Saturday, July 15, 2006 3:26 PM
Ein Bild
From 6/6/6:
Und was fur
ein Bild des Christentums
ist dabei herausgekommen?
From this date last year:
Adapted from cover of
German edition of Cold Mountain
From 6/6/6:
Und was fur
ein Bild des Christentums
ist dabei herausgekommen?
From this date last year:
Adapted from cover of
German edition of Cold Mountain
Saturday, July 15, 2006 12:00 AM
Today's birthday:Linda Ronstadt is 60.
"Elegant as a slow blues."
-- Review of a writer
by Rolling Stone
Just send me black roses
White rhythm and blues
And somebody who cares when you lose
Black roses, white rhythm and blues
Black roses, white rhythm and blues
-- Linda Ronstadt song
by J. D. Souther, from
Living in the USA, 1978
Thursday, July 13, 2006 7:00 PM
Chapter 24By Syd Barrett,
Dead Poet
A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset.
-- From the 1967 album
"The Piper at the Gates of Dawn"
Thursday, July 13, 2006 5:45 PM
Longest Day's JourneyBY BOB THOMAS, LOS ANGELES
July 13, 2006 (AP)-- Red Buttons, the carrot-topped burlesque comedian who became a top star in early television and then in a dramatic role won the 1957 Oscar as supporting actor in "Sayonara," died Thursday [July 13, 2006]. He was 87. --San Francisco Chronicle
Sayonara.
Thursday, July 13, 2006 4:00 PM
|
Thursday, July 13, 2006 Hyperspace and a Theory of Everything What lies beyond our 4 dimensions? I would ask myself a question only a child could ask: what would it be like to be a carp? |
A child, or Maurits Escher:
Three Worlds,
1955
Thursday, July 13, 2006 12:00 PM
Today's birthday:Harrison Ford
"The forest here at the bottom of the canyon is mostly pine, with a few aspen and broad-leafed shrubs. Steep canyon walls rise way above us on both sides. Occasionally the trail opens into a patch of sunlight and grass that edges the canyon stream, but soon it reenters the deep shade of the pines. The earth of the trail is covered with a soft springy duff of pine needles. It is very quiet here.
Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion."-- Robert Pirsig
Related material:
"Canyon Breeze" as played at
myspace.com/montanaskies
"Canyon Breeze" as played at
myspace.com/montanaskies
"...
a point of common understanding between the classic and romantic
worlds. Quality, the cleavage term between hip and square, seemed to be
it. Both worlds used the term. Both knew what it was. It was just that
the romantic left it alone and appreciated it for what it was and the
classic tried to turn it into a set of intellectual building blocks for
other purposes."-- Robert Pirsig
For such building blocks, see
myspace.com/affine.
The background music there
is the same, by Montana Skies.
myspace.com/affine.
The background music there
is the same, by Montana Skies.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 9:00 AM
Band Numbers"Some friends of mine
are in this band..."
-- David Auburn, Proof
Seven is Heaven,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.
-- The Prime Powers
Tuesday, July 11, 2006 9:11 PM
Not Crazy Enough?Some children of the sixties may feel that today's previous two entries, on Syd Barrett, the Crazy Diamond, are not crazy enough. Let them consult the times of those entries-- 2:11 and 8:15-- and interpret those times, crazily, as dates: 2/11 and 8/15.
This brings us to Stephen King territory-- apparently the natural habitat of Syd Barrett.
See Log24 on a 2/11, Along Came a Dreamcatcher, and Log24 on an 8/15, The Line.
From 8/15, a remark of Plato:
"There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on..."
(Compare with the remarks by Abraham Cowley for Tom Stoppard's recent birthday.)
From 2/11, two links: Halloween Meditations and We Are the Key.
From Dreamcatcher (the film and the book):
For Syd Barrett as Duddits,
see Terry Kirby on Syd Barrett
(edited-- as in Stephen King
and the New Testament--
for narrative effect):
"He appeared as the Floyd performed the song 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond.' It contains the words: 'Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond. Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.'
At first, they didn't recognise the
man, whose head and eyebrows were shaved....
But this was the 'crazy diamond' himself: Syd
Barrett, the subject of the song....
When Roger Waters saw his old friend, he broke
down....
Rick Wright, the keyboards player, later told an
interviewer:
...
'Roger [Waters] was in tears, I think I was; we were both in tears. It
was very shocking... seven years of no contact and then to walk in
while we're actually doing that particular track. I don't know -
coincidence, karma, fate, who knows? But it was very, very, very
powerful.'"
"I refer here to Plato's utilisation in the Meno of graphic austerity as the tool to bring to the surface, literally and figuratively, the inherent presence of geometry in the mind of the slave."
Shine on, gentle Duddits.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006 8:15 PM
Rock 'n' Roll
Keynote
"In Tom Stoppard's new play 'Rock 'n'
Roll,' showing in the West End, he [Syd Barrett]
is portrayed in the opening scene, and his life and music are a
recurring theme."
-- Terry Kirby, Syd Barrett: The Crazy Diamond, in The Independent of July 12
-- Terry Kirby, Syd Barrett: The Crazy Diamond, in The Independent of July 12
Keynote
"Each scene is punctuated with a rock track from such acts as the Velvet Underground, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd. Songs by Floyd's lost founder, Syd Barrett, are the keynote for Stoppard's theme that rock music sounded the death knell for repression but also heralded a freedom filled with its own perils."
-- Ray Bennett, today's review of a new play, "Rock 'n' Roll," by Tom Stoppard
Related material:
Dance of the Numbers,
for Tom Stoppard
on his birthday,
July 3, 2006,
and
Knock, Knock, Knockin',
from yesterday.
Dance of the Numbers,
for Tom Stoppard
on his birthday,
July 3, 2006,
and
Knock, Knock, Knockin',
from yesterday.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:11 PM
Pink Floyd co-founderSyd Barrett dies
"Pink Floyd's 1975 track 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond,' from the album 'Wish You Were Here,' is widely believed to be a tribute to Barrett."-- Reuters
Monday, July 10, 2006 2:48 AM
An obituary in this morning's New York Times suggests a flashback. The Times says that Paul Nelson, 69, a music critic once famously ripped off by the young Bobby Zimmerman, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment last Wednesday. Here is a Log24 entry for that date. (The obituary, by Jon Pareles, notes that Nelson "prized hard-boiled detective novels and film noir.")
|
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 7:35 PM Dance of the Numberscontinued-- A music review: "... in the mode of a film noir murder mystery" "For Bach, as Sellars explains, death is not an exit but an entrance." Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate, Nine is a Vine. |
Sunday, July 9, 2006 11:00 AM
Today's birthday:Tom Hanks, star of
"The Da Vinci Code"
Ben
Nicholson
and the Holy Grail
Part I:
A Current Exhibit
and the Holy Grail
Part I:
A Current Exhibit
A. Diamond Theory,
a 1976 preprint containing, in the original version, the designs on the
faces of Nicholson's "Kufi blocks," as well as some simpler traditional
designs, and
Part III:
The Leonardo Connection
See Modern-Day Leonardos, part of an account of a Leonardo exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and
Industry that includes Ben Nicholson and his "Kufi Blocks."
Part IV:
Nicholson's Grail Quest
"I'm interested in locating the holy
grail of the minimum means to express the most complex ideas."
-- Ben Nicholson in a 2005 interview
Nicholson's quest has apparently lasted for some time. Promotional material for a 1996 Nicholson exhibit in Montreal says it "invites visitors of all ages to experience a contemporary architect's search for order, meaning and logic in a world of art, science and mystery." The title of that exhibit was "Uncovering Geometry."
For web pages to which this same title might apply, see Quilt Geometry, Galois Geometry, and Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube.
* "Square Kufi" calligraphy is used in Islamic architectural ornament. I do not know what, if anything, is signified by Nicholson's 6x12 example of "Kufi blocks" shown above.
-- Ben Nicholson in a 2005 interview
Nicholson's quest has apparently lasted for some time. Promotional material for a 1996 Nicholson exhibit in Montreal says it "invites visitors of all ages to experience a contemporary architect's search for order, meaning and logic in a world of art, science and mystery." The title of that exhibit was "Uncovering Geometry."
For web pages to which this same title might apply, see Quilt Geometry, Galois Geometry, and Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube.
* "Square Kufi" calligraphy is used in Islamic architectural ornament. I do not know what, if anything, is signified by Nicholson's 6x12 example of "Kufi blocks" shown above.
Saturday, July 8, 2006 2:01 PM
For Kevin Bacon's birthdayNew Game:
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Roderick MacLeish, author of the classic Prince Ombra, died at 80 on Saturday, July 1, 2006. From an obituary:
"'When I think back over my career, I know that my father was a tremendous inspiration,' said his son, an attorney who represented abuse victims in a settlement with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston."
Related material: Log24 entries of May 31 and June 1, 2006, and the remarks of Raymond Chandler on wainscoting in The Big Sleep. See also the following:
Friday, July 7, 2006 7:00 PM
ART WARS continued| Now In memory of Roderick MacLeish: "Now, we are seven." -- Yul Brynner Related material: Log24 for 6/6/6 and Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. |
Friday, July 7, 2006 9:00 AM
Born (some say)
on this date:
Yul Brynner
Mate in 6
(White moves.)
on this date:
Yul Brynner
Mate in 6
(White moves.)
(White: Ke8, Nd7, Be5,
b5, e4, f2.
Black: Ke6.)
Log24, July 3, 2006:
"... There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn't solve it, like a lot of my problems. I reached down and moved a knight....
I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights."
-- Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, begun in the summer of 1938
"Is a puzzlement!"
"In this way we are offered a formidable lesson for every Christian community."
-- Pope Benedict XVI on Pentecost, June 4, 2006, St. Peter's Square.
Thursday, July 6, 2006 12:25 PM
State and ChurchToday's birthdays:
George W. Bush and
Sylvester Stallone, born on
the same day 60 years ago.
Two birthday quotations from Kathleen Parker:
"Verily, I say unto you - Whatever."
"No, wait, how about this: 'Yo, Christ Buddy!'"
-- Orlando Sentinel
column written for release July 1, 2006
Parker's column, on recent Presbyterian interpretations of the Holy Trinity, is titled
"I believe in Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe."
What about Shemp?
Thursday, July 6, 2006 2:45 AM
Mexican leftist'slead slips
in election recount
"The winner will take over from Fox on December 1, inheriting a divided nation and a fierce war against drug smuggling gangs."
Muy buena suerte.
Thursday, July 6, 2006 2:12 AM
What Song the Sirens Sang"Wake you up in the
middle of the night
just to hear them say..."
"Suitcases filled with cash had changed hands in the four-star Hotel Hassler in Rome."
-- F. Mark Wyatt, recently deceased
career CIA officer,
quoted in this morning's
New York Times
The New York Times, with its usual lack of clarity about dates, says Wyatt died "on Thursday." Presumably this was Thursday a week ago-- June 29, 2006, the Feast of Saint Peter.
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 11:07 PM
Solemn DanceVirgil on the Elysian Fields:
Some wrestle on the sands, and some in play(See also the previous two entries.)
And games heroic pass the hours away.
Those raise the song divine, and these advance
In measur'd steps to form the solemn dance.
"The cover of this issue of the Bulletin is the frontispiece to a volume of Samuel de Fermat’s 1670 edition of Bachet’s Latin translation of Diophantus’s Arithmetica. This edition includes the marginalia of the editor’s father, Pierre de Fermat. Among these notes one finds the elder Fermat’s extraordinary comment [c. 1637] in connection with the Pythagorean equation
-- Barry Mazur, Gade University Professor at Harvard
Mazur's concluding remarks are as follows:
"But however you classify the branch
of mathematics it is concerned with, Diophantus’s Arithmetica
can claim the title of founding document, and inspiring muse, to modern
number theory. This brings us back to the goddess with her lyre in the
frontispiece, which is the cover of this issue. As is only fitting,
given the passion of the subject, this goddess is surely Erato, muse of
erotic poetry."
Mazur has admitted, at his website, that this conclusion was an error:
"I erroneously identified the figure on the cover as Erato, muse of erotic poetry, but it seems, rather, to be Orpheus."
"Seems"?
The inscription on the frontispiece, "Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum," is from a description of the Elysian Fields in Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI:
The poets among us may like to think of Mazur's own role as that of the lyre:
Mazur has admitted, at his website, that this conclusion was an error:
"I erroneously identified the figure on the cover as Erato, muse of erotic poetry, but it seems, rather, to be Orpheus."
"Seems"?
The inscription on the frontispiece, "Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum," is from a description of the Elysian Fields in Virgil's Aeneid, Book VI:
His demum exactis, perfecto munere divae,
Devenere locos laetos, & amoena vireta
Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas.
Largior hic campos aether & lumine vestit
Purpureo; solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
Pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris,
Contendunt ludo, & fulva luctanter arena:
Pars pedibus plaudunt choreas, & carmina dicunt.
Necnon Threicius longa cum veste sacerdos
Obloquitur numeris septem discrimina vocum:
Jamque eadem digitis, jam pectine pulsat eburno.
PITT:It is perhaps not irrelevant that the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's next role would have been that of Orfeo in Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice." See today's earlier entries.
These rites compleat, they reach the flow'ry plains,
The verdant groves, where endless pleasure reigns.
Here glowing AEther shoots a purple ray,
And o'er the region pours a double day.
From sky to sky th'unwearied splendour runs,
And nobler planets roll round brighter suns.
Some wrestle on the sands, and some in play
And games heroic pass the hours away.
Those raise the song divine, and these advance
In measur'd steps to form the solemn dance.
There Orpheus graceful in his long attire,
In seven divisions strikes the sounding lyre;
Across the chords the quivering quill he flings,
Or with his flying fingers sweeps the strings.
DRYDEN:
These holy rites perform'd, they took their way,
Where long extended plains of pleasure lay.
The verdant fields with those of heav'n may vie;
With AEther veiled, and a purple sky:
The blissful seats of happy souls below;
Stars of their own, and their own suns they know.
Their airy limbs in sports they exercise,
And on the green contend the wrestlers prize.
Some in heroic verse divinely sing,
Others in artful measures lead the ring.
The Thracian bard surrounded by the rest,
There stands conspicuous in his flowing vest.
His flying fingers, and harmonious quill,
Strike seven distinguish'd notes, and seven at once they fill.
The poets among us may like to think of Mazur's own role as that of the lyre:
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 7:35 PM
Dance of the Numberscontinued--
A music review:
"... in the mode of a film noir murder mystery"
"For Bach, as Sellars explains,
death is not an exit but an entrance."
Seven is Heaven,
Eight is a Gate,
Nine is a Vine.
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 3:00 PM
Entertainment
from today's
New York Times
Related
Entertainment
from Nov. 6, 2003
from today's
New York Times
From the obituary of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died at
52 on Monday, July 3, 2006, at her home in Santa Fe:
"If she rarely spoke of her private life, few artists have brought such emotional vulnerability to their work, whether it was her sultry portrayal of Myrtle Wilson, the mistress of wealthy Tom Buchanan in John Harbison's 'Great Gatsby,' the role of her 1999 Metropolitan Opera debut, or her shattering performances several years ago in two Bach cantatas for solo voice and orchestra, staged by the director Peter Sellars, seen in Lincoln Center's New Visions series, with the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, Craig Smith conducting.
In Cantata No. 82, 'Ich Habe Genug' ('I Have Enough'), Ms. Hunt Lieberson, wearing a flimsy hospital gown and thick woolen socks, her face contorted with pain and yearning, portrayed a terminally ill patient who, no longer able to endure treatments, wants to let go and be comforted by Jesus. During one consoling aria, 'Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen' ('Slumber now, weary eyes'), she yanked tubes from her arms and sang the spiraling melody with an uncanny blend of ennobling grace and unbearable sadness."
from Nov. 6, 2003
Today's birthday:
director Mike Nichols
Wednesday, July 5, 2006 12:25 PM
And now, fromthe author of Sphere...
CUBE
He beomes aware of something else... some other presence.
"Anybody here?" he says.
I am here.
He almost jumps, it is so loud. Or it seems loud. Then he wonders if he has heard anything at all.
"Did you speak?"
No.
How are we communicating? he wonders.
The way everything communicates with everything else.
Which way is that?
Why do you ask if you already know the answer?
-- Sphere, by Michael Crichton, Harvard '64
"... when I went to Princeton things were completely different. This chapel, for instance-- I remember when it was just a clearing, cordoned off with sharp sticks. Prayer was compulsory back then, and you couldn't just fake it by moving your lips; you had to know the words, and really mean them. I'm dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ."
-- Baccalaureate address at Princeton, Pentecost 2006, reprinted in The New Yorker, edited by David Remnick, Princeton '81
Related figures:
For further details,
see Solomon's Cube
and myspace.com/affine.
For further details,
see Jews on Buddhism
and
Adventures in Group Theory.
For further details,
see Solomon's Cube
and myspace.com/affine.
For further details,
see Jews on Buddhism
and
Adventures in Group Theory.
"In this way we are offered
a formidable lesson
for every Christian community."
Pope Benedict XVI
on Pentecost,
June 4, 2006,
St. Peter's Square.
Monday, July 3, 2006 11:07 PM
Culture WarThe New York Times, August 6, 2003,
on its executive editor Bill Keller:
"'It is past time for our magnificent coverage of culture and lifestyles, so essential to our present allure and to our future growth, to get the kind of attention we routinely bestow on hard news,' Mr. Keller wrote in an e-mail message to the staff."
The New York Times, June
25, 2006,
on art in Mexico:
"At the Hilario Galguera gallery, newly opened in a fortresslike, century-old building, was Damien Hirst's gory new series 'The Death of God-- Towards a Better Understanding of Life Without God Aboard the Ship of Fools.' He conceived the work at his part-time home in the Mexican surf town Troncones."
Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep:
"I went over to a floor lamp and pulled the switch, went back to put off the ceiling light, and went across the room again to the chessboard on a card table under the lamp. There was a problem laid out on the board, a six-mover. I couldn't solve it, like a lot of my problems. I reached down and moved a knight, then pulled my hat and coat off and threw them somewhere. All this time the soft giggling went on from the bed, that sound that made me think of rats behind a wainscoting in an old house.
............I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights."
Monday, July 3, 2006 7:35 PM
For Tom Stoppard on his birthday:
"For I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet."
-- Abraham Cowley, Essays, 1668
Monday, July 3, 2006 10:13 AM
Requiem for a Clown
Into the Sunset, Part I:
Into the Sunset, Part II:
Requiem for a clown:
"At times, bullshit can only be
countered with superior bullshit."
-- Norman Mailer
See also 10/13
Into the Sunset, Part I:
Into the Sunset, Part II:
Requiem for a clown:
"At times, bullshit can only be
countered with superior bullshit."
-- Norman Mailer
See also 10/13
Sunday, July 2, 2006 8:00 PM
Review:
Sunday, July 2, 2006 6:29 PM
Related material:
The obituary of Jaap Penraat
in today's New York Times--
Log24, Jan. 6-8, 2006,
and
Jaap's Puzzle Page.
The obituary of Jaap Penraat
in today's New York Times--
"Hudson Talbott, a longtime friend of Mr. Penraat's who wrote a children's book about his experiences (Forging Freedom: A True Story of Heroism During the Holocaust) said his research indicated there was a daredevil aspect to the missions.
'The feeling I get is that he
just loved the idea of putting one over on the Nazis,' Mr. Talbott said
in an interview with The Albany Times Union. 'It wasn't a joke,
or a
game, but clearly there was something about fooling them that was an
important aspect of this.'" --Douglas Martin in today's New York
Times
Log24, Jan. 6-8, 2006,
and
Jaap's Puzzle Page.
Sunday, July 2, 2006 9:29 AM
The Rock and the SerpentIn a search for a title to express
the contrast between truth and lies,
an analogy between the phrases
"Crystal and Dragon" and
"Mathematics and Narrative"
suggests a similar phrase,
"The Rock and the Serpent."
A web search for related titles leads to a book by Alice Thomas Ellis:
Serpent on the Rock: A Personal View of Christianity. (See a review.)
(This in turn leads to an article on Ellis's husband, the late Colin Haycraft, publisher.)
For an earlier discussion of Ellis in this weblog, see Three Eleanors (March 12, 2005).
That entry brings us back to the theme of truth and lies with its link to an article from the Catholic publication Commonweal:
Getting to Truth by Lying.
Christians who wish to lie more effectively may consult a book by the author of the Commonweal article:
For a more sympathetic view of
suffering stemming from
Christian narrative,
see
(Click on cover
for details. See also Log24
entries on Guy Davenport,
who wrote the foreword.)
Saturday, July 1, 2006 11:55 AM
Zen
and the Art
continued:
Zen and The Art.
Related material:
Open House Day
at Cullinane College
and Log24, June 1-15.
continued:
Zen and The Art.
Related material:
Open House Day
at Cullinane College
and Log24, June 1-15.
Saturday, July 1, 2006 9:00 AM
Hong Kong DaySee Hong Kong July 1 marches,
Thousands March for Democracy in Hong Kong. and
Hong Kong flags, previous and current.
Related material:
the previous two entries.