It sounds more like a game of chess than war.

Posted 4/5/2003 at 12:36 pm by NickyJett


Friday, April 04, 2003

Mathematics Awareness Month

April is the cruellest month....

Do you know nothing?
Do you see nothing?
Do you remember "Nothing"?

— T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

From Michael Pearson, Director of Programs and Services for the Mathematical Association of America, in his Liaison Newsletter of January 2003: 

"For this year's Mathematics Awareness Month, April 2003, the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics has selected the theme of Mathematics and Art....

Financial support for Mathematics Awareness Month 2003 is provided by the National Security Agency."

From a ReelWavs.com transcript of 
"Good Will Hunting":

nsa.mp3 (436K)
Will:  "Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll give it a shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', Send in the marines to secure the area 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some guy from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorroids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they'r servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president."

From an eulogy for Ivan Illich:

"He frequently cited the Latin maxim 'corruptio optimi pessima,' the corruption of the best is the worst."

 4:36 pm

Comments on this post:

life imitating art or art imitating life...

Posted 4/5/2003 at 1:45 pm by NickyJett


Friday, April 04, 2003

The Eight

Today, the fourth day of the fourth month, plays an important part in Katherine Neville's The Eight.  Let us honor this work, perhaps the greatest bad novel of the twentieth century, by reflecting on some properties of the number eight.  Consider eight rectangular cells arranged in an array of four rows and two columns.  Let us label these cells with coordinates, then apply a permutation.


 Decimal 
labeling

 
Binary
labeling


Algebraic
labeling


Permutation
labeling

 

The resulting set of arrows that indicate the movement of cells in a permutation (known as a Singer 7-cycle) outlines rather neatly, in view of the chess theme of The Eight, a knight.  This makes as much sense as anything in Neville's fiction, and has the merit of being based on fact.  It also, albeit rather crudely, illustrates the "Mathematics and Art" theme of this year's Mathematics Awareness Month.  (See the 4:36 PM entry.)

The visual appearance of the "knight" permutation is less important than the fact that it leads to a construction (due to R. T. Curtis) of the Mathieu group M24 (via the Curtis Miracle Octad Generator), which in turn leads logically to the Monster group and to related "moonshine" investigations in the theory of modular functions.   See also "Pieces of Eight," by Robert L. Griess.

 3:33 pm


Thursday, April 03, 2003

Musical Metaphysics

Some background for my journal entries of  April 2, 2003 (Symmetries), of March 31, 2003 (Sunday Lottery), and of March 28, 2003 (Bright Star):

In memory of

Today's site music (see midi console at top right of screen) is "All or Nothing at All."

In view of the Sunday Lottery entry of March 31 and of Starr's hits,  this song might be retitled "007 or 256."

In view of Draper's hit

"Tell all the folks that
  this life's a game of poker...."

the following article is of interest:

"GOD MAY PLAY DICE with the universe, as Einstein once feared, but serious gamblers, scorning metaphysical crapshoots and the casino's house edge, prefer no-limit Texas hold'em poker...."

— James McManus, Boston Globe, Sunday, March 30, 2003

Two other quotes, epigraphs to the classic novel Cosmic Banditos, seem relevant:

God does not play dice with the universe.
— Albert Einstein

Not only does God play dice with the universe, but sometimes he throws them where they cannot be seen.
— Stephen Hawking

Those who prefer Jewish metaphysics can consult the related book

Seinfeld and Philosophy:
A Book about Everything and Nothing.

 12:12 pm

Comments on this post:

No really ...

I'm grinnin' from ear to ear.  THIS is an excellent post.  Aw, they all are, but once in awhile, you get me.  Sincerely.  It's as though you pull me into a headlock and rub a noogie on my noggin'.

My Xanga woes have mysteriously disappeared.  I had already done all the suggestions handed out to me ... to no avail.  It WAS a Xanga system glitch.  I emailed the Xanga Gods on a number of occasions, and evidently, they heard my pleas.

Thank you for your concern.

Posted 4/3/2003 at 2:56 pm by oOMisfitOo

Humn.  Don't you think it's rather interesting that there was an ad for Diamonds in the article you quoted?  For some reason, it jumped at me.

Synchronicity, yet again.

Posted 4/3/2003 at 2:58 pm by oOMisfitOo

i'm not sure what to make of you, but I'm subscribing for the moment until I can figure you out.

Posted 4/3/2003 at 3:41 pm by BabalonTheBride


Wednesday, April 02, 2003

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.

 2:30 pm