Thursday, March 31, 2005  3:16 AM

Tuesday, March 29, 2005  4:01 PM

Monday, March 28, 2005  1:06 PM

Bright
Star



Click on star
for background.

Sunday, March 27, 2005  5:24 AM

Saturday, March 26, 2005  2:45 AM

Harrowing

Definition 1          Definition 2



Click on picture for details.

Added at 1:11 PM Saturday:

From a discussion of gnostic heresies in today's Tennessean.com: Gnostic way a backlash against lackluster sermons, worship ''Jesus is not a teacher in the conventional sense, according to the Gospel of Thomas, because people must come to knowledge themselves,'' writes Marvin Meyer in The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus, the latest book to collect these hidden gospels and secret sayings of Jesus. ''Jesus was more like a bartender, in that he serves the intoxicating drink of knowledge, but people must drink for themselves.''

 
"It's quarter to three..."

See also
The Twelve Steps of Christmas
from Sinatra's birthday last year.

Friday, March 25, 2005  3:00 AM

Sermon

Related material:
Click on the "spider"
symbol below.



Questions or comments on the sermon:
webweaver@genetics.med.harvard.edu

Thursday, March 24, 2005  8:00 PM

The Crimson Passion, continued:

Supper at Eight

Wednesday, March 23, 2005  3:00 PM

Spy Wednesday



Nature morte a l'échiquier, (les cinq sens)
vers 1655 ?, une narration
a valeur symbolique...
Huile sur bois, 73 x 55 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005  7:59 PM

For more on this theme
appropriate to Passion Week --
Jews playing God -- see



Rebecca Goldstein
in conversation with
Bob Osserman
of the
Mathematical Sciences Research Institute
at the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco,
Tuesday, March 22.  Wine and cheese
reception at 5:15 PM (San Francisco time).
 
For the meaning of the diamond,
see the previous entry.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005  4:01 PM

Make a Différance

From Frida Saal's

Lacan Derrida:

"Our proposal includes the lozenge (diamond) in between the names, because in the relationship / non-relationship that is established among them, a tension is created that implies simultaneously a union and a disjunction, in the perspective of a theoretical encounter that is at the same time necessary and impossible. That is the meaning of the lozenge that joins and separates the two proper names. For that reason their respective works become totally non-superposable and at the same time they were built with an awareness, or at least a partial awareness, of each other. What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of the main issues in this presentation."

Presentation

From a Contemporary Literary Theory website:

"Différance is that which all signs have, what constitutes them as signs, as signs are not that to which they refer: i) they differ, and hence open a space from that which they represent, and ii) they defer, and hence open up a temporal chain, or, participate in temporality. As well, following de Sassure's famous argument, signs 'mean' by differing from other signs. The coined word 'différance' refers to at once the differing and the deferring of signs. Taken to the ontological level� , the differing and deferring of signs from what they mean, means that every sign repeats the creation of space and time; and ultimately, that différance is the ultimate phenomenon in the universe, an operation that is not an operation, both active and passive, that which enables and results from Being itself."

From a text purchased on
Make a Difference Day, Oct. 23, 1999:

22. Without using the Pythagorean Theorem prove that the hypotenuse of  an isosceles right triangle will have the length   if the equal legs have the length 1.  Suggestion: Consider the similar triangles in Fig. 39. 23.  The ancient Greeks regarded the Pythagorean Theorem as involving areas, and they proved it by means of areas.  We cannot do so now because we have not yet considered the idea of area.  Assuming for the moment, however, the idea of the area of a square, use this idea instead of similar triangles and proportion in Ex. 22 above to show that x = . -- Page 98 of Basic Geometry, by George David Birkhoff, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, and Ralph Beatley, Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University (Scott, Foresman 1941)

Though it may be true, as the president of Harvard recently surmised, that women are inherently inferior to men at abstract thought -- in particular, pure mathematics*  -- they may in other respects be quite superior to men:

The above is from October 1999.
See also Naturalized Epistemology,
from Women's History Month, 2001.

* See the remarks of Frida Saal above and of Barbara Johnson on mathematics (The Shining of May 29, cited in Readings for St. Patrick's Day).

� For the diamond symbol at "the ontological level," see Modal Theology, Feb. 21, 2005.  See also Socrates on the immortality of the soul in Plato's Meno, source of the above Basic Geometry diamond.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005  4:00 PM

The Enemy

See Remembering Jacques Derrida.

"There is no teacher but the enemy."

-- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game,
   Tor paperback reprint, 1994, p. 262

"Différance is, for Derrida, the key concept
in order to understand what is here at stake."

-- Lacan Derrida, by Frida Saal

The following entries from October 2004
are related to the death of Jacques Derrida.

Sunday, March 20, 2005  4:44 PM

Thursday, March 17, 2005  11:11 PM

"George F. Kennan, a diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who formulated the basic foreign policy followed by the United States in the Cold War, died last night at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 101...."

Thursday, March 17, 2005  12:00 PM

1. A commentary on "Darkening of the Light," the I Ching, Hexagram 36:

"Here the climax of the darkening is reached. 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."

2. Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler
   
   
3. Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad
   

4. Narrativity: Theory and Practice, by Philip John Moore Sturgess

   Sturgess's book deals with the narrative logic of the above novels by Koestler and Conrad, as well as some Irish material:

   Narrativity: Theory and Practice

   TABLE OF CONTENTS Pt. I The Theory of Narrativity Introduction 3 1 Narrativity and its Definitions 5 2 A Logic of Narrativity 28 3 Narrativity and Double Logics 68 4 Narrativity and the Case against Contradiction 93 5 Narrativity, Structure, and Spatial Form 117 6 Narrativity and the French Perspective 139 Pt. II The Practice of Narrativity Introduction 161 7 The Logic of Duplicity and Design in Under Western Eyes 166 8 A Story of Narrativity in Ulysses 189 9 Narrative Despotism and Metafictional Mastery: The Case of Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds 235 10 A Double Logic and the Nightmare of Reason: Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon 260 Conclusion. A Reading of Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent 287 Bibliography and Further Reading 312 Index 317

Thursday, March 17, 2005  12:00 AM

Midnight Drums for Larry

The Harvard Crimson, March 16:

"Voting by secret ballot in a Faculty meeting at the Loeb Drama Center, 218 faculty members affirmed a motion put on the docket by Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies J. Lorand Matory ’82, stating that 'the Faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of Lawrence H. Summers.' "

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences:

Professor Matory is "a renowned expert on Brazil and on the Yoruba civilization of West Africa, which is world famous for its religious complexity and artistic creativity. He is equally noted for his study of such Latin American religions as Haitian 'Vodu,' Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Santería...."

The Harvard Crimson, January 7, 2005:

"I came here with the goal of dancing with Larry Summers, and I did it," Chinwe U. Nwosu ’08 said. "He’s a great dancer."

"Now I can say that 'Bootylicious' is our song," she added.

"Atabaque - a large tom-tom
that is used in Afro-Brazilian
religious celebrations"

-- The Sounds of Samba
at Yale

-- From Log24.net, Oct. 16, 2004:

Midnight in the Garden
continued

Tuesday, March 15, 2005  2:56 PM

Harvard Magazine,
Sept.-Oct. 2004:

"With the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, Harvard couples were among those who took vows.... Lowell House master Diana Eck (left) and co-master Dorothy Austin tied the knot in Memorial Church on July 4, with Rev. Peter Gomes, Plummer professor of Christian morals, officiating."

Harvard's Lowell House: "In the Dining Hall are portraits of President Lowell and his wife; his sister Amy Lowell (Pulitzer prize winning poet, and a lover of scandal...)...."

Today's Harvard Crimson: "Stone joined members of the Foundation for lunch yesterday in Lowell House before delivering her remarks at Memorial Church last night..."

Site on Shakespeare's Sonnets:

Saturday, March 12, 2005  2:28 PM

Bomb

See The Meaning of 3:16 (2/28/05),

The Death of George Scott (March 9, 2005),

Is Nothing Sacred? (March 9, 2000), and



The Exorcist Revisited (July 2, 2004).



For the hidden spiritual meaning
of 3:16, see
March First, 2005
and the upcoming
Ides of March album,


Atom Bomb.

Saturday, March 12, 2005  7:14 AM

Logos

 

For the religious significance of the
logo on the left, see Why Me?

For the religious significance of the
logo on the right, see Palgrave.com.

Related material:
previous entry and Style.

Saturday, March 12, 2005  5:09 AM

Three Eleanors

Continued from March 10:

For some children...



It takes three Eleanors.


1             2              3

For Alice, a beautiful child
who died in London
on Tuesday
at 72:



Today's New York Times says that
Alice, the author of Fairy Tale,
was a
"passionately traditional Catholic."

For related material, see
Immortal Diamond:
O'Hara, Hopkins, and Joyce.

See also the conflict between Trudeau's
  "diamond theory" and
"story theory"
of truth,

and Suzanne Keen's article from the
Catholic publication Commonweal:

Getting to Truth by Lying.

Saturday, March 12, 2005  3:16 AM

Final Arrangements, continued...

From the Women's History Month Soundtrack:

Nellie McCaslin in Life on the Mississippi (2001)

The River's Too Wide -- Olivia Newton-John 3:16 For a sample of this vintage Olivia (1974), click here. For more on 3:16, see the log24 entries for the date of Dr. McCaslin's death -- February 28, 2005. For more on Life on the Mississippi, see NASA Meets Jesus.

Saturday, March 12, 2005  3:12 AM

Saturday, March 12, 2005  1:21 AM

My Dark Lady



"Form the turtle!"
-- Rex Harrison

See also Philadelphia Story.

Friday, March 11, 2005  4:04 PM

See too:



Click on picture for details.

For some theological background
to this and the previous 8 entries,
see log24 Sept. 1-15, 2003,
which contains the following passage:

"I would like to say something more to you about cheerful serenity, the serenity of the stars and of the mind.... neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses; it is a virtue of saints and of knights; it is indestructible and only increases with age and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art."

-- The Glass Bead Game

Star Wars Episode III opening date:

May 19

Friday, March 11, 2005  4:28 AM

For truth and beauty combined, see
The Eight, an entry of 4/4/2003,
to which the following sketch refers.

Friday, March 11, 2005  2:45 AM

Philadelphia Story Friday, March 11, 2005 James Biddle, 75, died at his family's estate, Andalusia, near Philadelphia yesterday. From today's New York Times: "Mr. Biddle was born at Andalusia on July 8, 1929. He attended St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and graduated from Princeton, where he studied art and archaeology. He served in an intelligence unit of the Army during the Korean War." "Anybody invites you to a game of solitaire, you tell 'em sorry, buster, the ball game is over." -- Frank Sinatra

Photo by John Orris, The New York Times James Biddle in 1967 Art Archaeology

Thursday, March 10, 2005  9:29 PM

Women's History Month
(continued)

For some children...



It takes three Eleanors.


1             2              3

Thursday, March 10, 2005  5:31 PM

Final Arrangements
(continued)



Macalester College on Don Celender:
"An Art History prize fund
has been established in his name.
Contributions can be sent to
the Macalester Art Department."

In today's Art History competition,
Glenn Davis is, of course,
the first runner-up,
and is represented below
by the X.
(Hexagram 34,
The Power of the Great)

Art itself is represented
by the box.
(Hexagram 20,
Contemplation, View)

  Women's History Month
is represented by
the X in a box.
(Hexagram 2,
  The Receptive)
 


The winner of the
Art History competition
is Jodie Foster, for
combining astrophysics
with interpretive dancing.



"... as in a great work of art, there is,
written small, the artist's signature....
 Standing over humans, gods, and demons...
there is an intelligence that
antedates the universe."

-- Carl Sagan,  
Contact

"Dr. Kinsey, Dr. Arroway;
  Dr. Arroway, Dr. Kinsey."

Thursday, March 10, 2005  2:45 AM

Final Arrangements

Trude Rittmann, an Arranger
of Broadway Favorites, Dies at 96

Ms. Rittmann died on February 22.
For related arrangements, see the
five log24.net entries ending on that date.

"It's quarter to three..."

Wednesday, March 9, 2005  4:02 AM

"The entertaining script was adapted from the novel by Charles Portis, by well-known, long time writer, Marguerite Roberts who liked to write scripts for tough men. She wrote scripts for MGM in the '30's, '40's, until she was blacklisted in 1952, for not revealing names to The Committee on Un-American Activities."

Thursday, March 3, 2005  3:31 PM

Ch-ch-Changes

"Everything changes but the law of change does not change."

"He who has perceived the meaning of change fixes his attention no longer on transitory individual things but on the immutable, eternal law at work in all change. This law is the tao of Lao-Tse, the course of things, the principle of the one in the many."

-- Richard Wilhelm (1923), introduction to the Book of Changes

Thursday, March 3, 2005  3:26 PM

Necessity, Possibility, Symmetry



Matrix group actions,
March 26, 1985

"We symbolize logical necessity
with the box ()
and logical possibility
with the diamond ()."

-- Keith Allen Korcz,
(Log24.net, 1/25/05)

And what do we           
   symbolize by  ?

"The possibilia that exist,
and out of which
the Universe arose,
are located in
     a necessary being...."

-- Michael Sudduth,
Notes on
God, Chance, and Necessity
by Keith Ward,
Regius Professor of Divinity
at Christ Church College, Oxford
(the home of Lewis Carroll)

Thursday, March 3, 2005  3:22 PM

Women's History Month

Wednesday, March 2, 2005  2:22 PM

White Stone

"I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language-- and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music."

In memory of Peter Foy,
who died in Las Vegas
on 2/17

Revelation 2:17:

"And I will give him a white stone...."

Related material:

2003 2/17: "immortal diamond"
2004 2/17:  "hard core"           
2005 2/17:  "the diamond"      

For an "elegant starburst," see

"Starflight," from 10/10, 2004 --

the date of
Christopher Reeve's death.

See also
Revelation 10:10 --

"And I took the little book
out of the angel's hand,
and ate it up; and it was in my mouth
sweet as honey: and as soon as I had
eaten it, my belly was bitter."

For the relationship of this verse to
the style of Hunter Thompson, see

From the Department of Justice:
"LSD generally is taken by mouth.
The drug is colorless and odorless
but has a slightly bitter taste."
Among the street terms for LSD
is "Superman."

Tuesday, March 1, 2005  3:16 PM

3/16 Continued

The New Yorker, issue dated March 7, 2005, on Hunter S. Thompson:

"... his true model and hero was F. Scott Fitzgerald. He used to type out pages from 'The Great Gatsby,' just to get the feeling, he said, of what it was like to write that way, and Fitzgerald's novel was continually on his mind while he was working on 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,' which was published, after a prolonged and agonizing compositional nightmare, in 1972. That book was supposed to be called 'The Death of the American Dream,' a portentous age-of-Aquarius cliché that won Thompson a nice advance but that he naturally came to consider, as he sat wretchedly before his typewriter night after night, a millstone around his neck."

-- Louis Menand

"I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
-- Daisy Buchanan in Chapter I of The Great Gatsby

"Thanks for the tip, American Dream."
-- Spider-Girl, in Vol. 1, No. 30, March 2001

Log24.net, Feb. 21, 2005: